Humense
Immensely human realities, putting fans on the field of play, across the white line, by digitally reconstructing sports
Company Details
- Location
- Sydney, Australia
- Website
- https://www.humense.com
- hi@humense.com
- Founded
- 2015
- Employees
- 4-10
- Fundraising
- Not Fundraising
Learn more
About Humense
The problem we're solving:
- 2D is poor compensation for giving the fan a true perspective of sport which is 3D and spatial. Everyone knows this but accepts it like a Nokia before an Apple iPhone is launched.
- 80-100% of visual coverage of sport is with off field cameras which is an "alien" perspective and does not do athletic feats justice. Theoretically there is a 30%+ difference in engagement levels if fans were allowed on the field during the game. Given their physical presence would be a ridiculous interference, our technology enables them infinite angles, infinite scale and personalisation in the form of a "ghost".
- Rights owners of sports have suffered from "streaming wars" (TV), piracy (TV and OTT) and 10 quarters straight of declining smartphone sales (telco/handsets). For satisfying rights owners, sports need a new asset class that gives fans greater value in every sense and can give every stakeholder a motive.
- Covid19 has led to shut downs and shouldering shutdowns, "soulless" stadiums. Fans have lost their greatest privilege and intimacy of watching their teams in a social setting. This leads to death or near death by a thousand cuts a) Lost revenue from fans - short and long term. Fans are calling TV coverage with empty stadiums as "eerie", "soulless", "weird" b) TV/telco rights owners - negotiating sports properties down c) Advertisers - weak market, harder to capitalise on "soulless" TV coverage - "like watching a training match" d) Ticket sales - Cost of retention - for when stadiums can be populated again, cost of selling a ticket may be higher due to ingrained fears e) Cannibalisation - eSports and other alternatives as leaks disguised as bandaids in the eco-system
Our solution:
Humense surrounds the human performance with sensors (camera and other) to enable 3D reconstruction of humense movement and ball. This can then be viewed on mobile (ideally via 5G) or VR headset. This has multiple benefits for multiple stakeholders:
- For the fan - first ever chance to step on to the pitch/field/court to get freedom of experience at athlete level and in the action. This is complemented with much more rewarding visual effects and personalised outcomes/alternatives. Instead of eerie, exhilarating, instead of soulless, surreal, instead of weird, more human and valuable.
- For the sports - new asset with multiple revenue streams to operate inhouse, sell to rights holders or to revenue share
- For TV/telco/digital rights holder - a new form of media that can excite the audiences attention and serve advertisers an improved method for engagement and call to action. For Telco's in particular, who have had 10 quarters of smartphone sales decline and now a weakened consumer market, this kind of content is what will be the best path to migration from 4G to 5G.
Our biggest achievement:
Humense led the world in volumetric capture at studio level by soft launching in the Sydney Opera house achieving 4 world firsts live on stage (to current knowledge):
- First live demo of volumetric video of a human live on stage
- First live demo of a HTC Vive headset live on stage
- First live demo with 3 different forms of a human being interacting with itself (volumetric high definition, low poly avatar and physical self)
- First live demo with real time lighting changes on the human asset
This was all achieved off a minimum budget, 2 weeks and a staff of 10. In effect this Sydney TEDx talk launched the international TV career of our investor Dr Jordan Nguyen.
This work has a number of translations to our current work in sport, namely;
- Volumetric capture of top players prior to match/season
- Relighting scenes (it took Microsoft and others funded AUD$50M+ 2 and 3years to achieve same)
- Cloud processing pipelines
- Livestreaming friends for social real time interactions amongst the sports capture
- User experience insights for VR and AR
- Several world firsts in the Sports volumetric product and best in class unit economics (from all public information available to us)