It’s difficult for most people watching the Olympics on TV to comprehend the sheer skill that goes into each and every sport, but The New York Times is using augmented reality to make it just a bit easier.
In the debut AR article on Monday, New York Times writer John Branch explored four Olympic sports — figure skating, short-track speedskating, ice hockey, and snowboarding — and how exactly the athletes in those sports pull off their athletic feats. You’ll need a recent iPhone (no older than 6S or SE) or iPad (fifth-generation or Pro model) and iOS 11 to see the featured Olympians: figure skater Nathan Chen, speedskater J.R. Celski, women’s hockey goalie Alex Rigsby, and Austrian snowboarder Anna Gasser in augmented reality.
The AR story will only run through the NYTimes app, which will prompt you to allow access to your camera. The story, headlined “Four of the World’s Best Olympians, as You’ve Never Seen Them Before,” features the combination of text and AR image. Read about Nathan Chen and how he describes everything that goes into his quadruple jumps, then point your camera at a n0n-reflective surface and move your phone in a circle to create a life-size, 3D image of Chen frozen in place at the height of his jump. Moving around him will reveal tidbits about the height of his jumps (20 inches), how he stays in such a tight form, and how much distance and time his jump actually covers (eight feet in half a second).
“I’m capable of doing quads just based off the way my body’s built, the way my muscles react,” Chen told The Times. “I have pretty quick-twitch fibers so I’m able to rotate really quickly. I’m able to spring off the ground really easily.”
Doing the same with the other three athletes brings you closer to their sports as well, perhaps demystifying what would seem almost impossible on a TV screen.
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Render Celski in AR and see in real life how low he has to get to maintain speed around a curve on an ice rink; he balances himself on his fingertips while whizzing by at 3o-plus miles per hour, according to the story.
Or see through the eyes of Rigsby as she positions herself in goal to block shots of up to 70 miles per hour. She slides her leg pads across the bottom of the net while keeping her body upright to cover as much space as possible. That position may be common to spectators because hockey is a mainstream sport and goalies are contorting themselves every which way on a nightly basis, but it takes on another level when you can move around Brigsby and realize that even the smallest movements make the biggest difference.
For all the dazzling jumps of figure skating, the incredible balance and precision necessary for speedskating, and the quick movements of goaltending, perhaps the most incomprehensible sport to the spectator’s eye is snowboarding. According to The Times, Gasser’s signature trick is comprised of three spins and two flips; to land the move successfully, she has to twist her shoulders and head precisely to maintain direction and increase speed, all while flying about 60 feet through the air.
According to The Times, each of these four athletes was scanned in 3D in a static position and then those scans were repositioned and edited to create the augmented reality effects.
While Android users will have to wait a bit for The New York Times to finish creating the Android AR experience, they — as well as desktop users — can get a sense of the athletes’ skill and movement through the web version of the story. Either way, when the action begins this Thursday in Pyeongchang, New York Times readers may be watching with an extra level of appreciation for these athletes and everything they must do to win — or even just to land on their own two feet.