Imagine

Future of Sports

What will the world of sports look like in fifty years?  What types of infrastructures will host competitions, how will athletic equipment evolve, and will athletes compete in totally new sports?  What is unthinkable today is possible tomorrow, thanks to your unleashed imagination and Dassault Systèmes’ 3D software solutions. 

People are creating new sports all the time.  What makes them new?  Oftentimes this is a new sports accessory, or equipment used in a different setting.  With advances in engineering and technology, the sky’s the limit for future games, perhaps literally.  Sponsored by Red Bull, there is now an “Air Formula One” whereby top guns compete in an airplane-maneuvering race through obstacles located in the upper stratosphere.     

With carefully imagineered and tested equipment, what seems dangerous today will be safe in 2058.  Think back 100 years.  No one had traveled to outer-space and airplanes didn’t exist.   Vain attempts could be lethal or at least lead to a broken leg!  For tomorrow’s innovations, inventors will be able to imagine and test everything in the virtual world, with built-in real-world constraints, so that only your photorealistic 3D avatar will suffer.  And you can invent your heart out, with only the budget to upload the real-time 3D and Virtual Reality applications needed and keep the electricity running.  If today’s extreme sports initiatives are any indicator, like the Solar Impulse fuel-free aircraft project, be prepared for the unexpected!    

Future sports may include a not-before-possible mix of athletes.  If a lamed runner has an awesome bionic leg, doesn’t this put him at the same level as a traditional competitor?   Bionic body add-ons could be permitted for athletes with or without handicaps, leveling the playing ground or adding new performance possibilities. An innovative design firm called Taga Pro has already invented an exoskeleton for disabled people.  Taga named it Rewalk, because it allows people to do just that.  Innovations like this promise to open the world of sports for the disabled. 

What about intelligent equipment, the kind that borders on robotics?  Harry Potter’s favorite sport, Quidditch, is already being played by schoolchildren in Canada and England.  They’re not flying on broomsticks yet, but what’s to stop them if given the right innovation tools?  A game with four balls, each with its own spirit and stand-alone behavior patters; that’s inventive.  What if you could program a ball the way you do a missile, but it could only be deprogrammed by a second ball impacting it from a certain angle, at a particular velocity?  All of this is possible with passionate imagineers and 3D virtual creation tools. 

Depending on where you play sports, on the ground, in the air, underwater, in outer-space, in a gravity-free stadium, or on the face of a mountain, the types of equipment and accessories you need changes dramatically.  With sports already making their way to the skies, underwater is the next natural spot.  The Daka Development design company has invented an underwater scooter, making it easy to imagine an “Underwater Formula One”.  This type of equipment can also open up scuba diving to the disabled. 

Imagine a sport where biometric data gives spectators a formally secret window in to appreciating athletic performance.  Polar has experimented with this in cycling; live cardiac biometrics has shown the high heartbeat of young competitors before a race due to lack of experience and anxiety, whereas more seasoned athletes are able to control theirs.  Transform the biometric data into real-time 3D applications, and it’s like suddenly giving spectators X-ray vision.  And you can imagine that it would generate a wider appeal to sports for more diverse audiences.  Perhaps biometric data will be incorporated into the rules for new sports games.  If your heartrate reaches the « red-zone » level, you get benched!    

With the arrival of Wii, the general public discovered the umbilical cord to immersive Virtual Reality, whereby physical motion has a seamless impact on the virtual world.  At Wii parties, you and your friends can be two places at once- in your living room, and inside the computer, whether you are “bowling” or “playing tennis”.   Several studies are trying to show that people actually burn more calories while playing videogames (that is if they use the Wii).  Does this make Wii-ing a sport?  This is no longer the debate.  Wii will definitely be looked back upon as the prehistory of Sports Plus Virtual Reality.  For awhile now, Dassault Systèmes has been active in the gaming world, in particular with Wii.  A lot of the interactive content developed with Dassault Systèmes’  Virtools technology is compatible with pilotable environments on Wii Mote.  Another example is Dassault Systèmes’ experience with a walking simulator and the total body immersion it provides for real-time 3D worlds.  Jogging on Mars (or in ancient Egypt) anyone?