One headset, three mediums: designing a spatial platform for live sport, streaming and gaming

A concept platform that puts live racing, streaming series and sim racing in the room around you. It follows from a panel I moderated at the Augmented World Expo.

A room of XR experts who did not know motorsport.

On June 19, 2024, I moderated Racing Beyond Limits: The Next Lap in XR at AWE USA 2024. The panel brought together Darren Cox, the creator of GT Academy, whose story became the film Gran Turismo; Torsten Gross, a race driver who is a C6 quadriplegic; and Stefy Bau, a three-time motocross world champion who runs a women-focused esports league.

The audience at AWE builds headsets and spatial software. Most of them do not follow racing. My job was to make the conversation useful to them, so I steered it toward what motorsport has already learned.

For twenty years, a lot of brands have treated motorsport as an expense, not a connection between fans and drivers.

We covered sim racing as a pathway from a game to a real race car, headsets as a cheaper route to immersion than a wall of monitors, and the depth perception a driver needs to place a car by inches. I showed footage of my own head movements in VR, and I asked the room what was wrong with a photo of a track full of race cars and almost no spectators.

Near the end, I showed the spatial platform this case study is about. The last clip below includes it.

Four clips from the session.

Fans moved. The products did not.

Four things from the panel stayed with me.

Fans use more than one screen.

One panelist described a teenager who follows a race on a laptop, an iPad and a phone at the same time. Casual viewers and data geeks sit in the same audience, and both need to be served.

Fans want to take part, not only watch.

As one panelist said about sim racing, people do not want to watch someone else do it. They want to compete themselves.

Stories make fans, and live data keeps them.

Netflix’s Drive to Survive showed that people follow the story behind the sport. A 2022 Morning Consult survey found that the series influenced 53% of US F1 fans to become fans. Torsten Gross made the same point about data: drivers see it after a session, when it would help most in the moment.

Too much XR is novelty.

On the panel I asked which XR experiences are needed and which are a luxury.

Live racing sits in a broadcast app. The story sits on a streaming service. The game sits on a console. Fans already move between all three. That was the problem I wanted to solve.

One app that merges live sport, streaming and gaming.

The platform runs on a pass-through headset, so the real room stays visible and the space around you becomes the interface. Dreamspace designed it, and I led the spatial UX and UI design.

Live sport

The live feed sits in the center with the timing board and standings beside it. A grid of onboard cameras lets you pick a driver’s view. Telemetry widgets show speed, gear and DRS, and a 3D track map on the coffee table follows the drivers around the circuit.

Streaming

Series, documentaries and behind-the-scenes stories live in the same space as the race. A series page with episodes, a pit crew story and a driver interview sit one glance away from the live feed, so the story and the race feed each other.

Gaming

Pick up a steering wheel and drive in first person, with the real wheel and your hands visible through pass-through. Your contacts show who is available and who is already in the game.

Together

Stream chat and a favorites list with availability sit beside the video, so friends can watch, chat and race from the same room.

Partners

Brand partners sit inside the content, such as a sponsored behind-the-scenes story and a featured partners panel, instead of a logo on a banner. It is a different answer to the question brands ask most, which is how many people actually see the logo.

Four ideas from the stage, built into the room.

01Depth beats a flat screen.

Torsten Gross pointed out that VR gives a driver depth perception a monitor cannot. The platform spreads content around you in depth, with the race feed at the center and data, chat and stories around it.

02Data belongs in the moment.

Drivers see their data after the session, when it helps least. The platform puts live telemetry beside the video while the race happens.

03Two audiences, one space.

A casual fan wants stories and highlights. A data fan wants timing and telemetry. The first screen leads with highlights and stories, and the data layers sit around the live feed.

04People want to take part.

The game sits next to the broadcast, not in a separate app, so a fan can go from watching a race to driving it.

The industry is heading toward many feeds on one screen.

F1 fandom in the US grew 33% from 2020 to 2022, according to Morning Consult, and 57% of fans had joined in the previous five years. Apple’s US F1 coverage, announced in February 2026, includes multiview for up to four feeds at once, about 30 extra feeds including all 22 driver cameras, and an extra camera view for Vision Pro users.

That is the direction the panel pointed to: more cameras, more data and more control for the fan. This platform shows where it can go when live sport, the story and the game share the same space.