Introduction Technology has enhanced sports performance and our understanding of sports dynamics. A prominent application of technology in this domain is gameplay analysis, which enables detailed review and evaluation of athletes' performances. This analytical approach allows athletes to reflect on their actions, pinpoint strengths and weaknesses, and make informed adjustments to their training and future performances. This process is especially crucial in team sports, where tactics and spatial strategies are key. The rise of virtual reality (VR) has introduced more immersive methods for performance analysis. In this work, we investigate an immersive analysis tool for badminton called VIRD (Lin et al., 2023), leveraging VR to enable trainers and players to review their performance comprehensively. Badminton, a fast-paced and widely popular sport, presents unique challenges due to its rapid tempo, making traditional observation inadequate for fully understanding game situations (Manrique et al., 2003). An immersive VR tool could provide a more comprehensive and dynamic analysis. Methodology In this study, we explored the requirements for a VR badminton analysis tool. Furthermore, we investigated existing immersive badminton analysis tools and the extent to which these tools satisfy the collected requirements (Chu et al., 2021; Liu et al., 2022; Wang et. al, 2022). Lastly, we examined how the features of the existing VIRD single-player badminton analysis tool can be translated to analyze badminton doubles matches. We recruited 12 participants from different age groups with various experience levels ranging from novices to experts: either players, coaches, or both (see Table 1). The first phase of the user study consisted of a pre-interview where we asked participants questions regarding the general requirements of a badminton analysis tool. The study's second phase included participants interacting freely with the VIRD badminton analysis tool while conducting a semi-structured interview. Lastly, participants explained how to translate the application to analyze double-player matches. Results We identified a list of requirements for an immersive badminton analysis tool. Our assessment revealed that, despite room for improvement, the investigated VR badminton analysis tool effectively meets nearly all fundamental functional requirements. Nevertheless, the tool requires the development of new features to better support badminton doubles analysis. Discussion We witnessed that few participants were concerned with the existing technological limitations of VR, such as visual clarity. Conducting a study with a wide-ranged age group gave us an advantage in seeking questions regarding the relation between experience level and the importance of functional aspects of such an immersive analysis tool. Our findings suggest that such immersive analysis tools can not only be suitable for experts on highly professional levels but also support less advanced badminton players and coaches. This study also identified three key challenges for the future development of such tools: Unreliable pose and position tracking, occlusion problem, individual performance, and collaboration analysis. We discuss these points and possible approaches to resolve them further in detail in the paper.
© Copyright 2024 15. Symposium der dvs-Sektion "Sportinformatik und Sporttechnologie": Zwischen Geistesakrobatik und praktischer Anwendung: Innovationen in der Sportinformatik und Sporttechnologie. Veröffentlicht von Technische Universität Dortmund. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.