[HN Gopher] The NBA Apple Vision Pro app now has a 3D tabletop view
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The NBA Apple Vision Pro app now has a 3D tabletop view
Author : matheussampaio
Score : 78 points
Date : 2025-02-14 18:58 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.uploadvr.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.uploadvr.com)
| wetpaws wrote:
| Nobody cares
| mouse_ wrote:
| Got your attention tho
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Think I laughed out loud when they showed the table top NBA in
| the launch video because the exact same concept was in the launch
| videos for at least oculus and magic leap, maybe more headsets
| but it's always been a fake concept that feels a bit like a
| solution in search of a problem.
|
| 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.
| crooked-v wrote:
| It feels to me like it's one step closer to having an
| arbitrarily positioned "courtside seat" view.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| I get court side view if it's 3d footage it would be
| immersive. It's the tiny players running around the coffee
| table that's technically impressive but conceptually baffling
| why you'd want that.
| crooked-v wrote:
| I think the missing context from the post (as it calls out)
| is that the intended experience is that you have the
| diorama view at the same time as the actual footage, so
| it's showing you where everyone is offscreen.
| bitmasher9 wrote:
| Yeah, it seems awesome to be able to track the entire
| game at once instead of just focusing on what's in camera
| frame. The combination of both could be very engaging.
| harmmonica wrote:
| Anyone able to explain the technical reason this doesn't
| exist yet? Maybe technically feasible but NBA thinks it would
| cannibalize tickets sales?
|
| 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.
| asadotzler wrote:
| Yes, because no one is going to spend the money to add
| another 30-60 cameras to the NBA broadcast platform to
| cater to fewer than 100K Vision Pro users. Even Quest's 10M
| actives doesn't come close to warranting that kind of
| financial outlay.
| harmmonica wrote:
| Ok, it's totally technically feasible today, but the
| return is not there given the lack of viewership. If you
| can expand a little on the 30-60 cameras so I can
| understand better, is that to stitch together the various
| views when a AVP user moves their head? Or were you using
| that number to represent the number of viewpoints on the
| floor? Like if it was only one view at the scorer's
| table, do I understand you would need multiple cameras
| for one view?
| ninju wrote:
| You can currently remote viewing sporting events
|
| https://tech.cosm.com/markets/sports-and-entertainment
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| I am struggling to come up with some mainstream uses for this.
| Sports, concerts, plays, etc are something that could
| theoretically be used on a recurring basis to entice the
| public.
|
| 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.
| lbourdages wrote:
| I would love this when playing DnD. You could even have the
| app recognize dice and compute modifiers for attack rolls and
| what not.
| ortusdux wrote:
| DnD with the option to switch between 3rd and 1st person
| views would be amazing.
|
| 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.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| https://www.meta.com/experiences/nfl-pro-
| era/419397521067812...
|
| NFL Pro Era for MQ3 sent chills up my spine when I first
| walked out into the arena.
| crooked-v wrote:
| Demeo (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1484280/Demeo/)
| is the pure board game implementation of that concept, with
| a lot of effort put into actually taking advantage of the
| VR aspect without siloing players off from each other.
| skyyler wrote:
| >My only nerd imaginations are something like a WH40k game
|
| Okay, actually, wargaming in VR would be sick if executed
| well...
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Try Demeo Battles!
| seanalltogether wrote:
| My wife would absolutely pay money to go to an auditorium
| with 100 other people to watch a live taylor swift concert.
| Even though its technically feasible to do it in your home,
| or even to watch it the next day, I know she would pay to be
| part of a "live" experience.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| They have that now in movie theaters that simulcast stage
| performances.
| crooked-v wrote:
| Sure, but there's a huge visceral difference between
| looking at a screen versus "being there" in what your
| brain interprets as, for example, a small black-box
| theater with a stage in the middle.
| dangus wrote:
| Yeah but a movie costs $10-20 retail and costs much less
| to deliver technologically speaking.
|
| All that fancy "you're really there" technology costs a
| lot more with diminishing returns on the running costs.
| bikezen wrote:
| Theres places like https://www.cosm.com/the-experience
| that have a spherical view and seating right up close
| that do live sports and concerts that are more engaging
| than a normal flat screen.
| willturman wrote:
| > I am struggling to come up with some mainstream uses for
| this.
|
| Grilling with Mark Zuckerberg?
