HOVERBOARDS WERE meant to be here by now guys, if Back To the Future II was to be believed. There’d be giant artificial lifeforms amongst us, Blade Runner had it, and you don’t wanna know what Total Recall suggested we’ll have by 2084.
Hey, fiction needs dreamers. Perhaps sport needs those visionaries even more. Rugby certainly does. And what’s worth noting is that some new thinking and wondrous technologies aren’t that far away. So while this issue of Rugby World looks at what would, could and perhaps should be in our sport, let’s take a look at the advancements that might begin lacing through our game in the very near future…
WATCHING THE GAME What do you think of when you hear the phrase ‘augmented reality’? For some, the next obvious thought is ‘lineouts’.
AR 51 out of Tel Aviv are a business which brings live 3D streaming of events direct to you. As co-founder Erez Tal tells us, “Imagine yourself sitting with the Apple Vision Pro (headset) in your living room and later what will be augmented reality glasses, which are going to be the same size as (a typical pair of) glasses. These understand surfaces and 3D and can provide you with holograms of the live game, as the stadium will be in front of you, from your coffee table to infinity.
“And you can control the size and the rotation and the angle of viewing, and where you want to sit (in the virtual stadium), together with friends and family – seeing the same experience in 3D and seeing each other. Or maybe your whole living room becomes a Stade Français living room.
“Our main technology is real-time, markerless motion capture. It means that we’re setting cameras around the (venue) with any size of (venue)
