Immersive viewing experiences will rise in popularity in the upcoming Olympics: InterDigital

Olympics are much more than just about games – it is a global platform to showcase the marvels on what human strengthen, determination and spirit can achieve. Olympics also plays a very important role when it comes to elevating global viewing experience and in the upcoming Olympics - a combination of video, audio, and haptic feedback can transport viewers, and make them feel like they are present in the very moment.

Philippe Guillotel, distinguished scientist at InterDigital speaks with Zia Askari from TelecomDrive.com about the fast changing nature of viewing technologies at Olympics and how this trend is going to drive innovative experiences for the viewers in the years to come.

How do you think Olympics viewing in the coming years will be different when you compare it with today's experiences?

Today, viewers are mostly watching the Olympics through TV broadcasts or online streaming, and this year’s Games was no exception. In fact, BBC Sport reported the 2024 Paris Games was streamed 218 million times, doubling the 104 million streams pulled in by the last edition in Tokyo. However, over the next decade, we can expect to see immersive viewing experiences rise in popularity–where viewers are able to share athletes’ live experiences.

Technology advancements will enable viewers to feel like one of the competitors, seeing the event from the athlete’s viewpoint, and feeling aligned with their movements, contributing to a fully immersive experience.

How close are we to metaverse level entertainment and immersion with athletes?

Ultimately, the goal of this technology is to make viewers feel like they are a part of the action–so when it comes to sports viewing experiences, the aim is to either get the audience to feel like they are sharing the athletes’ live experiences, or to recreate the atmosphere that makes them feel like they are in the crowd.

A combination of video, audio, and haptic feedback can transport viewers, and make them feel like they are there in the moment. Sporting events are naturally a social activity, with friends and colleagues discussing the goings-on at the games. While VR and XR tends to be a singular, personal experience, immersive technology has the potential to emulate the same social atmosphere.

What technologies and platforms will play an important role in the upcoming global events such as the Olympics?

Until we have better virtual reality (VR) technology, standard TV viewing is going to be the way people tune into large sporting events. That being said, with events like the Olympics, which only comes around every four years, there is potential for big advances in viewing experiences from one event to the next. So while TV dominates today, it may only be one or two games away where viewers are fully immersed in XR experiences.

While VR is a very personal experience, there are ways the technology can be adopted within a group setting. For example, VR spaces like Outernet London could be harnessed as an alternative to the classic “big screens” we see today. This would bring opportunities for ‘fan zone’ experiences to be even more collaborative with added levels of interaction.

How do you think additional haptic experiences will enhance viewing experience for consumers?

Haptics creates an enhanced level of immersion by adding another layer to the viewer experience. This added level of vibrotactile feedback can emulate the atmosphere happening in the stadium in real time–increasing the realism in virtual and immersive environments far beyond the current limitations of screens and devices. It can also be used to create physical feedback associated with sport actions, such as the players impacts in hockey, judo or football or dedicated feedback when players scores in basketball, soccer, volleyball or any other game.

One recent example of how haptics has been used to enhance the viewer experience is by Newcastle FC, which implanted haptics into the shirts of deaf fans to emulate the crowd atmosphere in its ‘Unsilence the Crowd’ campaign.

What are some of the limitations around current VR experiences and why sports haven’t seen much pick-up?

There is no denying that today, there are still technological limitations around the VR viewing experience. VR applications and content developers are still constrained by comfort levels and fatigue.

The immersivity of VR requires high frame rates and resolutions that translate into high bit rates. Generating content at such bit rates is a challenge when battery size limitations, heat dissipation, and device weight (areas that very much affect user experience) all need to be considered.

Please share your thoughts on more comfortable and less cumbersome headsets

For VR users, the majority of comfort issues stem from head-mounted displays (HMDs). When we think about the user’s quality of experience (QoE), the size and weight of the HMDs must be rectified, and future designs must be smaller, comfier and more user-friendly.

While it is the responsibility of device designers of the future to overcome these design issues, it is possible to enjoy immersive experiences without HMDs. For example, VR caves exist, where images are placed on screens or projected onto walls, to create fully immersive experiences.

What improvements will 6G bring in terms of XR hardware and its ability to “sense” or detect various objects within a surrounding environment?

Advancements in XR experiences will come with better connectivity, something that we will see with the rollout of 6G. Lower latency will stitch augmented and virtual reality together in real time, and create better immersive experiences.

Another novel use case of 6G will be ‘Integrated Sensing and Communication,’ which refers to the use of radio signals to “sense” or detect and identify various objects and surfaces within a surrounding environment. Those smart environments open the door to a new field of research and applications often referred to ubiquitous or pervasive computing.

This next generation of wireless technology has the potential to offer more complex analytical insights, distributed control over connected objects and an expanded range of digit-human interactions–all enhancing sensory capabilities. For XR, this means more accurate immersive worlds, that better transition between the physical and the virtual. Streamlined co-dependencies between chipsets, applications, networks, and platforms will lead to more efficiently created virtual worlds, and support for haptic feedback tech will result in better than ever immersion levels.