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ibm3WhfLk08
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| DoD is soon getting its Enemy of the State wish fulfilled
| with pervasive targeted imaging from VLEO. Projecting that
| realtime imagery in 3D would be icing on the cake.
| moron4hire wrote:
| DoD won't do it with any of these consumer headsets,
| though, because you can't get anything wireless approved
| for use in a SCIF. And no, they won't even consider doing
| anything outside of the SCIF.
|
| 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
| Animats wrote:
| Improbable tried baseball.[1] They have some kind of deal
| with the Major League Baseball company. Improbable's
| metaverse is so expensive to operate that they can't run it
| 24/7, so they only rent servers for pay per view special
| events.
|
| 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...
| joezydeco wrote:
| I'd be interested in using it for auto racing. Usually the
| tracks are too large to see all at once, the cars are going
| by too fast to track, and in most cases both apply.
| Especially if you could zoom in on areas of interest as they
| happen.
| oakesm9 wrote:
| Lapz is basically that for F1 races on the Vision Pro
| https://youtu.be/Z9OlYcfLmTY?si=k0bFAeMFl0bHEVx3
| Jare wrote:
| According to the article, _was_.
| cco wrote:
| One of the actual compelling experiences for me on the Oculus
| Go back in the day was court side NBA games.
|
| 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.
| philwelch wrote:
| There was an old Oculus app where you could watch NBA games in
| VR, except it was from the perspective of 3D camera rigs that
| were set up above the backboards. The company behind this app,
| NextVR, was acquired by Apple in 2020. (Meta has subsequently
| made different arrangements for broadcasting NBA games in VR.)
| Keyframe wrote:
| cool gimmick
| cma wrote:
| I feel like table top stuff isn't a good fit with the heavy
| weight of the apple headset when you have to tilt your head down,
| party from the fairly low vertical field of view.
| tjohns wrote:
| This seems to be very subjective. I can wear the Apple Vision
| Pro headset for hours without it feeling uncomfortably heavy.
|
| 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?
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Depends also on how you sit.
|
| 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.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It is not relaxing to wear any VR headset compared to watching
| TV. I use a web-based image viewer on my MQ3 in lean-back mode
| but the extended battery and UI are awkward for this.
|
| 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.
| asadotzler wrote:
| Of course you are right. Craning your neck to swing your head
| back and forth following the action with 1.5 pounds of goggles
| cantilevered off your face, for the full game or even parts of
| it, is going to be very challenging.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| Wish it had a hook so that you could tie some helium balloons
| to it. Or springy cable from the ceiling.
| tantalor wrote:
| This seems like a bad product. Wouldn't court side, full size be
| much better?
| itishappy wrote:
| Of course the real thing is better, but is that really an
| argument against broadcasts?
| graypegg wrote:
| I think they're talking about a VR POV that's courtside more
| like a normal VR experience, rather than this perspective
| "above" the stadium
| itishappy wrote:
| Oh. Fair concern, but it does that too.
|
| > 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.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| who not both?
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I got a free trial of an NBA app for the MQ3 which had a
| courtside view. It didn't work on my 20Mbps ADSL so I stayed
| late at the office one night to try it out. It was kinda cool
| but I`d say third to kicking back and watching on TV at home or
| at a bar with brew and bros which is second to $6 tickets to
| sit courtside if you wish at college games in person.
| mentos wrote:
| Wonder if you can scale the model up to fill a gymnasium? hah
| mathfailure wrote:
| How to link (or even just obtain) the gif/video from that page?
|
| It is not showing up on the 'Network' tab in Chromium's Developer
| tools.
| finnless wrote:
| https://www.uploadvr.com/content/media/2025/02/NBA-Apple-Vis...
| paxys wrote:
| Good for a tech demo and good for making headlines, but exactly
| zero people are actually going to watch a game like this for more
| than 30 seconds. At minimum the players need to be "real", not
| cartoon stick figures.
|
| 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.
| Spivak wrote:
| I don't envy whoever has to wrangle all the random licensing
| contracts major sports networks have. My partner is big into
| fantasy and she's got players on all sorts of random teams and
| wanted to watch the game so I looked into it.
