Fox broadcast its first MLB game of the year featuring virtual fans to fill an otherwise empty Wrigley Field, and actual fans on Twitter didn’t seem to like what they were seeing.
The tech is impressive, but the application to the broadcast needs some serious tweaking. Fox has the ability to scale the amount of fans in each park, and even change fans’ apparel to suit game-day weather. At the time of the first pitch, Wrigley was mostly full of virtual fans, but there were a few pockets of empty seats in the outfield bleachers
Via The Verge:
“Fox Sports producers will be able to control things like how full the virtual ‘crowds’ are for a given game, what weather fans are dressed for, and what percentage of the crowd will be home fans versus away, although the company is still figuring out how it’ll make some of those decisions.”
Virtual fans aren’t continually present on the broadcast, however, which is very jarring. For the usual behind the pitcher TV view, the seats behind home plate are empty. Virtual fans only ever appeared when the broadcast switched to an angle facing the outfield, so fans were constantly popping in and out of the presentation.
Some fans tweeted that they didn’t mind the experiment, but the majority seemed to be against virtual fans.
