The true reality of virtual reality

The sport industry is slowly moving towards its next technological leap – virtual reality.

The technology is still in its infancy – and many who have tried it, don’t see it as a game changer just get. But the message from the VR world was clear: you haven’t seen anything yet.

Philip Morrow, CEO of Retinize, a VR production company, explains how the technology is growing rapidly, and now they are ready to take the next big step:

“VR is moving incredibly fast. The focus has been on the tech for the last couple of years, and now we’re slowly seeing a shift into content. We see that as being a critical next stage. Our whole business is based on being a content business, and seeing what VR can be used for. The tech development won’t stop. We’re at year zero of the technology, where the proof of concept is there. It’s not perfect, some devices are better than others, it’s a bit expensive, there are some barriers to overcome. But most of those things are going to get solved in the next couple of years.” 

“To get a sense of what state of the art is now, you need to try an Oculus Rift – the quality is phenomenal. We find that people go in those devices and don’t come out again for an hour. That gives you a good indication on how comfortable people are feeling with the technology.”

People who work in VR insist that if you have tried a top end device, you will be convinced by its potential. The sceptics of the technology liken it to 3D, as a fad. Ironically Morrow says 3D has been crucial in the development of VR, but as an experience, they are vastly different.

“We think 3D has been critical for VR, because it gives you a total sense of presence. Most people who have tried VR, in our experience, come out saying ‘I thought it was just like 3D, but now I having tried it, I feel very differently’. That’s only true of high end VR experiences – Facebook didn’t invest $2 billion for nothing in Oculus Rift, they believe the future of social media is going to be via VR headsets.”

Another misconception is that shooting even the most basic VR is going to cost the earth. Again Morrow says once people deal directly with the technology, they will see that is not the case.

“We are always slightly mystified by this.” admitted Morrow. “VR is not particularly more expensive than regular filming. VR pieces do have expensive bits, the camera rigs, the video stitching, these kind of things do add cost. But most things are relatively low cost. Most VR companies want the medium adopted, so it’s not in their interest to overcharge.”

So what does this mean for sport? The most exciting possibility for clubs is that they could reimagine their ticketing strategy – and no longer be bound by how many people that could physically fit in their stadium.

It’s an area SAP expect to see growth in. Bernd Huwe, Business Development Director for Sports & Entertainment, thinks it’s something clubs will look at growing:

“We expect the virtual component to be more and more important in this market. You have a limited number of seats or spaces available, so you have to grow digitally to sell out your event virtually as well, to make it an experience for anyone, around the globe.”

If your stadium is always full, it means if you want to buy a seat in the stadium, it’s very difficult. But also if you’re a Chinese customer and you would like to attend a match, it is very cumbersome to get to the stadium, if you can’t pay a huge amount of money. So the solution for the clubs may be to sell out their stadiums and then make it an experience for wherever the people are. The only pre-condition is you have an arm thick link into your tel-co provider, as you will need to transmit a lot of data.” 

Morrow agrees, and that the VR experience may become a crucial part of how you follow your team.

“You may start seeing VR as a bolt on to your season ticket. You buy your season ticket, but you can’t make every game, but you can always make it virtually. But then the possibility of selling more seats than there are seats in the stadium has huge potential for events that could fill their stadia several times over. It could give them a huge finical opportunity. The idea that you could sit at the game with your mates, from around the world, in the comfort of your own home, having a beer, is incredibly attractive.”

So what is coming next for the industry? Live VR is close, but not quite yet ready. Retinize think it will take 2-3 years before large numbers of people are consuming live VR in significant numbers. But once the technology comes, the insight that it will offer sports fans could change the way they watch sport.

“There are unique experiences that VR could show.” said Morrow  “If you were to take F1 as an example, if you were to provide a live stream of a pit stop, and suddenly be there, as the car zooms in and the engineers work on the car… That’s huge. Some things VR does really well, and that sense of presence, being in a space where you normally couldn’t even stand, is really exciting. I think lots of sports have those moments. But currently doing live is certainly costly, and involves some serious challenges. But that will change.”

