Live From The Open Championship: World First as Sky Sports Debuts Volumetric Capture Innovation

Live from The Open: World first as Sky Sports debuts volumetric capture innovation By Fergal Ringrose, Editorial Director, Europe

Friday, July 19, 2019 - 09:28

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On the first day of The 148th Open at Royal Portrush, Sky Sports introduced what it calls Sky Scope, in which presenter Nick Dougherty demonstrated the golf swings of Dustin Johnson and Henrik Stenson at The Open Zone in 3D virtual reality, thanks to a brand new volumetric capture process.

Working closely in partnership with Mark Roberts Motion Control (MRMC) and virtual human' experts Dimension, Sky Sports has created the world's first mobile volumetric capture studio that is also integrated with motion capture. To see a video of the end result click here.

MRMC has also announced this innovation as Polymotion Stage, a mobile solution for high-end volumetric 3D video capture and avatar creation. Polymotion Stage is currently available as a Stage Dome (and soon a Stage Truck), and can be transported globally to wherever the talent is located, such as sports arenas or film sets.

Inside these soundproofed capture stages, 120 video cameras capture everything in the performance space at up to 4k resolution, making assets flexible for use across immersive and traditional media formats.

The Sky Sports team captured eleven top golfers in the build-up to The Open across Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. The players whose swings are being played out and analysed across the weekend include Rory McIlroy, Francesco Molinari, John Rahm, Adam Scott, Matt Wallace and Gary Woodland.

Sky Sports head of golf Jason Wesseley put this innovation into perspective for SVG Europe in the TV compound at Royal Portrush. From a golfing perspective it enables you to see a top level player in any environment you choose to put him in and see how the mechanics of his swing actually work. It's huge.

Jason Wessely, head of golf, Sky Sports

These players have limited time, and they don't always want to talk. They can come in and get their swing mapped, and then it takes five to eight minutes and they just have to swing a golf club. Then you have that asset to do what you want with it, because that's really key. This is just touching the surface of what's possible.

The 3D nature of it enables you to see the golf swing from positions that you've never seen before. You've never seen a golf swing from in front, because the ball is coming at you and it's a dangerous place to be. Now you're seeing it and that's quite a wow factor.

[Presenter] Nick Dougherty is very talented and can tell the story of the swing on multiple levels. That Dustin Johnson example was quite complicated and quite in-depth. What you saw today was quite a high level analysis, said Wessely.

The good thing about the Sky Scope is that not only is Nick able to describe the visuals, he can illuminate things that have never really been told properly before. In other forms of slow motion, you can't freeze it to the level you can here and move around it at the same time.

Nick probably had an hour's worth of prep for each sequence. He gets the raw video asset, and he can pick out the points he wants to talk about and advises us on where to push in with the camera or what angle to shoot if from at any one time.

I think it will probably take [golf] coaching to a new level. And I think we could take it to the first tee and put it there with an Ncam. It just so happens that The Open Zone is our environment of choice, said Wessely.

Hopefully the technology will also improve. Because they have already mapped the club head, that is really sharp visually. As of now, things like the hands on the club are a little less precise - but that will get better.

The exciting thing is being able to put these players in whatever environment you want - whether out on the golf course or back at Sky Studios or even a VR application on your phone. It's pretty exciting.

Engagement with the players, talking to them and getting access, is critical in the modern age, he said. At the moment the key thing that separates broadcasters is our relationship with top level athletes.

Golfers are mainly nice guys and they understand that golf is a sport that needs help to raise awareness, participation and image. Most of them are on board with that, and they've always given us pretty good access.

We've got a group of reporters, commentators and talent who work very hard at maintaining those relationships. We're trying to make golf more accessible, more attainable and more real, said Wessely.

Getting closer to the golf action: the next step

Duncan East, head of directors & creative, Sky Sports, takes up the story of how this latest Sky Sports Golf innovation came into being. The Open Zone that we have here has been a huge step forward as far as an innovative way of getting the real golfers here and showing you their techniques. But ultimately, when the tournament starts you get peak viewership because they're all out on the course and you don't get access to them.

You can pre-record some lovely pieces on the Tuesday and Wednesday of course, but they might not be relevant come Friday or Saturday. As brilliant as The Zone is and has been, we're always thinking what's next what's next?

We've done AR in The Zone before with our player walkthroughs at Opens and The Ryder Cup. Last year we took the AR out of the glass studio on-site down to The Zone, a great step forward to take it outside and place AR in an environment where is pushes you to really get it right.

This is the next step, said East. What we've now done is partnered with Nikon and MRMC. They came

By the beach at Dunluce Links, Royal Portrush Golf Club: (L/R) Nicky Chauhan, senior creative, Sky Creative Agency Sky Sports;

Dunca

LINK:	https://www.svgeurope.org/blog/headlines/live-from-the-open-world-firs...
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