The football World Cup is almost upon us. Many millions will watch the tournament unfold on TV screens around the globe. But what if you could enjoy a mini virtual reconstruction of each match on your dining table instead?
To create such an experience, Konstantinos Rematas and colleagues at the University of Washington trained a machine learning algorithm to convert 2D YouTube clips into 3D reconstructions.
They began by gathering footage from the football videogame FIFA. 鈥淚 had to play FIFA 2017 for, I don鈥檛 know, a couple of days to get all the data for training a neural network,鈥� says Rematas.
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Because the game calculates the 3D position of each player, the team could gather information about both their actual location and how they were rendered on a 2D screen.
Having trained their system on this data, the team was able to take imagery from clips of matches on YouTube and render them in 3D. An augmented reality headset, like Microsoft鈥檚 Hololens, lets a viewer see the 3D version as though it is positioned on a flat surface in front of them. They see small holographic-like players running around playing the game, which they can then walk around or move closer to.
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There are some limitations with the current results 鈥� the ball has not been properly rendered yet, for instance. And while the viewer can move around on one side of the pitch to get different perspectives on the action, one half of each player is currently missing. This would have to be reconstructed digitally.
And there are also glitches when players are close together as this confuses the depth-sensing algorithm that helps to render them in 3D.
Football鈥檚 coming home
Such issues can probably be ironed out, says at London-based digital agency Inition. If so, turning 2D footage into 3D content could make virtual and augmented reality applications more accessible, he adds.
鈥淵ou could have a button in any platform you鈥檙e watching videos from that would transform the content into 3D, which you could watch with a headset,鈥� he says.
And he says that this is a cost-effective way of doing things. Intel is working on a way of capturing sports events in 3D 鈥� but it requires putting .
However, tech analyst at Gartner is not sure people will want to watch entire 90-minute football matches via augmented reality headsets. He does think such technology could be used to offer more immersive ways of reliving match highlights either at home or even when fans go to the stadium.
鈥淵ou could stop by and see some of your favourite plays from a few years ago and be there right in the action,鈥� he says.
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