Australian Open tennis championship is broadcast in Wii Sports style

By: Viktor Tsyrfa | 15.01.2025, 20:41
Big-screen interpretation: a view of the court and the player General shot of the broadcast and a shot of the tennis player. Source: foxsports.com.au

The famous tennis championship is broadcast live in the Wii Sports style. Instead of real athletes, viewers can see their animated avatars. The broadcast organiser uses motion capture technology and simulates the behaviour of the animated character in real time. At the same time, all the surrounding sounds remain unchanged.

This is what happens when high technology meets greed. The fact is that the organiser sold the exclusive rights to live broadcasting to major TV channels, and under these conditions, they cannot broadcast matches on the Internet, only to post them later in a recorded format. However, modern technology has made it possible to circumvent the letter of the contract by redrawing the picture rather than broadcasting the real thing. The anime-style matches look quite atmospheric.

Chief Innovation Officer Machar Reid commented on the technology:

"Limb tracking is complex, you’ve got 12 cameras trying to process the silhouette of the human in real time, and stitch that together across 29 points in the skeleton,” he said. “It’s not as seamless as it could be – we don’t have fingers – but in time you can begin to imagine a world where that comes."

"The technology is also unable to capture small movements and textures sometimes fail. Due to the processing and modelling, this broadcast has a delay of about two minutes, but the organiser can change the angle to a more suitable one and add a bright trail to the ball to see its trajectory. This looks quite atmospheric and, according to the organisers, attracts a new audience.

On the tournament's channel, the videos are posted with the original image, and the streaming tab contains mostly animated avatars.

Source: ausopen.com