Rony Abovitz, CEO of Magic Leap, a US start-up mixed reality company, has predicted viewers will be able to watch sport as a live streamed hologram “within two to five years”.
In an interview with The Verge, Abovitz said that within “two to five years,” it will be technically possible for people wearing Magic Leap goggles to watch an NBA game (or other media) live, but in a holographic, interactive form.
“You can stream over the top and to the screens, the virtual screens — you can do that now,” he said. “We’re looking at, how do you derive the information to move the volumetric stuff from that? And then, how do you do volumetric live-streaming as well … if you time where processing power is going, particularly backends, you’re single-digit years away from that happening.”
Abovitz suggested that in order for the technology to work, venues would require multiple fixed-sensor cameras. He also said that instead of using “30 big TV cameras shooting from different angles,” broadcasters would instead use a larger number of much smaller, super high-resolution cameras that would send all the data to a backend computing stack.
“[It will] move from standard 2D television broadcasting to full volumetric capture. That’s probably going to take a decade before you see it happening across multiple sports and news, but you’ll see early adopters,” Abovitz said.
