>> I think the "breakthrough" happened a lot earlier. I recall watching
>>> what I seem to recall to be a Formula 1 race where a tire company logo
>>> was 'painted' on the pavement, in front of the start line. The logo
>>> disappeared after the race started. This was at least 3 years ago.
>> Actually I'd bet it was the yellow first down line used in football
>> telecasts that started it all. Once a marketing wiz noticed what was
>> happening they starting coming up with all kinds of things to
>> superimpose. I'm fairly certain those small ads on the backstop to the
>> side of the view of the batter in major league base ball games is
>> superimposed on a specially colored panel. It keeps changing, there
>> are a LOT of different displays, I can see no lines from rotating
>> panels, and at times with "special views" the area is blank.
> The ads on the backstop -- also at tennis court-side, and other
> similar places -- have been around for a _long_ time. The technology
> employed was _commercially_ deployed back in the mid 1960s for
> U.S. television. known as 'chroma-key', you could use it to drop in a
> 'replacement' image for anything that was in the scene of a particular
> color. Usually, the gear was set to trigger on a fairly narrow range
> of blue. Blue was the commonly-used color because it was not a
> component of 'flesh tones'.
> To make the insert of the replacement image 'believable', the camera
> that provided the original scene needed to hold a fixed view of that
> scene. You know "something's funny" when, for example, one part of
> the image zooms in, while another part _doesn't_.
> Note: The original chroma-key technology was pure analog, some early
> hardware was employing vacuum tubes. It was only a little more
> complex than the circuitry in the basic 'special effects generator'
> used for "split-screen" "corner inserts", etc. In fact, it shared
> most of the circuitry with the special-effects generator.
Do they still use the chroma-key method? I've not see a "flub" in many years and you can usually get one or two a game with chroma-key.
The yellow line in football still amazes me. And I know some of the technology. It tracks the field even as the camera moves.