FRC Blog - 2014 Championship Pros & Cons

[Gregor]

Originally Posted by dag0620

My concern isn't the cost. I know purchasing it is the better alternative. My worry is finding the volunteers to both handle all of that staffing, as well as volunteers with the expertise to make it happen. You also have to remember, while it's doable at a district event, on a regional level, you also throw lighting and rigging into the system. Should we really expect FIRST and volunteers to do that stuff in house?

Ryan is specifically complaining about Einstein. Yes, getting every event an HD webcast with cameramen who know where to point is a big task, but Einstein at the very least should have this, if not all the divisions...

Watching from home in 2012 and 2013 was pathetic, to be quite honest. I remember watching one qualification match in 2012 that 67 was in, but I couldn't actually tell which robot they were.

[Jake177]

I think there are two major factors that have contributed to the paper airplane "tradition".

1. In order to avoid getting stuck in the nosebleed seats, teams begin filling the Einstein stands well before the closing ceremonies start.
2. Given no other source of stimulation, most people find making and throwing paper airplanes to be an enjoyable way to pass the time waiting for closing ceremonies to start.

I think the easiest way for FIRST to discourage this practice is to address one or both of these factors.

1. I don't think it is wise or practical to try to keep people out of the Einstein stands until closing ceremonies are ready to start.
2. Give people something else they can pay attention to during this time. - What about a feed of the division elimination matches on the Einstein screen? Once those are over, why not have an Einstein Pregame Show with a recap of the division elimination rounds, and a run-down of the teams in the Champion alliances?

[Hallry]

Originally Posted by Gregor

Ryan is specifically complaining about Einstein. Yes, getting every event an HD webcast with cameramen who know where to point is a big task, but Einstein at the very least should have this, if not all the divisions...

Whoops, I mentioned Einstein, but I was trying to discuss the streams for all of the divisions. I'll edit that post to make that more evident.

[Michael Hill]

Originally Posted by Jake177

why not have an Einstein Pregame Show with a recap of the division elimination rounds, and a run-down of the teams in the Champion alliances?

Most of the time, division eliminations are still going on. We had already moved over to Einstein (to the nosebleeds) and noticed the Galileo elims were still happening (and I assume others as well). Why not broadcast those matches on the Einstein screen? For most people, nobody knows who they'll be watching on Einstein until the teams get there.

[ElvisMom]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

What NEEDS to happen, and only FIRST can really do this, is a singular website that my grandma can use.

She goes in, types in 973. And a few things could happen.

-973 is competing at this regional in 17 days! Give us your email, twitter, number, w/e so we can send you a reminder!

-973 is competing THIS weekend at the CVR regional. They are currently 1-8 and are playing again in approximately 37 minutes! Enter your info for a reminder, same as above.

there could be links and short videos on the sides that are FIRST promos, etc... Links to match results, standings, SPONSOR ADDs.

Want to Make it Loud? Make this happen!

I used https://frcmega.com/ to accomplish most of this and recommend to our friends and families who aren't able to visit for real-time text reminders of upcoming matches and results. For our team we used frcmega to hook into our twitter and facebook to post real-time results. (And awesome customer service even for little things that were of my own doing!)

Taking some of these home-grown services- frcmega, at the control, tba gameday -- to the next level would have impact!

[Metonym]

Originally Posted by Hallry

Not only this, but also webcast quality. All of the webcasts for the PNW events this year were extraordinarily better than the NASA streams at WCMP, and from what I heard, the PNW webcasts were all student-ran. FIRST should take a look at what PNW is doing and make that the standard for their streams, especially those at the prestigious World Championship. PNW camera operators also were familiar with the game and were able to focus in on the actual action, rather than simply zooming in to the part of the field where the most robots were, which is what FIRST told the WCMP operators to do. The WCMP also had a lot of weird camera angles, especially on Einstein. However, all of the divisions need improvement for their respective streams.

For comparison, here is a PNW match, and here is an Einstein match.

It also seems like PNW was able to cut up the match footage into the individual matches and upload them quite quickly, while last year, FIRST simply uploaded blocks of footage from WCMP, a few weeks after the event.

Ok, so my initial post sucked because all my formatting didn't transfer from Word on my phone to CD's stupid editor and the content did not fit what I was trying to get across.

Basically, what I wanted to get across was that our system could work for FIRST since our equipment is honestly not too expensive. What we really need to do as a community is to have the other district model areas adopt PNW's style of presentation. This will allow for the A/V volunteers at all the district events to be able to transfer their abilities to WCMP. Which would give us a trained volunteer A/V Crew that has been doing the job for a while. This crew could take over the stream and make it so much better than it currently is.

The thing that bugs me is that we still see complaints from people when we are at World Level competition. I don't ever want to have to see this

Originally Posted by Gregor

Yes, getting every event an HD webcast with cameramen who know where to point is a big task, but Einstein at the very least should have this, if not all the divisions...

Watching from home in 2012 and 2013 was pathetic, to be quite honest. I remember watching one qualification match in 2012 that 67 was in, but I couldn't actually tell which robot they were.

kind of comment about the FIRST live steams in the digital age where I can take awesome video on my stills camera because it has the ability to resolve detail on an 18 MP sensor. Most broadcast cameras are capable of 1/120 @ f/2.8 or under with minimal noise and have lenses and sensors with equal resolution capabilities. We are a group of technologically capable people, but we can't get a good live stream going?

Also the way we got our videos up so fast was that we had a recorder that was separate from the stream running at the start of matches and then stopping at the point where the scores were shown. We then threw these on our closed loop server and got a person on a laptop to upload them to YouTube as we went through our day. It worked really well, but I would like to automate it for next year, because it is honestly just a tedious task that really just sucked.


