LSU creates a virtual reality 'in Tiger Stadium' for football training

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LSU's Digital Media Arts & Engineering and Kinesiology programs are working alongside faculty and LSU Football athletic training staff to create a virtual environment that allows athletes to develop their skills in a game-like environment.

“In the virtual environment, the user will be in Tiger Stadium with a full crowd and full crowd noise,” said Kelley Burger, kinesiology Ph.D. student and team lead on the project. “We hope to even have settings to mimic an 11 a.m. game with full daylight versus a 7 p.m. game with stadium lighting. We have been in constant communication with [LSU Football] on what they want the program to look like for their wide receivers, for their quarterbacks, for their linebackers, etc. This will not be some stock program. It will be very LSU-specific.

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“By being able to create a whole virtual world, athletes could get more repetitions in and we could make these extra repetitions as meaningful as possible by taking the time to make it feel as real as possible.”

The tech team is rendering the stadium with photogrammetry techniques, taking existing pictures and videos of the stadium to use for measurements in the virtual world. They are also working to obtain 3D scans of a football, LSU’s uniforms and equipment, and one of the quarterbacks.

“[The team] will use photogrammetry to replicate all of these features exactly so the receiver will see exactly what he sees on gameday,” Burger said. “During the session with the quarterback, we took some recordings of his throwing motion in the biomechanics lab on campus, so [his] throwing mechanics will be replicated accurately in the game as well. Lastly, we are using a technology called Leap Motion that will be mounted onto the virtual reality headset and allow the user to see [his or her] own hands while playing.”

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