In some news that might have gone under the radar this past weekend, it was announced by NASCAR President Steve Phelps that the company is exploring some creative ways for fans to watch races.
Phelps, as first reported by Joe Lemire of the Sports Business Journal, recently spent time at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference and announced that the company was working on a joint plan for the implementation of virtual reality to allow fans to join NASCAR Cup Series races.
The release of the project is not exactly close, according to the article, but the project could be completed within the year.
Naturally, this raised the eyebrows of fans across the sport, many of whom are of a younger generation, and serve as a market that NASCAR can benefit in leaps and bounds from tapping.
But how will it work?
The original article by Lemire states that development began on Meta’s VR headsets but that a version for Apple Vision Pro is “expected to follow.” This means that no matter which mainstream choice of VR experience that users prefer, the option and software will be available for both. This is important not only due to the fact of a wider potential market reach, but also because it opens up the options of cross-platform play.
That also opens the door to the possibility of multiplayer. The article discusses Phelps relaying the idea that someone with a VR headset could join as a 41st car on the track. It makes completely logical sense, then, that if two people were to be watching the same broadcast, they could join as a 42nd.
This hasn’t been confirmed, but is indubitably a possibility, and what could be more cool than watching the race with a buddy? Racing with them, that’s what.
Of course, users will not be able to actually affect the outcome of the race in their own reality. However, they will very much have control over their virtual one.
The article mentions that fans would be able to “interact —i.e. crash — with digital recreations of the real cars,” meaning there would be ample opportunity to meme out and target their least favorite driver in the virtual world, drive backward on the track like we all did in NASCAR Heat or just simply try and avoid digital recreations of real crashes in the field caused by real-life driver miscues.
The black magic behind all of this comes from SMT data, which every NASCAR team uses to track things like telemetry, brake and throttle feedback, speed,…
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