U.K betting firm William Hill and production company Unit9 unveiled their latest horseracing prototype today, ‘Get in the Race’.
The latest exploration of a live betting app in conjunction with a virtual reality Google Cardboard viewer lets the user experience a horserace using real data collected with GPS tracers placed on the horses.
Users get the jockey’s eye view of the horse, as if you are in the saddle, and can look down on their ride to get data on the horse’s heart rate, stride length, distance remaining and race position. Unit9 was given data from a past race at Kempton Park, which was used to recreate the race in this latest VR experience.
Crispin Nieboer, Hills’ director of corporate development and innovation, said that the company was always on the lookout for ways to gin up the ‘dry’ betting experience. Nieboer said Hills’ goal was to enhance “the thrill of the ride” and provide more of a “Las Vegas experience” than the passive ‘win or lose’ binary boredom.
William Hill plans to offer a more complex setup in its betting shops using a traditional VR headset like the Oculus Rift DK2. There are even plans for jockey viewers to sit atop a horse-shaped device that will move according to the data delivered by the chosen horse.
Hills unveiled the new app at the Digital Shoreditch festival, which began on Monday and runs through May 24.
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