A1 and Nokia to broadcast live football in virtual reality

On Tuesday evening, A1 invited some of its customers to watch football together. A1 Headquarters In Vienna. There they watched the Champions League qualifier together. Red Bull Salzburg against Twente EnschedeWhich was broadcast live on a screen from the Red Bull Arena in Salzburg. Apart from that, you can also experience a completely new type of live broadcast there on Monday: Über 3 virtual reality glasses You can also watch the game in virtual reality – and even feel it. 360 degree live Look around the Red Bull Arena in Salzburg. This was made possible by the 360-degree cameras in the arena and A1's fibre optic network. This was the world's first live broadcast of a sporting event of this kind.

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More freedom for the viewer

Futurezone was also there and was able to watch the match live in 360 degrees. It looked unusual: in Vienna you put on VR goggles and suddenly you are standing at Salzburg station. Usually the TV cameras provide the section you can see. With the 360 ​​degree view through the goggles, it is completely different: here you can decide for yourself where you want to look. Apart from the action, there is also a lot to see around the game – like what is happening in the stands and on the sidelines.

“I really liked it because I didn’t expect it to vibrate much more,” explains visitor Michael Landschau, taking off his glasses.You really feel like you're on the field.“It’s crazy, you think you’re standing in the middle of the pitch,” he says. Thomas Ramer also liked it: “It’s just a little bit dizzy when you look down, and you can’t always see the opposite goal clearly. “Overall, it’s great, but I doubt if I’ll be able to hold it up for the whole game like I am at the moment,” Ramer told Futurezone.

It is not technically easy.

The technology is certainly not perfect yet, but that should change in the coming years. The aim of the first demonstration at the A1 headquarters was to show what is already possible. Where is the trip? It goes. Technically, the transfer process is not simple. Nokia CEO Christoph Rohr The future area is explained. 2 cameras in the stadium permanently record a 360 degree view. They are placed on the sidelines in opposite corners. This creates one huge Amount of dataBecause a lot of what is filmed in regular broadcast is being filmed. To get these recordings about that A1 Fiber Optic Network In order to be able to transmit directly to Vienna, they first have to be shrunk. The motion sensors in the VR glasses detect where you are looking in Vienna and then show that section in the Red Bull Arena. “Nokia has contributed the technology that enables the amount of data coming from the 360-degree cameras to be reduced so that it can be transmitted efficiently over the A1 network,” explains Rohr. In the future they even want to do that. 4K streaming Make it possible.

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The most important key to the transport is the fibre optic network, because this is the only way the data from the 360-degree camera can reach Vienna quickly enough. “The expansion of fibre optics is progressing rapidly in Austria. The A1 network alone now has a length of 75,000 kilometres, and we have connected around 800,000 households to the fibre optic network.” A1 CEO Markus Grausam Area of ​​the future. Up to 150,000 more households are expected to be added each year. Half a billion will be invested in this each year. In international comparison, Austria will be at the level of 5G We'd be in a very good position, but with fiber optics we'd have that. need to catch up -Here are the others in front.

This is how dependent we are on the internet

If you see now the beginning pandemic We saw for the first time how important a resilient digital infrastructure is for any country. “Without it, nothing would work: there would be no business, no home office, no home schooling,” says Grausam. According to the CEO of A1, we will be even more dependent on it in the future. Because more and more devices only work with the Internet: “Think of modern Alarm systems, Smart Home And the robotic lawn mower“It's now online,” Grausam says.

At the moment, we don’t know exactly what the future will actually require for a fiber-optic network, but that’s not surprising. “Twenty years ago, no one would have imagined that they would now be carrying something in their pocket or handbag that was much more powerful than any computer that existed at the time,” says Grausam. Above all Videos But it will increasingly be a larger part: “We can already see that 80 percent of the traffic we carry in our networks is video,” Grausam says.

Taylor Swift's concerts are sold out

The virtual reality broadcast of a football match shows what video broadcasting could look like in the future. He himself would prefer to go to the stadium in person – because of the atmosphere. “If that’s not possible, it’s certainly more exciting to watch it this way than sitting in front of a regular TV.” Sports Events You can also use it for selling. Concerts Referred:

“If I’m a Taylor Swift fan and I can’t get tickets anymore, it would be a great story to watch the concert this way,” Grausam says. “Ultimately, I don’t know if it’s going to be a VR headset or a projector in our home that will allow us to do the same thing,” says the A1 CEO. But the technology will come — though the transmission will require a more advanced fiber-optic network and more households to connect to it.

This article was created as part of a collaboration between Futurezone and A1.