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The Interactive Basketball Court

July, 2020

Inspired by the beautiful basketball courts from around the world, we’ve been dreaming of designing our own augmented vision of basketball for players and spectators alike. Moment Factory’s R&D team, with technological support from Panasonic, has been iterating ideas for an interactive sports experience that brings art and cutting-edge technology to one of the world’s most beloved ball games.

From the Sagrada Familia to Madonna’s Half-Time Super Bowl performance, Moment Factory has used projection mapping in creative manners for almost two decades now. With Panasonic’s latest high-speed projectors, we had this unique opportunity of pushing our work towards new heights. How could we augment, using depth and perspective, the precise and artful motions of basketball in a 3D world, at lightning speed?

Armed with Panasonic’s high-speed infrared tracking and video projections technologies, we set up three projectors in our prototyping space: one solely focused on tracking the ball’s movements, another one that took care of the background elements and a final one, suspended, that followed the player while projecting on the ground.

 

 

We also needed someone with game so we teamed up with local rap starKNLO(Alaclair Ensemble) who also happens to own an impressive arsenal of dribbles. We built a custom TouchDesigner patch to communicate with the projector and assembled a library of visual effects, ready to be triggered along the player and ball movements. We were blown away by the results as we were witnessing an ultra smooth, low-latency video mapping on a fast moving object, keeping up with all of KNLO’s tricks as the ball disappeared behind his back, swiftly going between the legs or spinning on his finger. From there, we went on exploring different motion designs, amplifying the court with response to displacement, and incorporating multipurpose decor elements.

We see this project as a glimpse into the future of interactive entertainment, augmented sports, and live events. In the context of physical training, competition, and immersive worlds,The Interactive Basketball Courtis positioned to change sports forever.