The NBA Apple Vision Pro app now has a 3D tabletop view
uploadvr.com
uploadvr.com
Fair play to them finally making the eternal vaporware demo real.
Fascinating seeing how an Apple launch plays out when the 3rd party dev support just isn’t there and nor are the users.
If it did (does?) exist it would be nice if it could be "all" courtside views (pick the one you want or switch between them as you're watching). And when I say all it doesn't have to be literally every seat, but there could be one at each baseline and then maybe one each side of the scorer's table and then 2 opposite those so 6 in total.
You sound like you know a lot about the NBA in particular so you probably know this, but the NBA has been giving that courtside perspective periodically during games on the broadcast. Being able to watch a full game that way or at least toggle between that and the broadcast at will would be great. The very few times I've sat up close at an NBA game have been mind-bogglingly better, particularly when you can feel the size and speed of the players. Maybe this VR-light 2D view I'm talking about wouldn't simulate that very well, but I think it would do a pretty good job and could be done with one extra view (still hear you that even one view courtside would require multiple cameras and is not worth the investment, but I feel like it would be sensible to offer that as a step to something even more immersive).
My only nerd imaginations are something like a WH40k game. Watch a MOBA in 3D. Fortnite.
Maybe a few historical events? This was the moon landing configuration. The view from the grassy knoll to Kennedy.
Personally, I'd like an NFL game where you drop your players on the line, draw the routes on the field, and then switch to 1st person QB view for the snap.
NFL Pro Era for MQ3 sent chills up my spine when I first walked out into the arena.
Okay, actually, wargaming in VR would be sick if executed well...
All that fancy “you’re really there” technology costs a lot more with diminishing returns on the running costs.
But if you look at all the options --
1) paying hundred of dollars or more, potentially having to travel to a different city to watch the actual event, where you enjoy it with friends/family and the rest of the crowd
2) watch a filmed version in the theater or Blu-ray for $10, with your family/friends and other fans
3) purchase a $3500 headset that is heavy and uncomfortable, watch a filmed version for $10-20, with yourself
The movie theater experience seems like a pretty good deal. If I am not watch the real thing, I might as well just spend $10 and get a great experience.
Grilling with Mark Zuckerberg? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ibm3WhfLk08
VR/AR for DoD is a dead end, unless you have a deep personal relationship with some random Air Force Colonel who is willing to personally walk all your work through all the paperwork on the promise of a board seat when he retires.
-signed, former DoD-targeted VR consultant
Anduril is the company buying IVAS. Founded by Palmer Luckey, who also founded Oculus. Unfortunately, he was never really the technical brains behind Oculus, more "the kid with hubris who got caught up in the ride." Anduril itself seems to be doing well, and I'm even considering applying, but I'm still on the fence about whether them buying IVAS is a good signal.
That was feedback on an earlier test and iirc those bugs were/are addressed with later versions. Of course there are going to be bugs as the product is developed.
American football would make more sense as something to view in VR. The action is complicated to follow.
[1] https://www.improbable.io/news/improbable-builds-major-leagu...
A lot of the negative reviews are people confused it's not a game, it's to watch baseball games.
I can't say I'd watch a ton of games on it but I watched some playoff games on it.
Only complaint is that the players are just little cards running around the field. MLB has very good 3D tracking[2] of players on the field, if you could see a somewhat realistic model of players on the field that would be pretty amazing.
If they iterated on the concept I could see more people adopting it.
But if it really is good for watching sports, that's a big market already.
The main issue is adoption. They aren't cheap enough that you'll simply gather a family around to play locally. At best you communicate online and experience it through peers from afar.
This makes that problem even worse.
It's more a matter that VR is expensive and still not small enough to he accessible.
I think they did eventually offer VR live games with a few different viewing options.
It's a really nice way to watch a game. Tabletop? Meh, but the ability to control the "camera" with your head, 3d audio of the live stadium etc, that was dope.
My first smartphone was a $50 LG Android thing in 2012. I used it to watch YouTube, check my email, listening to music, send texts, make calls, and GPS.
I use my current phone, an iPhone 13 Pro Max, to watch YouTube, check my email, listen to music, send texts, make calls, and GPS.
Obviously the newer phone is better, everything is faster, higher resolution screen, much better camera, etc...but it's not like I am doing anything with it that I wasn't doing in 2012 with my cheapy Android.
I think for people who are analyzing the game: Coaches, players, opponents, dedicated fans, historians, the tabletop view will be priceless. I also suspect that the tabletop view will become a tool in the editing room.
For casual sports fans, a much more immersive experience will probably be better.
Not to say I seek out radio or that 3d doesn’t seem cool. Only that the effects of sound penetrate me in a way that visual stimulus doesn’t.
Radio sports sound like a long string of facts that I need to remember but can get overwhelmed with.
I’m jealous that radio is immersive for you!
I'm not a huge sports fan, so I honestly couldn't say whether I'd want to watch a game like this - but I love the concept. From a technology perspective it's great to see them trying new things.
I will say that 180° video - the other way to content in VR - makes content feel very emotionally impactful to me. If you haven't watched the Apple Immersive Video series in VR, it's very well produced and worth a watch to see the capabilities of the format.
There's other tech going on specifically for sports analytics using 8K cameras that analyzes each player to give their sprint speeds, running distances, heatmap of their position on the field, etc.