But while live VR may be a few years away, the opportunity for brands to offer their fans more in-depth access than ever before is already possible. Josh Decker, CEO of Tagboard, outlined what could be done:

“We’ve been looking at VR, to create an interactive experience. Looking at social content in VR environment. We’ve been experimenting with that for about 6 months now, it’s not on the public market yet but once we have that to go for public consumption, you’ll see more VR interaction. Imagine walking into FC Bayern, with a VR app, this is just an example, and you walk into this virtual lobby, wearing your VR glasses and there are different places you can go into the store to buy merchandise, into a different room to watch replays of your favourite memory and you look to your right and there’s a social media room where you can walk into and see social media content being displayed from the community or from your favourite players. You can watch a video or a live stream, those type of things. I think that is the kind of experience we are going to see, is more of a virtual interaction of social media content. We have a powerful EPI that we have built, to help build those experiences.”

So if live will dominate the VR landscape in the next two to three years, what technology will emerge in the next five to 10 years? That’s where things get really exciting. VR will stop being a stationary experience, and turn into a fully immersive one says Morrow:

“In VR video at the minute, people are able to rotate their heads, but not able to move their heads around freely. But the ability to look around and even walk around something, will be a massive game changer. It needs a huge amount of processing power at the minute, but the technology already exists, we’re not talking about something that’s not possible, we’re talking about things becoming affordable. The possibilities that tech brings are huge. But there are so many other things people are working on like ‘haptics’ – which makes you feel when you touch objects that everything feels real.

“There’s a place in Utah and New York called ‘The Void’ where it’s an open space, but it’s completely tracked. When you put on a headset and walk around it, they map an entire 3D crazy world on top of it. You can touch surfaces as if they are real, you can walk around it. The physical sensations match exactly what you are seeing. There are so many companies and so much investment in this space.” 

We think this is around 10 years away. We’ll see the first examples coming later this year in its most basic form. The tech is moving quickly. I’m sure people will say when they see it – ‘It’s not bad’. But this is V1. Wait until you see V2 and V3. It’s like the very first smart phone you ever saw.”

The other key milestone will be VR’s assimilation with AR (augmented reality) – which involves information being added to the real world, as opposed to VR, which is in its own world.

AR had a major breakthrough this year with Pokemon Go, which has seen millions of people searching major cities for virtual Pokemon.

“We expect VR headsets to be more like glasses or even contact lens eventually” said Morrow. “We believe AR will merge into the same device over time. You will put on your glasses and either look at things in your reality, but then you can tap the side of it, suddenly the glasses darken you are somewhere else, and now you are completely transported. The two technologies are entirely complimentary in the long term. The weight, ease, processing power and bandwidth will all improve. The glasses will also have retinal projection. Which is much higher res. They will have laser projectors built into the glasses, beaming directly onto your retina.”

But crucially for sport business, sport is seen to have the potential to open the technology up to the wider public. Huge sports events, for which tickets will be unavailable or unaffordable to 99.9% of fans, will drive people to invest in technology that will make it feel like they are there. Morrow likens it to the adoption of TVs in the 1950s:

“Years and years ago, people bought TV sets because of the Queen’s coronation. The very first TV sets in British homes were driven by that in 1954. The same will be true for people with live VR – people will take the opportunity to be at an event they feel they cannot miss. To experience the roar of the crowd, and the sensation of really being there. It’s all chicken and egg, because people need content before they buy the tech, the tech needs to be good enough before people will invest in the content.

But it’s like a slowly advancing army of different parts of the jigsaw. There’s absolutely no doubt it is coming. To the people who say ‘I tried it and I didn’t like it’, pretty much everything that you had in your life, you thought that about the first version, and this technology is still in its infancy.”

VR is coming. $1 billion has already been invested in the technology in the first quarter of 2016, and $120 billion of revenue is forecast to come from AR/VR by 2020, and the brands and clubs who get there first will likely see a high ROI. 

The big question will be – who will be the first to make it work?

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