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Researchers Used 'FIFA 13' to Convert Real Soccer Matches to 3D

Who wouldn't want to see Cristiano Ronaldo with an Oculus Rift?
Rachel Pick
New York, US

A joint effort by MIT and the Qatar Computing Research Institute has developed a system for converting 2D video of soccer matches to 3D footage that can then be played on any device with 3D capability, including 3D TVs and Oculus Rift. The team used the rendering system from soccer-based video game FIFA 13 to develop the technology.

The MIT News blog quotes one of the team leaders, associate professor of electrical engineering Wojciech Matusik, who bemoaned the lack of 3D content. "[We] see that the production of high-quality content is the main thing that should happen," he said. "But sports is very hard. With movies, you have artists who paint the depth map. Here, there is no luxury of hiring 100 artists to do the conversion. This has to happen in real-time."

Video games like FIFA 13—the one used by the researchers—convert 3D maps to 2D images. So the team decided to try reversing the process. As MIT explains, they played FIFA on repeat, and "used Microsoft's video-game analysis tool PIX to continuously store screen shots of the action. For each screenshot, they also extracted the corresponding 3D map."