I'm sorry for my rambling, I'm honestly not that great at making long-ish posts like this.

[Michael Hill]

Replace "Standards" with "Websites that stream FRC events"

https://xkcd.com/927/

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by ElvisMom

I used https://frcmega.com/ to accomplish most of this and recommend to our friends and families who aren't able to visit for real-time text reminders of upcoming matches and results. For our team we used frcmega to hook into our twitter and facebook to post real-time results. (And awesome customer service even for little things that were of my own doing!)

Taking some of these home-grown services- frcmega, at the control, tba gameday -- to the next level would have impact!

Adam says that "only FIRST could do this" because whether or not something like this is first party and/or directly accessible through usfirst.org (which it probably should be) FIRST's inability (at least I hope it's an inability and not willful hostage taking of a valuable resource) to release stable tables to scrape the data from, much less a stable API for this kind of information.

No discredit to services like TBA or Mega, but in an ideal world these basic notification and archiving services should not have to exist on the fringe of the organization, but should instead be a basic service accessed through or actively partnering with usfirst.org.

[M. Lillis]

Can we talk about field location? (This may also help out HOF teams)

I haven't seen it posted here yet, and it seems to be one of the bigger problems with housing an event like FIRST in a football stadium.

To get to the Curie field you had to walk all the way around the stadium, and it just feels unnecessary. Why not put Einstein where Curie is currently and move the 4 main fields closer to the pits. I mocked up this proposal. The four small blue boxes are the division fields, Einstein is given half of the stadium for floor space and seating.

This was not initially part of my idea, but it could work: put the HOF team's pits in the red box area of my map. This would give those teams "priority" for getting to matches and they could have bigger pits to accomodate their larger displays. It would be made accessible to the public from the stands and with the proper signage in the concourse, any spectator could walk down and visit the HOF teams.

I think that it will help ease flow of traffic to Einstein during elims, and it will make "getting good seats" less of a priority, because there are more sections opened for Einstein. Finding HOF teams in the pits is difficult if you are new to CMP, so putting them out in the open will help draw attention to their pit displays and their team in general, as they did win the most prestigious award in FIRST.

[dag0620]

Originally Posted by M. Lillis

Can we talk about field location? (This may also help out HOF teams)

I haven't seen it posted here yet, and it seems to be one of the bigger problems with housing an event like FIRST in a football stadium.

To get to the Curie field you had to walk all the way around the stadium, and it just feels unnecessary. Why not put Einstein where Curie is currently and move the 4 main fields closer to the pits. I mocked up this proposal. The four small blue boxes are the division fields, Einstein is given half of the stadium for floor space and seating.

This is very close to the set-up in Atlanta, which people forever have been wanting back. The problem is that the VIP lounge looks over Einstein in the current set up, and it's been a pretty much decided factor that due to that they won't move Einstein. While it's not the must effective layout overall, it's crucial to have the VIP lounge over look Einstein. Without the VIP's and Sponsors, we wouldn't be able to rent a giant Dome, so we do have to take care of them.

[StillDefective]

Originally Posted by dag0620

This is very close to the set-up in Atlanta, which people forever have been wanting back. The problem is that the VIP lounge looks over Einstein in the current set up, and it's been a pretty much decided factor that due to that they won't move Einstein. While it's not the must effective layout overall, it's crucial to have the VIP lounge over look Einstein. Without the VIP's and Sponsors, we wouldn't be able to rent a giant Dome, so we do have to take care of them.

People want Atlanta back, but STL and Indiana are the only two indoor football domes that they can remove the turf and have convention centers attached in the US*. WHERE will you put the pits (ESPECIALLY if they are going to be larger) if the CMP goes back to Atlanta?

As for Indiana, it has EXACTLY the same problems as STL. Airport isn't a hub, there is some crime, hotel situation isn't great... I can go on...

*That I know of.

[dag0620]

Originally Posted by StillDefective

People want Atlanta back, but STL and Indiana are the only two indoor football domes that they can remove the turf and have convention centers attached in the US*. WHERE will you put the pits (ESPECIALLY if they are going to be larger) if the CMP goes back to Atlanta?

As for Indiana, it has EXACTLY the same problems as STL. Airport isn't a hub, there is some crime, hotel situation isn't great... I can go on...

*That I know of.

To clarify, I meant many people want the dome layout that was used in Atlanta back/executed in St. Louis.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by StillDefective

People want Atlanta back, but STL and Indiana are the only two indoor football domes that they can remove the turf and have convention centers attached in the US*. WHERE will you put the pits (ESPECIALLY if they are going to be larger) if the CMP goes back to Atlanta?

As for Indiana, it has EXACTLY the same problems as STL. Airport isn't a hub, there is some crime, hotel situation isn't great... I can go on...

*That I know of.

I don't think we were hitting a space ceiling in Atlanta. The pits could go exactly where they used to go, with perhaps FLL or FTC moving to a different part of the GWCC.

If the "separate venues" plan debuted this year were done in Atlanta, it would be even less of a problem.

Turf can be covered rather than removed, right? Thought that's what happened in Atlanta?

[Lil' Lavery]

The Georgia Dome is being replaced by a new football stadium prior to the contract with St. Louis expiring. The new stadium will be further away from the GWCC, so I don't anticipate a return to Atlanta.

[MooreteP]

Originally Posted by dag0620

This is very close to the set-up in Atlanta, which people forever have been wanting back. The problem is that the VIP lounge looks over Einstein in the current set up, and it's been a pretty much decided factor that due to that they won't move Einstein. While it's not the must effective layout overall, it's crucial to have the VIP lounge over look Einstein. Without the VIP's and Sponsors, we wouldn't be able to rent a giant Dome, so we do have to take care of them.

Nailed it David. Thanks.