Together with Cake, we launched the world’s first 5G-powered AR foosball tournament live from Wembley. We overlaid a new digital version of the pitch on top of the iconic Wembley Stadium turf to allow users to battle against each other in AR.

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Our team transformed the Wembley pitch into an AR foosball table complete with rows of players that competitors could operate in real-time using a custom app on their Samsung devices. Each character was designed and animated by us to have its own unique personality. Users could perform the usual foosball motions like kicking, sliding, and bouncing, plus some fun additions like duplicating the ball and freezing rows of players. The epic foosball tournament featured a star-studded line-up, including Peter Crouch, Gareth Southgate and Joe Cole, along with some lucky EE competition winners.

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Thanks to the fast 5G connection speed, participants could all experience the same uninterrupted AR game session in real-time without any delays. Our biggest challenge was anchoring the 3D content to the pitch in the most precise way. We used ARCore Cloud Anchors, which allow you to scan a physical environment and sync the AR coordinate space on every device. By leveraging the versatility of these positional cloud anchors, we were able to specify a point around the user as a reference. Through cloud processing, we were then able to share this anchor through all the devices, ensuring all players could see exactly the same content but from their own perspective.

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The result was a shared gaming experience that transformed the Wembley pitch into a canvas for digital play.

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