|
| Me: Can I pay _someone_ , presumably you, any price to watch
| any NFL game I want?
|
| NFL: no.
| wkirby wrote:
| I don't enjoy basketball and I think the Vision Pro is a crazy
| stupid product --- but this does look cool as hell.
|
| Let me know when they make it work with a real sport.
| ugh123 wrote:
| What's a real sport?
| wkirby wrote:
| Pod racing.
| medlazik wrote:
| Humanity is doomed. Only some _actual_ communist central planning
| could forbid this and the other thousands of "innovations" in
| order to drastically reduce resource consumption and maybe, just
| maybe make earth kinda livable in the next 50 years. Otherwise
| we're just doomed and if not us, the younger generation
| assuredly.
| graypegg wrote:
| Honestly want to understand your viewpoint here, is your
| corcern the resource consumption used in producing VR headsets,
| this NBA application, or something more general like all
| computing?
| medlazik wrote:
| Absolutely everything related to this article except the
| sport itself. _All_ innovation from now on should go through
| a committee of scientists and randomly selected individuals
| to avoid such fucking stupid ""innovations"" to ever exist.
| graypegg wrote:
| I thought it seemed neat. If I was part of your randomly
| selected individuals, I would give it the green light.
|
| I think the core element of human creativity might be lost
| in your imagined system of governance.
| medlazik wrote:
| _" Earth is burning and 99% of humanity is suffering but
| at least for a century we were oh so creative"_ You in
| 2062, most probably
| graypegg wrote:
| Is it more to do with resources misallocated from
| something to prevent human suffering, to something
| comparably suffering-neutral? (a VR headset with an NBA
| app on it)
|
| 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)
| gameman144 wrote:
| This is super interesting to me -- I would expect that this
| world view would object to the comparatively extreme
| infrastructure and capital requirements of professional
| sports and other in-world consumption, vs. the relatively
| small outlays for digital consumption.
| tjohns wrote:
| I'm very curious what they're using on the capture side for this.
| How are they keying out the rest of the stadium? What's the
| camera setup?
|
| 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 180deg 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.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Stadiums/arenas are using more and more cameras through out
| that some very cool/interesting things are coming from it. One
| of them is a Matrix bullet-time style ability for highlighting
| plays. The MLB places ads for the TV audience that the people
| in the stadium do not see. Same for the boards around a
| football pitch.
|
| 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.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > Would you prefer to watch your sport of choice in 180-degree
| immersive video, or as a 2D flatscreen view with a tabletop 3D
| representation?
|
| 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.
| brudgers wrote:
| Oddly for me, radio has been the most immersive media for live
| sports. Maybe because it is forced to prioritize audio...humans
| dance to sound not pictures.
|
| 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.
| daft_pink wrote:
| Do they have this for F1?
| terramex wrote:
| There was unofficial Lapz app ( https://www.lapz.io ) on
| TestFlight but got taken down after complaint from F1:
| https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/20/24301420/apple-vision-pr...
|
| 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.
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| Probably I'd want better seats!
|
| 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).
| williamcotton wrote:
| I don't watch a lot of basketball but the "all-22" film in
| American football is great to watch for the hardcore fans.
| Seeing the whole field or court from any vantage point could
| give sports nerds some insight into how teams approach the
| game.
| fullshark wrote:
| Another AR/VR use case I don't think people even want with
| perfect fidelity. Time to seriously consider posibility
| computers/smartphones are fully mature products like washing
| machines and refrigerators were 40 years ago and there is no next
| form factor.
| tombert wrote:
| They've been mature for awhile.
|
| 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.
| asadotzler wrote:
| A VR low-poly single camera view is FAR LESS immersive than the
| actual NBA broadcasts which utilize 30-60 world class cameras,
| including wide shots like this for context (but not silly laggy
| stick figures.)
|
| 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.
| erulabs wrote:
| VR and Sports together certainly brings out the cynicism!
| Seriously tho, as with all VR/AR, this is _extremely cool_, but
| the practical reality is that in order to enjoy this with a group
| of friends we'd need ~8k in clunky heavy hardware on our heads.
| Cheaper to _just go to an NBA game_.
|
| 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.
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