Televising Paintball

[Hudson']

I think we all know that paintball on TV is kinda hard to watch. Its really hard to work out whats going as the paints moving so quickly etc. Has anyone ever thought of making everyone wear GoPros, being it head strap or barrel mount and using the WIFI packs. Then they could stream a video feed for every player. Okay every video would really need an edit to work out the best bits, so watching live wouldnt necessarily be great, but still it would be better then whats there at the moment. Assuming allot of paintball makes TV these days. I guess in the States it must do? Thoughts?

 

[Random Invert]

Submit your idea - their filming over the next few weeks

http://www.thepaintballshow.tv/

 

[Hudson']

Thanks for that, just did it. Though I'm sure I will see them as I believe their heading down to campaign in a few weeks

 

[Thorpe]

Some good examples of player cams in that video. Its a good idea but for the back players especially who are shooting at players that can barely be seen on the camera, I don't think it adds much other than giving a players-eye view of the field, and the speed some of the pro players can snap shoot makes it very difficult to actually see what they are shooting at. Run through and close-up videos can be very good to watch though.

I think the PSP webcasts (available at http://www.paintballaccess.com/live/) do a very good job of making tournament paintball fun to watch. Whether its as fun to watch for non-players, someone else would have to offer an opinion.

 

[Liam92]

i agree with Thorpe, that the psp webcast is by far the best job i've seen so far at making paintball viewer friendly. the statistics are amazing but even without that, the good quality commentating and fantastic camera work is what keeps people drawn in.

 

[hipjaw]

What I think would make it a lot more easy to view and understand would be to have some kind of line of fire being shown from the player to the lane he's shooting. I understand there's probably no feasible way of doing that. Being able to see what the players are doing, what zones they're locking down (and those that aren't!) would show some of the thought that goes behind the team's game plans instead of just shots of people shooting one way and shots of others shooting the other. You'd probably need some kind of infrared layer to go over the normal camera footage and something on the barrel to shoot the magic laser beams - I don't know the science let the boffins work it out!

 

[dodge-gnome]

Doing that on a live feed would be very difficult! However it would be simple enough to do for a reviewed game, similar to what MOTD do showing where players move, what areas are free and highlighting where shots are being placed.