What the Metaverse Means for Sports Mental Performance in 2022
What is the Metaverse?
The Metaverse is in all the news at the moment as the next evolution of the internet, but what exactly is it? While still new and changing rapidly, it seems to be the combination of a number of new and interesting technologies:
- AR/VR headsets for complete immersion in new digital worlds or as an additional digital layer superimposed on the real world.
- Blockchain/crypto allowing for recognised ownership of digital goods like avatars, land, gaming cards or money.
- Massive increases in computing power allowing for photorealistic digital worlds (visual quality, physics processing etc) and
- Increasingly advanced AI, allowing for more realistic simulations.
Anything else?
Other emerging technologies that are interesting to include in the sporting mental performance mix include brainwave monitoring and eye tracking as these can also be included in the appropriate headsets and provide useful data on athlete mental performance.
6 ideas where the Metaverse could help athletes develop, particularly in the area of athlete mental performance:
- Optimising Decision Making
Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be used to analyse all of the movements and decisions of an opponent based on all available video footage from their career and run thousands of real world simulations to help decide on strategies that would be effective against them. This information can then be fed to the team to help train decision making skills against specific opponents. - Realistic Virtual Training
An athlete will be able to put on an AR headset (or ideally contact lenses), go to an empty pitch and play an entire match with realistic AI representations of real life teammates and opponents. Contact won’t happen, but tactics, movement, concentration, reaction time etc can all be monitored and trained for a full match duration.
Similarly, innovations like VR connected treadmills will allow runners to run fully immersive virtual races against realistic opponents without ever leaving a room. Add in temperature and humidity controls, wind machines etc depending on your budget and desire for realism. - Imagery Training
Probably a more near term innovation, Immersive VR will allow imagery training that includes a photorealistic visual component.
It will allow an athlete recreate realistic stadiums (complete with cheering fans, weather and lighting conditions etc). It’s the kind of training that could make all the difference in a Penalty Shootout. - Perception / Focus Training
Combining eye tracking, brainwave tracking and immersive virtual worlds allows metrics based training for focus, self-talk/emotional state, threat identification, game management and reaction times through pre-planned scenarios that have been created.
In competition, it could also track a user’s mental state on a continuous basis which could be then used to recreate similar scenarios in future training sessions. - In game decision making
Real time data provided to an athlete via AR can help athletes make better real time decisions. It can also be combined with team (and opposition health) data, for example allowing a playmaker to select a play based on which teammate is freshest, most focused, whether an opponent is injured, where the space is opening up etc. - Fan engagement and athlete motivation
Want to play a virtual match v.s. your favourite athletes? Get into a virtual game against real world opponents. This could be a fun activity to help athletes engage with their fan base while allowing them to blow off some steam.
Some sports, like Formula 1 already use virtual worlds to help drivers learn tracks and improve car setup.https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2099152-secrets-of-how-f1-drivers-prepare-for-brand-new-tracks-like-austrian-grand-prix
The Drawbacks
- Bulk.
Until VR headsets get small enough to become contact lenses that can directly interface with the human eye, having an all encompassing headset (and potentially other equipment) will impact the athlete’s perception and ability to actually train at or near competition intensity. - Cybersickness
Early VR headsets had a heyday in the 80s/90s and surfaced a problem that is hard to solve: when the ear and the eye don’t agree about motion, people feel sick. That limits the amount of time people spend in such environments, and can have negative effects on well-being and coordination long after a session is finished. - The Social Media Effect
Athletes engaging in fully immersive virtual worlds can create and be subject to even more personalised online abuse than current social media platforms. Permanent ownership of digital assets means this abuse may even be continued across different virtual world providers, leaving less safe spaces for people to find. - Effectiveness of training?
More research needs to be completed to understand whether training in immersive digital worlds is more or less effective than other proven forms of mental training.
Conclusion
Rather than a single iconic moment like the release of the first web browser in 1990 or the first iPhone in 2007, the technologies involved in the Metaverse already exist and are now being combined in different ways to create solutions that benefit real people. The overall importance of the Metaverse (and who controls it) is still to be understood.
The hype is mostly being created by large venture funds investing in volatile cryptocurrency markets and big technology companies like Facebook and Microsoft championing it as the next big thing (Facebook has 10,000 people working in its Metaverse team and Microsoft recently acquired a company that makes virtual worlds for $63b). Whether this vision for the future is right is yet to be proven.
Coming back to sport, it is likely that the Metaverse will allow for significant improvements in Fan and Stadium experience first, while proven applications for athlete mental performance come to light somewhat later.
