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Claus Helfenschneider
Interactive Applications & Digital Experiences
IBM

The Masters Tournament

Agency:FIELD
2025

Lead Unity development for a multi-part, data-driven interactive installation by FIELD.IOOpens in a new tab for IBM at the The Masters TournamentOpens in a new tab—visualizing nine years of AI-augmented shot data within a guided experience.

Roles

  • Lead Unity Developer
  • Technical Lead (Interactive Systems)
  • System Architecture & Integration
  • Performance Optimization
  • Interface Prototyping & Hardware Integration

Stack

  • Unity (C#)
  • Python
  • React
  • Wwise
  • Custom Hardware Integration
  • Web API Integration
  • Golf course with stroke data visualized as lines

Outline

I led the Unity development for this high-end interactive installation designed for a guided environment at The Masters Tournament. The experience visualized nine years of tournament shot data—289 players and 266,939 individual shots—transforming complex, AI-augmented datasets collected by IBM into an intuitive, spatial, real-time exploration.

The installation was experienced by invited guests, including former Masters winners and their caddies, and consistently elicited strong reactions through its depth, clarity, and responsiveness.

  • Close-up of golf course visualization showing individual strokes as lines

System Overview

The project was conceived as a modular, synchronized system, consisting of:

  • A standalone Unity application acting as the core real-time visualization engine
  • A web-based remote control (authored in React), fully synchronized with the Unity runtime
  • A custom-built physical control interface, controlling the Unity application
  • A web API delivering raw, up-to-date Masters data from a live database (including 2024 and 2025 events)
  • A bespoke audio layer, integrated via Wwise
  • Golf course with stroke data visualized as lines, closeup from eye level
  • Golf course with stroke data visualized as lines, closeup from eye level

Key Contributions

  • Designed and owned the Unity application architecture, supporting multiple input modalities and operational modes
  • Implemented large-scale, real-time data visualization pipelines for hundreds of thousands of historical golf shots
  • Authored a React-based remote control interface, tightly synchronized with the Unity experience
  • Prototyped and integrated a custom physical interaction device, including participation in the design of the device communication protocol
  • Integrated Wwise audio middleware, enabling the sound designer to deliver handcrafted, responsive soundscapes directly driven by runtime state
  • Collaborated closely with designers, data engineers, hardware specialists, and sound designers to align creative intent with technical feasibility

Technical Characteristics

  • Deterministic, production-grade runtime behavior suitable for guided experiences in high-stakes environments
  • Clear separation between data ingestion, visualization logic, interaction, and presentation
  • Designed for operational stability, maintainability, and future live data updates rather than one-off execution

Why this project matters

This project exemplifies my role as a technical lead within agency-driven, high-stakes installations—translating complex datasets into compelling real-time experiences, architecting multi-part systems across software, hardware, and web, and delivering reliable interactive applications for premium audiences.