A group of LSU graduate students in digital media arts, engineering and kinesiology are working with faculty and LSU football athletic training staff to create a virtual environment that will allow athletes to develop their skills in a game-like environment.
“In the virtual environment, the user will be in Tiger Stadium with a full crowd and full crowd noise,” said kinesiology PhD student Kelly Burger.
The creators of the program are working to make sure that the virtual reality is as authentic as possible by collaborating with LSU football. They are also going to have settings that mimic the time of day of a game. The program will be very specific to LSU and Tiger Stadium.
Currently, the program is intended to help receivers. The goal is for the receivers to be able to view the football from multiple different angles.  The team hopes to release the virtual reality program by March. 
Burger thought of idea for the project while working part time in sports training. She saw the difficulty in replicating game-play situations when working with athletes outside the gym and field. 
While she knew she did not posses all the necessary skills to make this happen she still wanted to peruse the idea, so she recruited students in digital media arts and engineering programs. 
“[The team] will use photogrammetry to replicate all of these features exactly so the receiver will see exactly what he sees on game day,” Burger said. “During the session with the quarterback, we took some recordings of his throwing motion in the biomechanics lab on campus, so [his] throwing mechanics will be replicated accurately in the game as well.”
The team is using a technology called Leap Motion that will be mounted onto the virtual reality headset and allow the user to see his or her own hands while playing. 
Eventually, Burger said the program will expand to include multiple other sports. 
“We hope to make more versions of this project for other positions on the football team and for other sports, such as tennis and soccer,” Burger said. “We hope to have all the features for the wide receiver game completely done by the end of the semester.”