My friend believes her class tomorrow ought to be canceled preemptively due to weather. In all honesty, the weather isn’t so great out there (especially given the quality of Glassboro snow removal), but her first attempt wasn’t persuasive enough, so we decided to take another crack at it. Video follows:
Also available at Vimeo.
Update: Apparently by way of my friend’s professor, and the Associate Provost for Research, this clip shall be shown to our university’s president.
3 comments ↓
I think i’ve seen this somewhere before…but it’s not bad at all
Hey Ivan, I have an interesting question for you. There was a brand new graphic that ESPN showed off for the Home Run Derby this year. The link below is from the video game MLB Slugfest ‘04, but it should give you an idea what happens. The graphic started just as the ball started off the bat and changed colors once it cleared the fence. Do you have any idea how they could have achieved this, while still running the show live in real time?
Pete: This affect was probably achieved the same way as digital lines of scrimmage or puck-enhancers. A 3D representation of the field is created in a computer, and points of interest are tracked. The field is not rendered (so it’s transparent), and then effects are overlaid on the digital field. In order to make sure that the line isn’t rendered on top of players or anyone else on the field, a chroma-key is used, so only the field is “painted” on. Every camera contains information on its precise orientation relative to the field, so the computer knows how it should orient and scale the graphics.
Now, the ball-tracker technology is more complex, but likely utilizes many of the same concepts in rendering the graphics. The ball tracker possibly uses some kind of optical tracking technology, either by identifying the ball visually, or by the ball having something only identifiable by the computer (mayhaps some kind of special coating that reflects a certain wavelength of light in a certain way, a technology recently introduced that ought to revolutionize chroma-keying as we know it). Then it just renders a fist full of colored pixels and overlays them.
A lot of this technology isn’t new. It was pioneered with the 1st & Ten graphics system, and I think it was MLB who developed ball-trackers (their website offers up all sorts of information live during games, including where balls have passed through the batter’s box). It’s just the application that’s new. What will be really cool and amazing is when they can get this into an augmented-reality system: just put on a pair of goggles or something, and you get the same effect, but in real life (basically a real life HUD, but used in this case for sports).
Feel free to e-mail me any questions you have. I don’t know if comments on my videos is the most appropriate forum for these kinds of discussions.
Leave a Comment