I remember seeing an arcade redemption machine that worked on the same principle. It had a database of hundreds of screenshots from soccer/footy games and the player had to guess where the ball should be. The more accurate the guess; the more tickets the machine dispensed.
Spot the Ball
51–60 of 90 posts
Re: Spot the Ball
#52I'm one of the people that made this interactive - funny to see it on Hacker News! If anyone has any questions about it, let me know.
How do you construct the background image that replaces the ball?
If you look at the third picture, the guy in green is cloned and blended in where the ball is meant to be.
Re: Spot the Ball
#53I'm one of the people that made this interactive - funny to see it on Hacker News! If anyone has any questions about it, let me know.
How long does it take to "hide" the ball per pic?
One possible way of generating such images is to use more images since a lot of sport photos seem to be taken as part of a burst sequence. All you need is two such photos where the ball has moved over enough and the rest shouldn't be difficult.
Re: Spot the Ball
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you construct the background image that replaces the ball?
That's the work of Sam Manchester, deputy editor on the Sports desk and chief Photoshop wizard. I believe most of it is just cloning different parts of the photo to cover up the ball, though it can get more complex. For example, on the 4th photo of this previous round: http://projects.nytimes.com/interactive/sports/worldcup/spot... he actually cloned a players face from a different photo and pasted it in to cover up…
I was wondering how he did that one!!! Part of my thinking was that you'd choose pictures that had the ball in an easy to photoshop location, and that threw me off
Re: Spot the Ball
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
How long does it take to "hide" the ball per pic?
One possible way of generating such images is to use more images since a lot of sport photos seem to be taken as part of a burst sequence. All you need is two such photos where the ball has moved over enough and the rest shouldn't be difficult.
But won't the players have moved roughly as much as the ball from photo to photo (since they're moving at about the same speed)? I suppose as long as the players haven't moved into the space where the ball used to be you could still trivially use that space to replace the ball in an earlier image.
Re: Spot the Ball
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the work of Sam Manchester, deputy editor on the Sports desk and chief Photoshop wizard. I believe most of it is just cloning different parts of the photo to cover up the ball, though it can get more complex. For example, on the 4th photo of this previous round: http://projects.nytimes.com/interactive/sports/worldcup/spot... he actually cloned a players face from a different photo and pasted it in to cover up…
I was wondering how he did that one!!! Part of my thinking was that you'd choose pictures that had the ball in an easy to photoshop location, and that threw me off
I think he enjoys a challenge. Case in point, the last photo in this set:
http://projects.nytimes.com/interactive/sports/worldcup/spot...
Re: Spot the Ball
#57If you notice the outline of the ball has different size for each photo, this allows to identify a relative distance where the ball is compared to height of players
Re: Spot the Ball
#58[deleted]
Re: Spot the Ball
#59It's odd to see a casual game, with no other significance or meaning, in the NY Times. It would be great to see them using interactive tools to tell news stories more often.
[deleted]
Re: Spot the Ball
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
One possible way of generating such images is to use more images since a lot of sport photos seem to be taken as part of a burst sequence. All you need is two such photos where the ball has moved over enough and the rest shouldn't be difficult.
But won't the players have moved roughly as much as the ball from photo to photo (since they're moving at about the same speed)? I suppose as long as the players haven't moved into the space where the ball used to be you could still trivially use that space to replace the ball in an earlier image.
This is a guess but maybe if they have multiple moving objects they just figure out which one is shaped like a ball?