Game Winning Drive AR

Volumetric augmented reality brings American football legends to your living room.

United States of America

Game Winning Drive AR is a first-of-its-kind immersive trivia experience brought to life using web augmented reality and volumetric capture technology. By simply scanning a QR code with their phones, fans of Monday Night Football could unlock a unique virtual game show led by high-fidelity 3D avatars of football legends Peyton Manning and Emmanuel Sanders. With each correct answer, fans will move down the football field until finally receiving a special digital prize from their heroes – right there in their living room.

Expanding the reach of traditional media

Client Brief

Peyton Manning is a big name in American football. After 18 seasons as one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time, Manning turned his talents to commentary and entertainment as founder of Omaha Productions and host of popular TV show ‘Manningcast’.

Splash screen for Game Winning Drive by Verizon augmented reality experience for Monday Night Football.

In an effort to expand the show’s appeal to a wider audience, Omaha Productions and Verizon were looking to create an interactive trivia experience to launch at the Superbowl. Working with Girraphic, we set about developing an augmented reality experience that would bring Manning’s star power into the homes of football fans across the US.

AR brings football legends into your home

Augmented Reality

At its heart, Game Winning Drive AR was about bringing the star-power of Peyton Manning into the homes of football fans.

Augmented reality would allow us to do that quite literally, and in a way that mirrored the casual playfulness of Manning’s personality.

Peyton Manning and Emmanuel Sanders in web AR experience Game Winning Drive by S1T2.

The experience creative lent into this idea of playfulness. The 3D set was designed to give fans the sense that a set of miniatures had taken up residence on their coffee tables, animated by the presence of Manning and fellow football legend Emmanuel Sanders.

3D set for Monday Night Football trivia web AR experience for Verizon.

Crucially, this approach also meant that the experience was a ‘second screen’ solution, allowing fans to engage with the game while continuing to watch football on their TVs; a truly immersive football experience with one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time.

Behind the scenes making Monday Night Football trivia web augmented reality experience.

Life-like representation of big personalities

Volumetric Capture

Given the creative vision of Game Winning Drive AR, it was important that we were able to create a life-like representation of Manning and Sanders. After all, our goal was to foster the feeling that these football stars had joined fans in their own homes. A sense of realism would be key.

The solution came in the form of a partnership with Evercoast, specialists in portable volumetric capture. They were able to set up a mobile volumetric capture stage in Mannings’ home studio, allowing us to create high-fidelity 3D holograms of the football stars.

Active engagement through interactivity

Interactivity

While volumetric capture is pretty cool in itself, the real innovation of Game Winning Drive AR came in the integration of this technology with other, more established mediums. Unlike most volumetric captures until that point, which existed on their own, our digital avatars would be placed within a wider augmented reality scene. And, perhaps most importantly, this experience would allow fans to interact with their sports heros through multiple choice trivia questions.

Trivia game UI for Verizon and Peyton Manning augmented reality experience.

Layered audio creates dynamic scene

Dynamic Audio

Alongside the volumetric capture, we implemented a system for dynamic audio to enhance the interactivity of the experience. Within this system we were able to layer different components of the audio – narration, music, sound effects – based on the unfolding scene and interaction time. While it did require additional systems for synchronisation and seamless fading between segments, this approach helped Game Winning Drive AR feel more dynamic and responsive.

Digital tablet shows storyboard for Verizon web augmented reality experience.

An effort in all-round optimisation

Web Development

To bring Game Winning Drive AR to as many people as possible, we built the experience as a website using the 8th Wall AR platform. And given the amount of data we were working with – streamed volumetric video, 3D models and lighting, dynamic audio, pre-rendered video – this was no easy feat.

Data size and bandwidth were huge technical challenges that required months of optimisation to overcome. In the end, it wasn’t a lack of speed that we were dealing with, but browser tab memory limits. And thus began a process of many micro-cuts, compressing audio, reducing texture size, etc.

Landing page and QR code for volumetric capture augmented reality experience Game Winning Drive.

Next-gen technology captivates football fans

Public Launch

Launched at the Superbowl, Game Winning Drive AR is the first innovative 5G entertainment experience from Verizon and Omaha Productions.

By simply scanning a QR code, football fans were able to take part in a first-of-its-kind trivia experience. Bringing together volumetric capture, augmented reality and dynamic audio, Game Winning Drive AR proves the power of immersive, interactive experiences to engage audiences in more meaningful brand engagements.