The English Premier League is set to replace its controversial old video assistant referee system used to detect offsides, more commonly known by its acronym VAR, with one developed by a group called Genius Sports. Detailed in Wired, the new system, nicknamed “Dragon,” is much more complicated and nuanced than a bunch of iPhones strung together—even though that’s also literally what it is.
Dragon uses an array of at least 28 iPhones to make accurate offside decisions. The phones are mounted around the pitch to capture high-frame-rate footage from multiple angles. The old VAR cameras can only capture 50 to 60 frames per second. Now, the Dragon iPhone rig can capture up to 100 frames a second, allowing officials much more clarity to help make tough offside decisions.
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The new system will track thousands of data points on every player on the pitch. It can supposedly track things like a player’s skeletal frame, gait, and muscle mass, and it can even decipher what was happening during a play that was obscured because several players were crowded next to one another or were piled on top of each other. It’s like X-ray technology without the X-rays. Pretty wild.
Dragon will be especially useful in detecting offsides, and the way it does it is pretty clever. The second it detects an offside situation is about to occur, it will automatically adjust the frame rate in real-time to make sure that the potential offside is captured in utmost clarity, leaving little room for missed calls. There will always be missed calls, but now, at least, you’ll have more reason to blame the ref than you’ve ever had before.
