Tennis legend John McEnroe plays against an avatar of his younger self. And not on a PC or console, but for real.
John McEnroe is considered one of the greatest tennis players of all time With his aggressive attacking game, he enchanted audiences and opponents alike from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. But he is not only known as a former world number one and three-time Wimbledon champion, but above all for his temperament.
On 21 January 1990, for example, he became the first player since Spain’s Willi Alvarez in 1963 to be sent off for disorderly conduct at a Grand Slam tournament. That was in the fourth round of the Australian Open against the Swede Mikael Pernfors. All you have to do on Youtube is type in John McEnroe plus disqualified or freak-out.
McEnroe got in his own way more than once during his career If you like, he was his own biggest opponent. The US sports channel ESPN+ and the beer brand Michelob are now letting the now 63-year-old actually compete against himself or his younger self with the help of sophisticated technology including artificial intelligence. And not on a PC or a console, but on a real tennis court. Here you can see the teaser:
How can McEnroe play against himself in real life?
McEnroe was first completely scanned so that the avatar of his younger self could reproduce movements, gestures and facial expressions. The Unreal Engine, to be precise: the MetaHuman technology, was used for this.
A team also analysed hundreds of hours of video material and fed 308 different shots of McEnroe into the system. Among other things, this consists of an AI algorithm that is trained on McEnroe’s playing style.
On the court, it looks like this: One half of the tennis court can be viewed normally. This is where the real John McEnroe stands and swings his racket. The other half is shrouded in fog. On the one hand, this serves to represent the virtual McEnroe by means of holographic projection, and on the other hand, to hide the ball machine that does its work in the background. When the avatar swings his racket, the machine fires the balls as if they were actually coming from the racket.
There are three versions of the artificial McEnroe from 1979, 1981 and 1984 Unfortunately, the complete video, which not only shows the match but also how it was made, is not available for free. For this you would have to take out an ESPN+ subscription. Nevertheless, it’s a crazy experiment that we haven’t heard of in this form before.
What do you think? Have you ever heard of such an experiment? Feel free to write about it in the comments!
