In a decade or two, will people view two-dimensional television as outdated, much as we view black-and-white footage today? Japan hopes that the leap forward will occur twelve years from now, with the World Cup being presented in life-size, holographic form, BLDGBLOG writes:

Japan is distinguishing its bid to host the 2022 World Cup with a plan to broadcast the entire thing as a life-size hologram.

“Japanese organizers say each game will be filmed by 200 high definition cameras, which will use ‘freeviewpoint’ technology to allow fans to see the action unfold from a player’s eye view—the kind of images until now only seen in video games,” CNN reports.

British football theorist Jonathan Wilson puts an interestingly spatial spin on the idea: “Speaking as a tactics geek,” he said to CNN, “the problem watching games on television is it’s very hard to see the shape of the teams, so if you’re trying to assess the way the game’s going, if you’re trying to assess the space, how a team’s shape’s doing and their defense and organization, then this will clearly be beneficial.”

Watching a sport becomes a new form of spatial immersion into strategic game geometries.

Of course, there’s open disbelief that Japan can actually deliver on this promise—it is proposing something based on technology that does not quite exist yet, on the optimistic assumption that all technical problems will be worked out in 12 years’ time.

But the idea of real-time, life-size event-holograms being beamed around the world as a spatial replacement for TV imagery is stunning.

http://www.disinfo.com/2011/01/japan-plans-to-broadcast-2022-world-...