I've Always Thought That That Yellow Line on the Football Field Was Some Sort of Geospatial Thing

Ever since the TV broadcasts of American Football started including that funny yellow "first down line" effect back in the late 1990s, I've thought that that had to be some sort of geospatial application.

When I ran across the recent How the First-Down Line Works on HowStuffWorks, I thought it might answer that question.

It did. Sort of. It detailed, at least conceptually, how the company that does that line, SportVision, uses a 3-D model of the football field, spatial data on camera locations, and sensors that track the tilt, pan, zoom, and focus of each camera, along with some big beefy computers, to project that line onto the field on our TV screens when we watch a game.

SportVision uses geospatial data to enhance a few other sports as well. For example, a little Googling turned up a press release from HJW GeoSpatial, on the occasion of a contract to collect some high-resolution data for of a road-racing course.

HJW will compile 1”= 20’ scale mapping and 1’ contours from aerial photography taken at a photo scale of 1”= 200’. HJW’s client, Sportvision, will use the mapping data for the purpose of enhancing video broadcast of the races.

Now, that's what I call hi-res.