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NBA fans roasted ESPN's absurd “virtual reality” peplays during the playoffs

NBA fans roasted ESPN's absurd “virtual reality” peplays during the playoffs

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ESPN is trying out a new technology for the broadcast of the Oklahoma City Thunder and Minnesota Timberwolves in the Western Conference final.

There are occasionally very cool technical progress that the audience experience can improve when looking at sports. A few years ago I tried to see an NBA game through a meta -virtual -reality headset, and it was slightly entertaining.

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At the beginning of this year, USA TODAY wrote how Dan Orlovsky brought the virtual reality analysis for the NFL to the masses. Tim Legler from ESPN successfully used VR for ESPNS Insightcast. Recently, the former NHL player PK Subban tried something similar for his hockey analysis.

This can be suitable for the analysis before the game or after the game, especially if it contains shooting diagrams or extended statistics. But it just doesn't work as a repetition:

But the latest efforts of ESPN that you can see above are not almost as impressive and the fans were unimpressed.

Here you will find more details on the repetitions of Tim Corrigan, the ESPN Senior Vice President for Sports Production (via ESPN Press Room):

“Beyond Sport is literally replacing what the action was, what it looked like. And we will go into this environment with the avatars. The avatars will match the uniforms where they play on which they play. […]

This will also be new in a live broadcast, and the ability to turn these things like the virtual repetitions could be the first repetition in a sequence of what we do in this transmission. In this way it will look different and feel different from the main transmission.

Vivid ARC is a company that we and their avatars hold together again and what looks like, how the players wear, what matches what they wear in the game, and the places where they play, and everything. “

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It sounds theoretically good, but here is: this is not even technically virtual reality, it is only 3D. It is not interactive without using a headset. It's just boring.

More: MLB has built up a video-like repetition view of the Tokyo Dome and the fans rightly hated it

As you can see, the fans seemed to agree that this highlight of a Chet Holmgren Dunk would have looked far cooler if it were only a repetition in which he put the ball in the basket.

There is clearly the effort that ESPN and others are pushing on VR on the show, but the fans do not want it to replace highlights. The technology is not quite there yet, even if it arrives there at some point.

This article originally appeared for the victory: NBA fans roasted ESPN's absurd “virtual reality” during the playoffs

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