EVENTURE STADIUM

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Context:

XPR Labs has always looked for new types of virtual venues to investigate and develop. It was in this context that, during a conversation with partners at Eventure, a well-renowned event coordination company, that the idea of a sports-based venue was proposed. As always, XPR was up to the challenge, and began work on the company’s first sports arena.

Challenge:

Initial research showed that others had tried to recreate a sports stadium or arena — but they all suffered from the same issues. Detailed environments were small and cramped, while spaces at real scale were often low-poly and unattractive. XPR decided to create an environment that not only solved these issues, but would also be functional on headsets like the Quest 2, calling for extensive polygon reduction. To hasten the prototyping process, the development team used a package of preexisting assets, reducing modeling time.

Solution:

To overcome the issue of size, the arena was modeled solely as an interior space, reducing the overall geometry and required assets. To reduce the number of textures employed, novel methods were used to stretch a small number of textures as far as possible. Overall, new optimization methods were tested, culling unneeded geometry, objects, and rendering, allowing the venue to be experienced optimally on any device.

Results:

After dealing with the challenges that came with building a sports arena, the stadium was fitted with Eventure’s branding, and shown off as a proof of concept. For the first time, a real-scale, high definition, well optimized, interactive basketball stadium was available for use in VR, enabling any number of sports-centered events to be hosted. Additionally, the developments piloted in the Eventure Stadium would enable other sports venues to be considered, including hockey rinks, baseball diamonds, and even football stadiums.