Watching Football In 3-D

[pantherfan81]

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- When South Florida's Maikon Bonani booted a 43-yard field goal to beat Kansas on a Friday night in 2008, I watched from my press box seat on the 48-yard line. Even though I saw the kick go through the uprights with my own eyes, I looked up at the HDTV monitors overhead to check the replay so I could include precise details in my column.

Despite all that, I never truly saw the kick until I watched it in a hotel conference room in Newport Beach, Calif., in January.

There, ESPN executives offered a demonstration of the network's new 3-D capability. Unbeknownst to those of us at the game, USF-Kansas served as the first field test of a college football game. The demonstration, which also included clips from the 2009 USC-Ohio State game and the Winter X-Games, featured footage of Bonani's kick.

In my column off the game, I described the kick this way: The ball began its flight wide of the right upright, then hooked inside just before it reached the post. After watching the kick in 3-D, I knew I hadn't come close to capturing the drama of the moment. Watching in 3-D, I saw what only the players on the field and the fans sitting directly behind the goalpost had seen that night. The game-winning kick hooked in by mere inches, and just in time. Had it waited another millisecond to turn, it would have hit off the upright.

As I stood there looking like a Roy Orbison impersonator in my specially polarized glasses, I made a mental note to call my wife and apologize for the money we'll be dropping on 3-D televisions in the next few years. Because, no matter how attached you are to your current HD flatscreen, you're going to want to throw it in the trash once you see sports in 3-D.

This is not meant to serve as an advertisement for ESPN or for any of the consumer electronics companies whose products I may mention below. I'm not receiving any promotional equipment or reward of any kind; in fact, I'd be fired if I were. This is just a warning for all of you out there who, like me, can't resist the lure of the Next Big Gadget.

Sometime between five and 10 years from now, most of us will watch our sports in 3-D, and we'll wonder why anyone bothers to actually attend the games.

In the U.S., the shift likely will begin with college football fans. While ESPN's first live broadcast of an event in 3-D will take place in at the World Cup in June when Mexico faces South Africa, the network's first regularly planned 3-D coverage will come in the form of a 3-D college football game of the week.

Just imagine if the technology had been in place this season. Nebraska defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh would have blasted right off our screens. We could have shared the fear of the poor Big 12 quarterback Suh chased on a given Saturday.

As you read this, ESPN staffers are working at the ESPN Wide World of Sports section of Walt Disney World to perfect the art of the 3-D broadcast. If you're a youth soccer player in a tournament at Disney World and you see someone pointing a camera rig with two lenses at you, that's an ESPN cameraman working out the kinks before he points that rig -- designed by Vince Pace, who also worked on Avatar -- at a USC player in the fall. If the camera looks strange, it's because it's actually two cameras. One lens stands in for the viewers left eye, while another stands in for the right.

"We're closing the gap between what we know and what we don't know," said Chuck Pagano, ESPN's executive vice president in charge of technology. "It's still a science project."

This is only part of it to read more click the link.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/andy_staples/03/02/3d-tv/index.html?eref=sihp

I can't wait to watch football like this it's gonna be bananas. If this belongs in Nerdvana my bad, but this does concern football.