Slashdot Mirror
Intel's Big Bet On Baseball (axios.com)
Ina Fried, reporting for Axios: Intel has been traveling the country this year, broadcasting one major league game a week in virtual reality. On Tuesday, the company's crew was close to home as the San Francisco Giants defeated the Cleveland Indians 2-1 in extra innings. How it works: The games are free to watch, but require the person to have a Samsung phone and Gear VR headset. To broadcast a game in VR, Intel has camera rigs on the first and third base side, as well as the traditional "deep home" shot. It also aims to have an additional camera or two in a spot unique to each stadium. In Arizona, for example, it has one near the stadium's swimming pool. Each camera setup has six pairs of cameras to capture high-definition footage in 180 degrees. In the parking lot, meanwhile, separate teams work in two adjoining vans. One group works on the sound and stitches the images together, while a second van houses a more traditional broadcast setup, including play-by-play announcer J.B. Long. Tweaking the product: Still new at this, Intel is constantly adding new tricks to its arsenal. Last night's game, for example, was the first time the company added real-time VR graphics to the mix, showing baseball cards with stats above the players. Intel CEO has said he wants VR sports to be a billion dollar business for the company.
You're wasting your time in India unless it's 3D cricket. Never seen an Indian in the parking lot with a baseball bat, and the "out of the park" highlight clips most likely shown in my neck of the woods aren't from US footage.
The title is way off. This doesn't have anything to do with Intel betting on baseball, unless they are buying a team or something we don't know about. They're betting on VR, and refining their approach, and baseball is an easy, cheap, repeatable way to do that, and provides a "cool" experience in surround. They can move their setup within minutes to any other venue I'm sure.
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
Much like 3D glasses, 360 VR is a silly gimmick that appeals to a very small hardcore group of early adopters.
360 VR does not have a future outside of a small niche. To the average non-video game player/early tech adopter, the headsets are big, bulky, and dorky (sis said it not me).
Have you seen your average TV baseball demographic? Do you really think they're going to spend money on something like this? This is a silly fad that will be replaced with the next silly entertainment gimmick designed to encourage consumers to keep buying new equipment every 1 to 2 years.
The only way this would be successful is if Intel gave away its 360 VR headsets for free to thousands of fans in those cities.
The sooner 360VR dies for Immersive VR, the better.
Who in the hell would pay to watch other people play sports?
Support my political activism on Patreon.
With 200+ pitches a game the home plate ump is bound to get some calls wrong or is just having a bad day. The umps get fatigued, their view gets blocked by the catcher, catcher framing the pitch making it look like a strike and the catcher moves the mit back into the strike zone in such a way that the ump thinks it was a strike.
Baseball should have a goal to get every call correct.
I am curious why Intel would even be the entity to do this? Especially given that they are delivering the "product" on a Samsung platform which doesn't even have Intel Inside(TM).
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
There are already systems to track pitches and determine if they are balls or strikes. Questec has been used to grade umpire performance in balls and strikes. Pitchfx, which is also used to track the performance of pitchers, has been used to call balls and strikes in minor league games in place of the home plate umpire. You don't need VR when it's possible to completely automate that function of the umpires altogether. It wouldn't replace umpires, just free them up to focus on calling other aspects of the game.
I have no place in that world. I would MUCH rather go to a game, concert, or event. Why are tech companies trying to keep me in my house? We need MORE human interaction, not less.
I had a subscription to MLB.tv for a couple years, I'm also one of the five baseball fans in Canada (hi there) one thing that annoyed me is that they blackout the games that are shown locally, as if I'm sitting in front of my TV all the time. The whole point of me getting a subscription to the damn service was so that I could watch a game on my mobile device or at my computer on their site, but nope, if a team I follow was on TV it was blacked out on the site / app service.
So yeah, cancelled that PDQ. I understand that the MLB and the MLBPA makes cash from broadcasting rights but I'm trying to give you the money here and you lock me out anyway. Kinda pointless
Anyway, on topic, seems like a fairly specific setup you need to have in order to use this, kinda defeats the purpose really. (I'm sure somebody else has made the same comment already by now RIP)
crazy dynamite monkey
The ump should have a real-time display in his mask showing the pitches in proximity to the strike zone.
Like there is not enough branding at a Major League Game?
Like Ad revenue isn't way way off.
I'm in favor of this, even if it's not implemented in precisely that way. I wouldn't want augmented reality in the umpire's mask to be a distraction from making another call like a balk or catcher interference. In the test, it wasn't implemented that way. Someone else (in the test, former major leaguer Eric Byrnes) was responsible for operating the equipment and making the calls, but it actually went well. You can read about it at https://www.wired.com/2015/07/baseball-game-no-umpire/. I believe it would be an improvement because it would get rid of a lot of the biases in the calls umpires make, which are documented at http://www.fangraphs.com/community/the-2016-strike-zone-and-the-umpires-who-control-it/. That last link is a really interesting read and shows that there are a lot of biases in the calling of balls and strikes.
This also isn't something you'd want to implement right away. Pitchfx has its own errors, partially due to technical limitations that the flight of the ball is extrapolated over the last few feet before getting to the plate. While the overall biases during the course of a season are normally distributed about zero, there can be larger systematic biases over smaller scales like within the course of a game. These are discussed in quite a bit of detail at http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=13109. I'm okay with a randomly distributed error of a half inch or even an inch, provided that there's no systematic bias. On the other hand, if the calibration is off and the horizontal error is two or three inches, that's pretty significant. If the goal of automating calling balls and strikes, you don't want to implement a system that has some of the same systematic biases that human umpires have. The solution is to commit to the technology and put the resources of MLB toward fixing the calibration issues with Pitchfx.
I'm absolutely in favor of doing this. But even if the "baseball purists" immediately dropped their opposition, it would take a little while to properly implement this. I think there's more involved here than, say, implementing instant replay over the course of an offseason.
Wasn't this already tried many years ago in Second Life? I imagine this will be just as popuar
from 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
to 45 2F 6E 40 3C DF 10 71 4E 41 DF AA 25 7D 31 3F
Baseball is quite limited in its popularity in the world stage. If you want to make serious money, choose a global sport.
The title makes it sound like Intel is betting the family jewels on VR. However, "Intel CEO has said he wants VR sports to be a billion dollar business for the company" means he doesn't see it growing to even 2% of revenue.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Bad calls are a part of baseball. Instant replay is the devil.
Breakfast served all day!