Mixed (reality) signals

Mobile has unsurprisingly dominated the pages of this month’s EGR Technology magazine once again.

Although 2017 saw some impressive movement in tech, not least in transport and healthcare, egaming remains a relative “slowpoke” in the great race of technology and mobile is still a major talking point.

And while some discussion of virtual and augmented reality came out of the last year, it has been unilaterally agreed by the lion’s share of egaming industry professionals that the technology is nowhere near becoming mainstream.

However, many egaming operators have put themselves in the position of investing in the future of the technology.

Unibet-owner Kindred Group is among them, having launched its investment arm Kindred Futures in the first half of 2017.

The operator’s latest development is a partnership with augmented reality developer Zappar, which has developed a $30 (£22) cardboard headset and smartphone app as a response to Microsoft’s £3,000 mixed reality HoloLens headset.

“The big problem [with the HoloLens] was that it wasn’t going to get out to the mass market. We worked with that in mind to develop a solution for $30,” senior business development manager of Zappar, Jeremy Yates, tells EGR Technology.

Mixed reality is a form of augmented reality that makes use of the space around you. Zappar uses vision-based augmented reality algorithms to analyse camera images and bring life-like 3D experiences to consumers’ smartphones, transcending AR beyond the confines of Snapchat filters and Pokémon Go.

Its consumer friendly and invariably cheap hardware, made up of a cardboard headset, hand controllers and targets, and a low cost fisheye lens, is leveraging universal smartphone use to bring augmented reality experiences to the consumer.

Preparing for the future In this instance, Kindred has teamed up with the developers to explore how to deliver sports data to consumers in a much more absorbing and immersive capacity using Zappar’s product.

“This is very much along that line of mixed reality and immersive technologies that are touching the gambling industry at the moment,” Kindred Futures’ Michael Franklin reveals.

“As consumers get used to and expect these types of experiences, data is one of the most natural use cases for it at the moment.

“It’s very much about this being the current state of the technology and looking at the type of things consumers will want in the future.”

The project is one example of Kindred preparing for the not too distant future of technology and Franklin is eager to follow the latest trends and keep a keen eye on the impact it has on egaming.

The obstacle both partners have set out to overcome is reinvigorating the boring nature of visual sports data.

The static scoreboards and spreadsheet statistics sportsbooks currently offer leave much to the imagination of sports bettors.

Conversely, TV broadcasters are able to liven up the information and enable viewers to visualise it more easily, through mock ups and animations of sporting events.

However, viewers are still passive consumers of the data shown to them rather than actively engaging with it. Yates explains the solution to this problem lies in visualising data in a way that is not only immersive, but experiential.

“This isn’t a solution that we’re saying, ‘problem solved’, it was very much an investigation into what it might look like in say 10 years,” he adds.

“[One objective] was to develop content that seemingly could be democratised and reached by the masses using the device we already have, the powerful device that exists in everybody’s pocket. This is just the start of the conversation on how we can make data more intuitive.

“Can bettors make a smarter decision? Can they use data-driven insights to make better bets?” Franklin expresses.

Users can interact with player and team data using the ZapBox headset and their smartphone

Get your head in the game

The prototype offers insights into the 2017 Champions League final and T20 cricket between South Africa and England.

The two demos, powered by data from Opta, look to give an insight into what the future holds for interacting with sports data, with the user interacting with an extra layer of information on top of reality.

Users can physically reach out and interact with the data displayed before them in the 3D stadium. They can explore the team’s players, with insights into their goals, shots or runs and create their own experience.

Once the headset is on, the journey is relatively seamless and literally puts your head in the game. “The cricket experience has such a great use of 3D space.

“We discussed golf and tennis and other ones but ultimately these two we felt were the best routes to go down,” Yates comments. The concept is simple but the background to the technology is undeniably complex.

But perhaps most interestingly is the almost laughably uncomplicated set-up. “The headset is really just a lens in order for you to see the screen, making it more immersive, the points are basically a target for the camera to lock onto.

“The lens is about widening the field of view, as iPhones in particular crop video. It’s not advanced kit, it costs about $3 to make,” Yates continues.

However, the algorithm behind the concept is the result of 13 years of research that led the company’s co-founders Dr Simon Taylor and Connell Gauld to coin their own unique augmented reality system.

Point code technology

Somewhere within the company’s timeline the founders transitioned into developing a marker system to help the AR programme make proper use of the space it is allocated.

During the Kindred/Zapbox demonstration, we probe Yates on the coaster sized targets, each looking like a unique and rounded QR code.

“Rather than layer content to specific images, [the targets] actually layer digital content over areas or spaces,” he says. “Large scale AR would be a simple way of looking at it.

“In order for a phone camera to recognise a space we developed these point codes which means the smartphone camera can map and understand that each one is very different and it can quickly and seamlessly detect the position of each one, and lock an area accurately and map content to that area.”

Yates says the only other use case for these point codes is in radiation therapy, as doctors use them to adjust radiation beams to better target the cancerous cells, particularly in lung cancer as breathing movements restrict the ability to target a specific area.

“Slightly different use, but same technology,” claims Yates.

Before adopting the point codes, the traditional process of recognising images and layering them within a restricted space was much more difficult.

In their demonstration, Zappar and Kindred use seven of the coaster sized targets but, in theory, up to 50 could map out an expansive area. It is only the constraints of smartphone screens that limit the 3D imagery that is projected onto it via the Zappar app.

Mobile-first mantra

AR technology actually dates back 50 years to head mounted displays used by pilots, but it wasn’t until the first release of the iPhone almost 11 years ago that the technology was within reach of everyday consumers.

When 2011 rolled around, smartphones were more advanced overall and had much faster processors and better cameras, enabling developers to start serving AR experiences to the masses.

The technology has potential as the second generation of video, which was once questioned as the chosen medium for companies to display content to consumers for marketing. Yates believes AR is no different.

“It’s a platform for displaying content and so ultimately what you show is completely up to you, it’s just using 3D space rather than a 2D screen,” he adds.

“In terms of what’s next, when we leave the iPhone 6 behind and start supporting base-level iPhone 7 we can develop more advanced content and experiment more, but we’re very conscious we don’t want to move too far towards hardware.”

Alternatively, it may well be the case that in 10 years’ time the technology will be more ubiquitous and most consumers will own a pair of £200 augmented reality glasses.

But with the continued wave of iPhone updates, particularly the iPhone X’s latest inclusion of a built-in AR development platform, it’s more than likely we will see the technology continue to have a mobile-first stance.

“The term ‘spacial computing’ was knocking about a while ago, which is basically computing in physical space,” Yates relays.

“It means that in any app you can now have an AR feature to position content and interact with it. For Facebook that might be a communication tool. Snapchat has already done it, Facebook has done it and they are the tech leaders so it’s just a matter of time before others follow suit.”

Without doubt, the technology will gain further traction. Already, the retail industry is harbouring its own AR boom, with the likes of IKEA and frontline make up brands testing out the technology as a means to streamline customer shopping experiences.

However, Kindred’s Franklin says his experience working with Zappar has largely been about understanding what the wider world is doing, and if this technology is ready for broader consumer uptake.

He adds: “The gambling industry is generally focused on the near term innovations – the next slot, the next version of poker game.

“This is understandable for an industry currently achieving high growth. What this exploration has sought to do though is look beyond this near term at how emergent technologies like mixed reality will come to impact the industry in years to come.”

The prototype includes cricket and football insights provided by Opta data