Feeling Woozy? Why Immersive Live Sports Might Be Hard To Stomach, and What Can Be Done About It
From Major League Baseball to the NBA, the Olympic Games to the European Soccer Championships, the way we consume live sports is changing. Over half of US consumers will stream this summer's Olympics, a whopping 82% increase on the last Olympics in 2021 when live TV was still the dominant medium for watching the games (69%). Thanks to digital streaming, whatever your sport, whatever your stripes, the only obstacle between you and the action is the time zone you happen to be in.
But even that's old news. Technologies such as the Apple Vision Pro and Meta Quest are now competing to turn every swing, tackle, jump, and touchdown into an immersive, multisensory experience that propels sports fans right into the middle of the excitement so they can celebrate or commiserate with their sports idols as if they were really by the side of the field, pitch, track or court. So, what's the catch?
Sports fans are ready, but can the technology live up to the hype?
Almost. You see, our brains process different sensory inputs at different speeds. Haptic stimulus - an experience of touch by applying forces, vibrations, or motions – takes around 20 milliseconds, visual stimulus takes roughly 13 milliseconds, while auditory input can be processed in less than a millisecond. That means that if the motion-related, visual, and audio aspects of an experience aren't perfectly synchronized, we get an uncanny, unpleasant effect not too dissimilar from motion sickness. If VR headset manufacturers want to avoid making us woozy, they're going to need ultra-fast, high-performance connectivity - any latency or buffering will mean less immersion and more trips to the restroom.
One thing is certain: Live sports are placing greater demands than ever on IT infrastructure.
What's holding back immersive live sports?
This rapid rise in sports streaming is putting pressure on the world's Internet infrastructure. By 2025, it's estimated that over one-third of US sports fans will regularly stream their favorite sport, a 71% increase compared to 2021. But that's only half the story. Streaming volumes have rocketed, it's true, but fans – understandably – want to watch their favorite sport in the best quality available, and thanks to 4K quality being the new gold standard, sports streaming regularly breaks global data traffic records.
That's the current state of play, without taking into account even more data-intensive media formats that are being rapidly ushered in with the arrival of immersive devices. Virtual reality headsets take the online sports experience to the next level. Meta wants to offer customers front-row stadium seats. Apple, with its Major League Soccer sports streaming deal and its dedicated sports app, looks increasingly likely to offer interesting sports-related immersive experiences in the future.
The immersive sports takeover is coming…or is it?
It is, but not as soon as the headset manufacturers would probably like. Why? Well, the price tag is high, and the live immersive sport ecosystem is not quite ready yet. VR headsets cannot operate in isolation. The immersive Internet ecosystem requires fast and high-performance Internet connections to deliver the kind of experiences that leave sports fans elated rather than woozy. Studies show that 80% of VR users currently experience some form of "cybersickness," the name given to a range of symptoms such as nausea and dizziness that occur in virtual environments when users' motion, audio, and visual streams of an experience are out of sync with one another.
While it is easy to see the appeal of experiencing first-hand every moment of the action from the prime (virtual) position within the stadium, an immersive experience that leaves fans disorientated and frustrated is clearly not acceptable.
Stronger infrastructure is the foundation for multisensory sports experiences
Even small dips in connectivity are immediately noticed by VR users. VR headset manufacturers are taking this seriously. But the reality is that, for live immersive sports, the biggest factor determining adoption will be reliable, robust connectivity. For immersive sports streaming, data processing must match the speeds at which the human brain perceives sound and motion.
We need to build the infrastructure foundations for this today. With immersive sports streaming, every millisecond counts for viewers. In victory, as in defeat, the emotions that sport triggers require lightning-fast connections to honor the fans' expectations of the viewing experience. Such connections can only be assured by using Internet Exchanges that exchange data directly, eliminating the agonizing lag time that sports fans hate.
The streaming infrastructure revolution
As sports fans begin to enjoy a summer of sport, there's nothing short of a transformation taking place at the IT infrastructure level to enable our growing appetite for catching every shot, stride, strike, and jump. Internet Exchanges are playing an increasingly important role in providing the type of stable and fast connections that are perfect for seamless sports viewing. By interconnecting individual networks directly, data exchanges can be optimized, reducing latency, improving performance, and assuring more robust connectivity. This makes Internet Exchanges ideally suited to meet fans' expectations of live immersive streaming as well as many other types of content. As digital giants like Apple, Amazon, and Netflix enter the lucrative live sport streaming market, many content providers are reevaluating their connectivity strategies to be able to offer better performance, more resilience, and more stable connections, eliminating that woozy feeling from live immersive sports streaming.
[Editor's note: This is a contributed article from DE-CIX. Streaming Media accepts vendor bylines based solely on their value to our readers.]
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