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Live Streaming Esports
An essential part of esports growth has come from live streaming. PTZOptics has been working with esports teams, tournaments, and gamers from around the world to help develop live streaming equipment that meets the demanding needs of esports. The first major development for PTZOptics PTZ cameras has been an interactive extension for Twitch (learn more here) which allows broadcasters the ability to give their audience remote PTZ camera control through the Twitch player. This extension has allowed many esports tournaments and individual gamers to get more interactive with audiences watching online.
Making Live Streams More Engaging
Using the PTZOptics Twitch extension, esports broadcasters can give their audience control over their camera. In addition, Twitch broadcasters can charge their viewers in a virtual currency called Bits. This gives creators on the Twitch platform the ability to further monetize their broadcasts and provide engaging moments for their fans.
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So where do you begin?
Let’s start with capturing the gameplay of each player and include a webcam video feed as well. With 6 players spread out hundreds of feet from each other, the USB capture card method mentioned our basic setup would not be possible. Most live streamers do not recommend the use of more than two capture cards with a single computer. This is due to USB bandwidth constraints built-in to most computers. Instead of using expensive capture cards and video extensions you can use IP video that leverages the ethernet cabling already connecting every computer.
Each of the Rocket League computers should be connected to a local area network as a prerequisite to hosting the tournament. A local area network or LAN is basically an interconnected system that connects each computer for gameplay with ethernet cabling using networking equipment. This same networking infrastructure can also be used to connect each gaming computer to the production PC.
In the planning stages of your Esports tournament, you will want to know exactly how many computers and devices you will have on your LAN (local area network). Most networks can handle 254 connected devices, all communicating with unique IP addresses, without advanced configurations. The brain behind your LAN is generally a piece of networking equipment called a router. A router is used to manage all of your computers and other devices connected on your network. All devices on your network will need unique IP addresses in order to communicate. This is not something you generally have to worry about and it will be covered in more detail in the included Esports Streaming Course. But for now just understand, each device can be assigned an IP address manually or automatically using DHCP. Assuming your router is set up to handle DHCP, it will automatically give any device connected to your network an IP address unless the device has already been assigned an IP address manually.
Take the above network for example. The modem providing the internet to your router is optional. If you plug a modem with internet access into your router, it will allow you to give all of the devices on your network internet connectivity. Internet connectivity is generally important for Esports tournaments, not just for live streaming but also for updating game software with the latest builds.
Connected to the router is a network switch. Network switches are used to connect devices together using ethernet cabling. As you can see there are 6 “Esports Computers” connected to the network switch. Because they are connected to the network, the router will assign each computer an IP address using DHCP. Once each computer is connected to the same local area network the RocketLeague software will automatically see each computer running the game on the network and allow the students to play the game together in your tournament. Also connected to your network you can see your Observer and Production PCs. These computers can be used to send and receive video over IP as well on the local area network. Your production PC will be receiving video from all 7 computers on your network by the end of this set up.
So that’s the basics of a simple 3 on 3 Esports tournament local area network with a broadcast setup for two play by play announcers.
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