AFL Grand Final on 3D TV? I’d like to see that!

 
Redb Roar Guru

By Redb, 23 Sep 2009 Redb is a Roar Guru

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It’s 2017 and Essendon and Gold Coast are in the AFL Grand Final in front of 100,000 screaming fans. For those who can’t make it to the game, the next best thing is to watch it on your 3-D TV.

The ball is bounced, it’s trajectory hopefully straight up as it surges into the sky to meet its zenith. On its descent, two opposing ruckmen fly up to meet in mid air.

The view is diverse, angles abound.

The Bomber ruckmen gets the tap to an aging Jobe Watson, who takes the ball and puts it on the boot into the forward line.

James Hird Jnr flies through the air to bring down a spectacular mark. You leap out of your lounge chair and rise up you can almost touch the ball yourself as your young hero marks the ball directly in front of goal.

As the young Hird lines up, the 3-D camera views the goals ahead some 45 metres away. You can see the depth, the angle, see beyond the goals to the Gold Coast cheer squad and the crowd.

As the ball is caressed off the boot, you follow its flight. Is it straight enough? Yes, it looks good. The camera follows the ball past the posts.

It’s a goal! The crowd leaps to mark the ball.

Fantasy, fiction, fallacy? No, it looks like 3-D technology for computers and television is the next big thing.

According to the September 5 issue of the Economist magazine, Samsung, JVC, LG, Panasonic, Sony and others already have prototype 3-D televisions. Laptop computers with 3-D displays will be available by the end of 2009. And by the end of 2010, all the major computer hardware manufacturers will include 3-D displays.

So what is it going to look like? Dodgy cellophane glasses transforming your local pub crowd into a scene from some retro cinema experience?

Perhaps the early 3-D TV stuff will require glasses.

The eyes have to receive two images for a 3-D image to be generated for your mind. We don’t give the 3rd dimension (depth) any thought because the brain already assembles real life scenes to create depth of field.

There are, however, two other nascent technologies that do not require glasses (known as stereoscopic) to view 3-D.

There is also ‘autostereoscopic,’ which not does not require the wearing of glasses.

There are tiny lenses in the 3-D screen designed to send one image to your left eye, one image to the right. The drawback is that you have to keep your head still for the 3-D image to appear.

It is still early days and most new technology is pretty clunky.

However, probably the most exciting 3-D format for development in sports coverage is the holographic image. Again, the technology it still in the early days of development, but it already possible for holographic images of a speaker being used in conferences around the world.

Al Gore, Bill Gates and Prince Charles have already appeared at conferences as holographic presenters.

3-D technology will be a step change in sports presentation, as significant as the move from black and white to colour 35 years ago.

Whilst the move from standard definition to high has been an improvement, the 3-D holographic will put sports literally in your living room like never before.

I can’t wait to see that!

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