Introducing the Esports Spectator Display Rule for Pro AV
Paul Richards
Chief Revenue Officer @ PTZOptics | Revenue Generation, Strategic Planning
After publishing Esports in Education on January 1st, 2020, and handing out over 200 copies at the FETC (Future of Educational Technology Conference), I have been speaking with teachers, coaches, and school faculty members about their new esports facilities. Everyone seems to be excited about bringing esports into their athletics departments and many faculty members are working with professional audiovisual integration companies to build out facilities with state of the art presentation systems to support their esports programs. When planning out a space for esports tournaments, many overlook the importance of good audiovisual design to accommodate spectators. Unlike traditional sports where coaches and audiences can watch from the sidelines, esports gameplay must use image magnification with large screens for viewers to watch and follow along with the tournament from a distance.
From the ProAV side of my technical background, I have worked with Joe Mulcahy the PTZOptics COO, to come up with an "Esports Spectator Display Rule" that uses established industry-standard guidelines for display sizes and applies that knowledge to esports. In the ProAV industry, most engineers are familiar with the "24 point font rule" which was originally designed for PowerPoint presentations. As technology has changed over the years with UHD/4K displays and now large LED screens becoming much more popular, a new rule was needed for esports.
This new Esports Spectator Display Rule published here, is now available with multiple easy to use calculators and a complete white paper outlining the mathematic principles behind the rule. The rule works by determining two important factors. The distance from the farthest viewer and the size of the text on the screen. Using this information, audiovisual professionals can accurately calculate the Arc Minutes viewers will have to determine how legible the text is to read during an esports tournament.
Try out our new calculator at https://ptzoptics.com/esports-rule and let me know what you think!
Sincerely,
Paul Richards
Chief Streaming Officer
PTZOptics
Faith Family Freedom Leadership
5 年Good way to take visibility/legibility calcs into this arena. In CTS-D studies they had a more extensive formula (I'd have to dig out the whole eye-arc notes). Maybe we could extend the life of this article discussion by some CTS-Der adding that greater depth for dweeb level . Of course resolution dot pitch and contrast (even color depth) come into the equation too. So does the environmental lighting, when you basically have a bunch of photons hitting your eyeballs. Then of course the content itself comes into the picture quickly with the font size of what will be displayed, be it the game or arena production graphics being added. The main point you are making is to put yourself as the AV provider into the experience and use system-thinking (not schematics folks, but what the senses gather) to consider the holistic factors of impact, understanding and entertainment.
Passionate about finding you the right Audio Visual solution
5 年Useful info here Paul
Providing Systems Integrators Best In Class Solutions
5 年Interesting read Paul.