The alternative broadcast is based on Sony’s Beyond Sports technology and Hawk-Eye data

The world of alternative broadcasts is expanding again. ESPN launches tonight The Simpsons Funday Football on Disney+, ESPN+ and NFL+ (mobile). SVG goes behind the scenes in Springfield (and Bristol) and reports in detail on every aspect of the production:

The sophistication of Altcast exemplifies the evolution of animated programming

The Simpsons Funday Football not only promises to be fuller of humor and wit than previous alternative shows, but it also shows how quickly technology is evolving to power such shows.

“I think this is the most alternative of all alternative shows,” he says Phil Orlins, vice president, production, ESPN. “For me, this is the real alternative because we’re not just treating the game or putting a change on it. We’re actually recreating the game in a truly alternate universe. We are consciously pursuing the interest of fans who may not want to watch the game in a traditional way and I think that is really important.”

Today’s show features creative elements that represent everything from the world Simpsons Employees write to the ESPN graphics team, which is getting more and more representatives with shows like this. These creative elements use some key technologies that make everything possible and increasingly enable it. Shows should become even more demanding.

Explained Josh Helmrich, Senior Director, Media Strategy, Business Development and Next Gen Stats, NFL“We always had this vision when we started tracking players, which we call the Next Gen Stats platform, to create benefits for the entire NFL ecosystem.” One of them is to provide new experiences for our fans and create more engaging content. With the team at Beyond Sports and the data from Hawk-Eye, we were able to take it to the next level. The more creative and engaging content we can create, the better. Thanks to great partners like ESPN and Beyond Sports, we continue to grow.”

According to Orlins, the constant and rapid advancement of technology, which began just a few years ago with single-point tracking and relatively simple movements, has evolved into mixed tracking, which is single-point NGS tracking combined with the Hawk Eye tracking is involved. He attributes it Nicolaas Westerhof, co-founder and chief technology officer of Sony’s Beyond Sports and his team are taking alternative transmission to a new level.

“Our 3D simulation is initially based on position tracking data,” explains Westerhof. “We have two sources coming together. The single-point tracking data provided by Next Gen Stats is based on trackers in the player’s shoulder pads and provides us with very stable player positioning data.”

The secondary source, he notes, is optical tracking, which provides skeletal data from 29 points on each player’s body and limbs. The secret to Beyond Sports is combining the two data sets in an accurate way.

“This allows us to get much closer to the actual movements of the players and give the (animated characters) detailed movements,” explains Westerhof. “It’s a little less robust than single-point tracking, but when it works, you want to use it as much as possible because it provides the detail.”

Today’s effort takes things to a new level. For example, characters like Lisa Simpson won’t be as tall as Dallas Cowboys wide receiver CeeDee Lamb. So if the Beyond Sports system is tracking a ball thrown to a real 6-foot-2 receiver, but the viewer sees the shorter animated figure of Lisa Simpson, the Beyond Sports system must adjust the ball’s flight to that he ends up in the hands of Lisa Simpson.

“With data processing,” says Westerhof, “we can put the ball right in your hands.” This is particularly difficult to achieve in real time, and a whole range of different processes, mostly machine learning processes, are running in the background on our side to make this possible. It has to be adapted on the fly because we don’t know beforehand which character will star in which piece. We spent a lot of time trying to make the system as flexible as possible because we don’t know what will happen.”

Progress on Hawk-Eye was driven by a comprehensive technical partnership between Sony and the NFL that began over the summer and will expand to other aspects of the NFL’s business. “This alternative show is a good example of (this expansion) from a Hawk-Eye perspective,” he says Michael Markovich, Sony’s chief commercial officer. “The more data we collect, the better it becomes and we can use it to deliver more use cases. As this data gets better and the systems get better and we have more people and trials, of course we can do things like that Simpsons game and the Toy Story game and hopefully more serialized or episodic media content.”

He also sees a role for this type of data in officiating: “Our main focus on the Hawk-Eye side is to leverage the optical tracking data and start to drive NFL officiating.” Our hope is “To eventually get other sports to take over the next generation as referees.”

Another advance, Westerhof adds, is the use of VR headsets by the commentary team. Commentators will wear Oculus Quest or Meta Quest Pro headsets so they can be immersed in the immersive graphical representation of the stadium, field and players. “The headset,” he explains, “will transport them into the virtual world, and we will actually be able to see them in the virtual world, to the point where they can go on the field and be among the players.” That is super exciting.”

Adds Michael “Spike” Szykowny, vice president, editing and animation, ESPN“After Toy Story Last year we moved to where we have the talent that drives the game and immersed ourselves in the game with a Meta Pro VR headset. People who hadn’t used the headset before put it on and (said) the scene felt so real. Apparently it’s an animated scene with an animated stadium in Springfield. But once the talent puts on the VR headset, they will feel like they are standing next to each other and that there is something animated next to them Simpsons Character. You can even stand on the sidelines at Mo’s Juice Bar.”