Revolutionary viewing: 3D volumetric video streaming set to become reality for sports fans Getting creative with photo-realistic holograms and Condense Reality By Heather McLean, Editor
Thursday, November 5, 2020 - 18:27
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Live sports viewing is set to become truly interactive with Condense Reality's technology
Condense Reality, an 18-month-old virtual reality (VR) startup that develops technology to transform how viewers watch live entertainment and sports, is banking on 3D holograms as the future of live sports engagement.
The company has developed a system for streaming hologram-style 3D volumetric video of live events alongside a normal television broadcast in real-time, with the potential to bring entertainment and sport to life on the tabletop and elsewhere.
Next-generation volumetric video
Until now, capturing volumetric video, which creates a three-dimensional image that can be viewed by multiple people from different angles, required fixed studios with green screens and many precisely calibrated cameras to work. Additionally, the processing power required meant it could take days to process minutes of content for streaming.
Condense Reality has developed a next-generation solution that enables broadcasters and content creators to capture and stream volumetric video in real time, outside the confines of a studio, and with far fewer cameras.
Condense Reality's modular approach combines proprietary software with off-the-shelf hardware. Its CR Capture platform uses state-of-the-art computer vision and deep learning to accurately reconstruct the contents of a scene in seconds, while CR Stream enables broadcasters to stream that content to viewers via their own augmented or VR headsets including Oculus, Vive, Microsoft Hololens, and Magic Leap. The multi-platform CR Playback app gives viewers control of their experience through an intuitive 3D UI.
What we're building is the capability of capturing these photo-realistic holograms, and then what we want to do is take these holograms and allow the broadcasters to do what they want with them
Speaking to SVG Europe, Nick Fellingham, CEO at Condense Reality, says: Our technology integrates with Unity and Unreal [Engine]. These game engines are taking over the world. They're doing massively well, not just because they create games, but because create these 3D immersive experiences. So we're betting less so on augmented reality, more on game engines, and if you bet on game engines you naturally bet on augmented reality because you're creating augmented reality experiences inside a game engine.
Condense Reality's system is a key part of a project to bring this engaging technology to the masses; BT recently became one of the winners of the UK government's Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) funding boost for 5G, under the 5G Create competition. Named 5G Edge-XR, the consortium led by BT's Media and Research teams alongside Condense Reality, TheGridFactory, Bristol University, Dance East, and Salsa Sound, will develop virtual and augmented reality experiences for live sport, working closely with BT Sport.
Fellingham comments: We contacted a number of broadcasters, and when we spoke to the guys at BT Media and Research about eight month ago, they said we've been thinking about this exact idea. So it just turned out that our visions aligned quite well. It's such a nice coincidence.
5G Edge-XR will enable people to view immersive sporting events from all angles, across a broader range of devices including smartphones, tablets, AR and VR headsets and TVs. Condense Reality will initially focus on optimising its technology for boxing, with other sports to follow.
Getting creative with photo-realistic holograms
However, adds Fellingham, this technology we're building isn't just designed for AR . He goes on: What we're building is the capability of capturing these photo-realistic holograms, and then what we want to do is take these holograms and allow the broadcasters to do what they want with them.
We are really interested in a tabletop experience, but that's not the only way you can enjoy them. You can see them in VR and make them life sized you can almost stand in the action, but you can also, for instance, increase the size of them massively so let's say you captured a performer or musician, you could then place that performer 20-times the size in the centre of the stadium and people could watch that through their phones.
He notes: It may turn out that tabletop AR isn't the thing that people really jump on and in fact what they want is to be able to control the cameras using an Xbox controller on a standard TV. The way that would work is you can move your camera around, or set it to follow your favourite boxer, or rotate it around yourself so [it would be like you are] flying a virtual drone around the boxing match.
Fellingham states: We're building the tools that allow people to do really creative stuff with this.
Boxing with a 3D AR version of the match on your coffee table could become a reality with BT Sport and Condense Reality
From boxing to pole vaulting
Right now the focus for the company is all about sport, but this could broaden out with time. Fellingham states: We want to capture sports events. Eventually we want to capture everything, but when you're a start up you have to focus, and we saw this need in sports events, and in particular, boxing. Other things that are interesting [for this technology] are [sports like] climbing and athletics I think is going to be really popular in this kind of format; being able to watch pole vault on your table [in 3D] will be absolutely fascinating.
The reason these specific events are good targets for Condense Reality is due to the technological restr
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Revolutionary viewing: 3D volumetric video streaming set to become reality for sports fans Getting creative with photo-realistic holograms and Condense Reality By Heather McLean, Editor 
