Speaking of football on tv…

I was watching some pre season football on fox and I don’t know if you saw it but they have upgraded some of their graphics. First off they changed the design of the score bar on the top of the screen. It looks cool, a little bit of a web 2.0 feel to it, but I seems to have a little bit of wasted space. However the really cool and noticeable change was to the arrows they superimpose onto the field. You know the once that tell you the direction the offence is going (which if you cant figure out then you are either blind (and in that case what good does an arrow do for you anyways) or you really are not that big a football fan and the arrow wont much of anything to you) but it also lets you know the down and how many yards to go for a first down. The arrow used to be a bright pastel color that really stood out form the field and was even a little distracting. However this new arrow 2.0 is quite impressive. They have changed the colors and even graded the colors to make it look as f=if the arrow was painted directly onto the field and is lying on top of the grass. To add to the effect they don’t lay the arrow over the white lines to give an even more realistic view. Its nice to see computers being used for some thing useful for once besides word processing and excel and finally being used to entertain us.