Canon has demonstrated a three-site live volumetric sports workflow during the 2026 Asian Games. Approximately 100 cameras captured a basketball game at Aichi International Arena. Video travelled over the NTT-led IOWN All-Photonics Network to Canon’s Kawasaki office, where servers generated 3D spatial data in real time.
The reconstructed scene was then sent to a separate Tokyo venue. Around 60 participants used Canon MREAL mixed-reality devices to view the match as a tabletop 3D scene and choose their viewing angle. Canon says the data-generation servers had previously needed to remain at the capture site.
Moving reconstruction off-site changes the production footprint. The arena keeps the cameras and acquisition network, while compute can sit where power, cooling, specialists and shared capacity are easier to provide. The same separation is relevant to remote production even if the final output is conventional video rather than MR.
Canon calls the configuration a world first based on its own research. The release does not publish end-to-end latency, raw bandwidth, compression, 3D resolution, compute scale, synchronisation method or failure behaviour. Commercial readiness and cost are also open.
