2016 is supposed to be the year virtual reality hits the mainstream, but the Dallas Cowboys football team isn’t waiting around. After all, they’ve already been waiting 20 years to win a Super Bowl and are hoping that cutting-edge technology will help bring that to an end.
The Cowboys recently signed a two year deal with StriVR Labs, a virtual reality startup focused on the sports training market. The company’s system will be used to train all of its quarterbacks.
The goggles allow players to see a live-action virtual reality video replay of a football play from the quarterback’s perspective. The quarterback can then stop, start and review the play from a first-person perspective, looking in any direction. This would allow them to see defensive coverage, where certain players were and anything they might have missed.
StriVR’s technology isn’t interactive at this point, but is instead focused on teaching quarterbacks decision-making skills using a real play that doesn’t require a whole practice squad to run over and over again. This should allow for both starters and backups to get more practice.
The company was started by former Stanford University kicker Derek Belch as a master’s thesis and spun into a company earlier this year. His invention received some credit with helping the school turn around its football season last year.
Thus far StriVR has deals with Arkansas, Clemson, Vanderbilt, Auburn, Dartmouth and of course Stanford.
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