Virtual Players

Imagine a fantasy football game in three-dimensions with virtual players using the moves and strategies of their real world originals. Such virtual sports games are not as far out or as far off as you might think. Rapid progress is underway in the field of virtual reality. Neural networks are fueling a revolution in artificial intelligence. Some day in the not too distant future the virtual players in your fantasy football teams might be a lot less fantasy... and a lot more fun to watch. Virtual Reality (VR) may be used for sports in several ways. First, VR can provide enhanced training and instruction for participating in conventional sports. Second, VR can enhance spectator involvement in traditional sports that includes, but is limited to, viewing. Third, VR can make possible new virtual objects for traditional sports or entirely new sports within virtual constructs. Also, virtual reality for sports training has related VR material.

One method for information transferral from humans to computers is "computer vision" in which advanced processing of camera images of human movement via computer allows the computer system to recognize vital configurations and patterns of body movement. In any event, this technology has constraints. The relevant portions of one's body must all be visible by the camera. They should not be hidden by elements in the environment or by other portions of the body. Some gestures are overlapping by nature. This approach is also constrained by available light. See also: application of haptics technology to virtual reality may provide unique developments.

The quantity of human senses that must be engaged and the amount of realism that should be reached to make it possible for a communication between humans and computers to be virtual reality progresses as technology progresses. This may be compared to the increasing norm for "high fidelity" music recording in the midst of the previous century -- following advances in different modality encoding. computer simulated environments for additional material.

If one were to specify total sensory capacity for communication from world to human and total locomotor and sensory output for communication from human to setting, then one might define a base-level percentage that one expects to be engaged by active simulation to be virtual reality, but specifying sensory bandwidth and summing interaction potential across different senses and methods is challenging. A different method to specify the baseline amount of human to computer interaction to be called virtual reality is the "four-fold" approach. Virtual reality should be (1) engaging, (2) multi-dimensional, (3) immediate, and (4) intelligent. bidirectional interaction between humans and computers also covers this material.