  Badminton is a fast-paced sport that requires a strategic combination of
spatial, temporal, and technical tactics. To gain a competitive edge at
high-level competitions, badminton professionals frequently analyze match
videos to gain insights and develop game strategies. However, the current
process for analyzing matches is time-consuming and relies heavily on manual
note-taking, due to the lack of automatic data collection and appropriate
visualization tools. As a result, there is a gap in effectively analyzing
matches and communicating insights among badminton coaches and players. This
work proposes an end-to-end immersive match analysis pipeline designed in close
collaboration with badminton professionals, including Olympic and national
coaches and players. We present VIRD, a VR Bird (i.e., shuttle) immersive
analysis tool, that supports interactive badminton game analysis in an
immersive environment based on 3D reconstructed game views of the match video.
We propose a top-down analytic workflow that allows users to seamlessly move
from a high-level match overview to a detailed game view of individual rallies
and shots, using situated 3D visualizations and video. We collect 3D spatial
and dynamic shot data and player poses with computer vision models and
visualize them in VR. Through immersive visualizations, coaches can
interactively analyze situated spatial data (player positions, poses, and shot
trajectories) with flexible viewpoints while navigating between shots and
rallies effectively with embodied interaction. We evaluated the usefulness of
VIRD with Olympic and national-level coaches and players in real matches.
Results show that immersive analytics supports effective badminton match
analysis with reduced context-switching costs and enhances spatial
understanding with a high sense of presence.
