Visitors to Madrid this weekend have another attraction to consider.
Telefonica, the Spanish telecommunications company, has partnered with its subsidiary Movistar to present the Nadal Challenge. The experience, which will go on tour after it leaves Madrid on Tuesday, includes a virtual reality game in which users can play against Rafael Nadal.
The game uses a stereoscopic 360-degree video of Nadal set against a green screen and chroma key and accompanied by the 3D modeling of 300 photographs to create the virtual reality environment. The game presents real-time situations and objects to mimic the effect of playing on an actual tennis court. As part of the fanfare of the experience’s opening in Madrid, Nadal played the game against himself.
.@RafaelNadal, jugando contra sí mismo en un juego pionero de realidad virtual disponible en la Flagship de @MovistarPlus. “Mi nivel en hierba lo habéis puesto el de los últimos años, no el de los comienzos de mi carrera”. pic.twitter.com/Wrcn1Q1cwt
— Minuto#0 en Movistar+ (@MovistarMinuto0) December 4, 2017
The Nadal Challenge also features modules that involve motion control and 3D animations for an immersive tech experience, according to the announcement. One module asks visitors to use a mobile device to simulate a racket and return the serve to Nadal, which is tracked by sensors for angular displacement, linear acceleration, and rotation. A module focused on how Nadal trains uses Xbox Kinect to track users’ movements and compare them to Nadal’s.
Rafa VR contra nuestro Rafa. ¿Quién habrá sido el mejor?
#MovistarconRafa pic.twitter.com/t5oQVi74iK
— Movistar Likes (@movistarlikes) December 4, 2017
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The challenge as a whole also works as a marketing tool for Nadal’s tennis academy, also sponsored by Movistar. “I would say that it is the most important professional and vital project of my career; it is very special for me,” Nadal said in a statement. “The Academy is a training center for athletes where they are given all the possible opportunities so that they can reach their maximum potential, and is equipped with the latest technology applied to sports. That willingness to use the latter is something we share with Telefónica.”
“The Rafa Nadal Academy by Movistar was born with the latest technology applied to sport and trains young talent through the experience of Rafa and his team, combined with innovative training systems,” Francisco de Bergia, Telefonica’s director of public affairs, said in a statement. “In 2016 we launched an international call focused on finding startups that will develop technological solutions for the Rafa Nadal Academy by Movistar, in which more than 160 startups from Asia, Europe, North America, Latin America and Oceania participated.”
Fans of Nadal and visitors to the Telefonica Flagship Store can book a turn on the VR Movistar Nadal here. Subscribers of Movistar and Telefonica can also enter through the VR challenge to win prizes like a Nadal Babolat tennis racket.