If Seattle Seahawks fans attended the team’s game against the Los Angeles Rams in December, they would have clearly noticed their favorite players donning wildly bright uniforms on Action Green Day. But what they probably didn’t notice was a special kind of experimentation happening in the stands as well at CenturyLink Field.
Seattle-based Vulcan, which was founded by Seahawks owner and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, conducted a mixed reality test during the game, according to a blog post published earlier this month on the Vulcan Technology website. Staffer Eric Smith, a software engineer with innovation team The Forge, provided a recount of the experiment as he and colleagues donned Microsoft HoloLens to experience with how mixed reality could play a role in shaping the future fan experience.
Overall, when the HoloLens tracked properly, Vulcan Technology discovered that it was “more impressed than we expected with mixed reality’s ability to enhance the game experience.”
Above the stadium seats, it could hang NFL.com for fans to check-in on while instant replays on the side felt “natural,” as the company described. Having the ability to scroll through Twitter, follow one’s fantasy stats or view other games were all options for the user.
“If we aren’t getting strange looks from people in public, we are probably not trying hard enough,” Smith wrote on the site regarding pushing the boundaries of innovation.
Prior to the December game, Vulcan wrote a small HoloLens app that would make holograms appear on the field depending on seating. Through obtaining game day badges and security permission to utilize the HoloLens, the Vulcan team uncovered some answers to questions they had such as how the stadium lighting affects the hologram translucency and impact of distance on hologram quality, among others.
Vulcan Technology found that the stadium lights at CenturyLink Field didn’t affect users’ ability to read text and images displayed via the hardware. However, the company classified pose tracking as “problematic and inconsistent.” The HoloLens generally tracks a person’s “pose” using various sensors and cameras combined with the stationary objects in that individual’s environment.
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When a user was seated in the football stadium, the HoloLens would become stable and serve its natural function, which included displaying images up to four meters away. On the contrary, when someone was standing — which naturally happens during football games — the HoloLens and its sensors that would normally attach to the seat back in front of the user left the sensors view. As a result, one was “left with the HoloLens-equivalent of a tumbling hourglass,” according to Vulcan. Similarly, walking around with the HoloLens didn’t allow for the mapping feature to assess a user’s area that he or she was in. Consequently, the HoloLens would either jiggle or stop tracking altogether.
While there’s clearly some work to be done figuring out the HoloLens and how its best suited for enhancing the fan experience, the test with at CenturyLink Field is a good start for determining what futuristic viewing will look like.