Gadgetory

a view of central court at a warrior's game not from $3,000 courtside seats but from inside a virtual reality headset of the Pacific next VR has partnered with the NBA to broadcast select games and virtual reality the goal is to make it feel like you're actually at the game it's not there yet but it's getting closer the ball itself Yatta we got a sneak peek of what it takes to put on a live VR broadcast and what's coming next to make the VR experience feel more realistic those cameras when they're turned on build a map of the world around them so right now these camera positions get you really close to the action so if it's happening in either you know at the end of either court in the end zones where you're there with those those stanchion cameras and you can see you know layups come up and sort of happen driving towards you as a viewer next VR is already testing out its next generation camera which is smaller and has better resolution allowing for more cameras in more places we feel like we can optimize the position on the stanchion because the cameras can actually be embedded in the padding right now you have three degrees of freedom when you watch our content that's y'all pitch roll so you're sort of you can around that will in the very near future open up to allow you some amount of physical movement for instance if a referee is standing in front of that center court camera you can look around them just like you could if you're sitting there unlike other VR creators next VR does not stitch the images together from an array of cameras the technical term for it is stereo orthogonal reproduction so what happens is the cameras build a map basically a mesh of the world around them and that is transmitted all the way down to the end users when you're watching our content you're actually inside a virtual world that's a mesh copy of the actual arena and then we projection map the video to the walls of that mesh to complete the illusion of it being real in a production truck that's just outside the arena a team is making sure everything is synced they're switching the live camera views adding 3d graphics and stats and turning around highlights and replays our game is produced from inside virtual reality so if you're in our truck you'll see in producers who actually have headsets on or watching the game in in VR and talking to our talent our own commentators who are calling the game in virtual reality which by the way is a different discipline than calling it for television almost entirely different because you actually tell people where to look hey look down you know and then give them spatial direction about sort of the experience next Villar claims the technology can sometimes fool your brain into believing you were really at the game we've had reporters suggest that at some point in their season this season they will have a hard time remembering which games they actually attended in person and which games they they attended and VR which means we're laying down memories in people's minds is if they were there the technology here is really impressive it's still not as good as being there live you're still missing that social aspect of being at the game with others and that will evolve in time but what we have here right now is a peek into the future it's really good and virtual reality experiences are only going to get better you