Vodafone experiments with 5G also at XFactor: Gianna Nannini from Berlin duets as a hologram

It is known that 5G has a myriad of possible applications, but it is still hard to understand which solutions will truly become the key ones. Vodafone continues its experimentation of this 5G "in search of an author" and does it directly on the stage of Xfactor 13, in a way that undoubtedly has been much more spectacular than the other views so far: the opening guest, Gianna Nannini, sang live on the XFactor stage, but remotely (the artist was in Berlin), projected like a hologram. Thus began the fourth live of the season, at the crossroads of amazement (among those who understood what was happening) and fun.

Yes, because those who thought they saw a grainy "figurine" like that of the hologram of Princess Leila of Star Wars, had to think again. The 3D figure of Nannini has been reconstructed with projection on a special gauze for holographic projections in a very faithful way, thanks also to a direction that has limited itself to shooting from the front and the categorical black background.

And in all this, what role did 5G play? Well, the novelty is that Nannini has duet with the XFactor boys in the studio managing to sing together, in sync. And despite this, up to a few seconds before the passage in hologram, Cattelan and Nannini managed to talk to each other with some difficulty due to the latency of the satellite connection (which, we must say, seemed slower than usual, so a little forced).

The duet song was made by "teleporting" Gianna Nannini (both the 3D orographic figure and the audio part) into 5G, so at least we were sworn by environments close to Vodafone. The low latency of the 5G link (all on the Vodafone network, which is also present in Germany) – they explained to us – allowed us to guarantee a synchronous performance (or rather perceivable as such) between Monza and Berlin, which would be unthinkable via satellite .

At the end of the song, magically, Nannini "dissolved" from Factor's stage and there, perhaps more than any other moment, it was understood that something very strange and particular was happening.

A potentially very valid and explanatory demonstration, even though many have criticized the use of playback by the singer, who clashes a bit with XFactor's totally live habits.

A demonstration perhaps made a little less effective than it could have been by two factors: Cattelan for his part did not explain very well what was going on neither before (and there is) nor after the performance; on the other hand, the extreme credibility of the scene, made up of many long fields (perhaps there was only some proportion to be seen between Nannini and the boys on stage) was remarkable, even too much. So much so that in our opinion the most distracted did not even understand that Nannini was really in Berlin and instead believed that the club where he was performing was a backstage scenario and the curtain was a "carrambata".

The paradox is that a less defined figure, a little blued and maybe shaky, similar to the one we have in memory of the compulsive visions of Star Wars, would have done almost more blow.

Still in a 5G and hologram key, Vodafone has also launched the initiative Ready for X Factor, a singing challenge that will give the contest winner the chance to duet as a hologram with one of the finalists.