All of this to say that I don't really think that placing specific cameras in the arena to provide this type of view while keying out the rest of the stadium would be that difficult. Especially if the cameras are in fixed positions where the distances/angles were well known to the court.
from the demo, it's a stationary seat for a VR user. so in the VR experience, everyone will be sitting in that exact same seat. for 3D, you only need 2 lenses. for 3D VR in a 360° experience you need more, but much fewer cameras than 30-60. the best VR 3D i've worked with came from 16 cameras and a helluva lot of optical flow processing in post, but that was only on a cylinder and not a sphere. it did allow you to look 360°, and this demo doesn't need any of that. so yet again, your looking at less lenses than that. if you want to give a few degrees play in leaning left/right, you might need 4 lenses to allow for some parallax in that leaning. however, the demo clearly showed an unobstructed view of the "court" with nobody in the crowd obstructing your view. at that distant, there'd be very little parallax of the players on the court and the biggest notice would be from something in the foreground. yet, as previously stated, they've already shown that's not an issue.
as for the NBA never upgrading, you're saying that to someone that has personally worked on VR content for NBA finals. you can even see some of the camera rigs in the footage of the games. so in a sense, the NBA has already embraced VR which I guess means never has already come and gone
as for expert producers, if you've ever worked in live action VR, everyone that works in it promotes themselves (personally or as company) as experts. i started in 2014, so that's about 10 years of experience. i'm not an arrogant asshole, so i'd never call myself an expert, but i've got enough experience to qualify.
From other videos of the app, you can see the viewer isn't bound to any specific position. It appears to track enough skeleton key-points per player in full 3d to reconstruct them as models. Maybe they are skinning them from video but it doesn't really look like it.
I don't care so much about the tabletop view shown, but if we get to the point where I can choose my viewpoint from anywhere on the court I'd be excited. I want to pause the game and rewind and watch Jayson Tatum's jab steps up close, to get a better sense of how he fakes out the opposing player. Put me in the action.
1. https://www.sportsvideo.org/2023/03/09/nba-taps-sonys-hawk-e... 2. https://www.npr.org/2025/01/17/nx-s1-5261006/australian-open...
Unfortunately this medium has neither the atmosphere of a live event, nor the skilled camera feed cuts of a televised event (a lot of effort goes on behind the scenes to make a televised game exciting to watch).
I'm not sure if that's because I just happen to have a good light seal fit, or if it's because I spend a lot of time in VR on other platforms and am more used to it?
If you've got straight posture sitting in an office chair the weight of the headset is not cantilevered.
If it is the end of the day and you want to splay out on the couch and watch TV or play games it's a different thing entirely.
For high energy experiences like games and fitness apps the weight is less of a problem, but Apple chose to ignore those established applications for passive entertainment where you don't want to work your micro muscles.
The bigger problem of course is that with local/regional blackouts, nationally televised games and other broadcast restrictions there aren't very many games worth watching on NBA's own app for League Pass subscribers. And judging by how massive a media rights contract they just signed with TV networks, the status quo isn't going to change anytime soon.
Me: Can I pay someone, presumably you, any price to watch any NFL game I want?
NFL: no.
One could imagine this tech being used to rent out local gymnasiums with movie-theater-showing-a-3d-film style glasses so that every small town could go to an NBA game together. The blocker is making the headset cheap enough that you could have two thousand of them together in a room without the room being wealthy enough to have just flown to an actual NBA game in the first place.
And even the few 3D 180 cameras are extremely bulky, expensive, and not even taking full advantage of every pixel.
So it's adding an extra layer of inconvenience and discomfort to something that's already seen as inconvenient, and something I feel people are doing less often unless watching with others.
Even as a "second screen" I'm not going to turn my attention from the fast paced "inside the action" feel I get from the broadcast to look at this shitty game map because I'd miss the action, and when there's no action, the professional NBA producers already give me wide context shots, shots of the benches, the spectators, and more.
This experience offers zero practical value, to NBA fans or even casual sports watchers. It's yet another piece of truly worthless VR demoware.
It is not showing up on the 'Network' tab in Chromium's Developer tools.
How many people are going to use it? How much money is this going to make?
I'm not putting my bets on NBA or Apple for this thing.
It might end up being only for watching already aired games so they can backlog it and reduce costs.
I watched few races on it and it was pretty great. You logged in with your F1TV account and could set up streams around you plus there was 3D view of the track with current positions of cars on it, you could look at car and pinch and driver view opened in pop-up window attached to car model. Couple times I noticed a car stopped on track before it was shown on main broadcast.
I think the core element of human creativity might be lost in your imagined system of governance.
While I can empathize with that, I don't think those resources would be reused in solving world hunger, poverty, access to medicine, or something more directly related to alleviating suffering.
If there's a direct connection here that I'm missing (one of the engineers abandoned a medical degree to become a developer) I'm willing to at least understand that. But otherwise your idea still seems rather tenuous.
Oddly enough, you don't have an issue with the sport, which is also suffering-neutral, and actually represents a massive capital and labour waste by comparison. (Stadiums, redirected tax revenue, bloated salaries, ownership structures)
> Tabletop shows in addition to the 2D livestream view you see floating in front of you as a large virtual screen, giving you the benefits of both.
Let me know when they make it work with a real sport.
called Vantage: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vantage-official/id6698850979
at a closer look i dont think they even have a website. ive only seen them on reddit and now that i search i think they pretty much only exist there. despite that, whoever runs the account is nice, knowledgeable and responsive
it makes me, a college basketball fan, want to talk to some of the local smaller schools about a similar project