Ball tracking technology at WTGF

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This technology is simply amazing. It's very interesting to know the speed and spin of word class players shot.
Today in the men's final FZD hit a devastating forehand 77 km/h and 122 rps. I think that it was the strongest shot of the tournament in term of spin &speed. So we could say that FZD ha the strongest forehand on the pro tour. what do you think? Even Hugo hits the ball with a lot of power.
 
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As a geek, I am impressed a little. This technology is very expensive. The equipment itself is not that amazing. The cameras and computer power have been around a few years. The programming techniques have been around too. However, it still takes a lot of effort to get the detail right and there isn't a monetary reward to justify the effort.

High speed cameras have been around for years but they are expensive. Being able to process this data real time also requires expensive interfaces to the cameras. The computing power isn't that expensive. The graphics cards like GTX1080 are also up to the task with special programming for the cores on the graphics card. The physics and geometry required is known.

I would say it is about time except there is no return on investment. There is only satisfying ones' curiosity.

If you have a high end NVidia graphic card for playing games, you should look up CUDA cores. Your graphics card is actually a massively parallel processor card.
 
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In the recent World Cup quarterfinal between Fan Zhendong and Boll, at 4-4 in the 5th set, Timo hit a backhand that was measured at 83 km/h and 97 rps. Was not really a big swing or anything. Was pretty surprised at the time at how he could hit so fast as I had seen the measurements of forehand loops that looked faster, but was measured slower. Maybe a faulty measurement at the time or else sublime technique and timing.
Otherwise is it really interesting to see. A bit like Trackman in golf.
 
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I don't think so. ITTF could easily sell this information to any association who wants to deconstruct an opponents game and come up with counter measures. Some might say that China probably already has a team doing this for them, sure. But lesser teams with less resources for an analytics team could benefit greatly from such a database.

Of course the playing field will level out once everyone gets their hands on the information, and there will be the question of whether its fair to place a further monetary barrier to succeed at world level table tennis.
 
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I also find those information awesome. Along with the new video referee... nice!

In Germany table tennis is often advertised with "ball speeds up to 180 km/h". I wonder if that is true or just rubbish. Seeing that professional winner topspins are that far away from that mark?! Not sure what the fastest smash ever was.
 
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[...]

In Germany table tennis is often advertised with "ball speeds up to 180 km/h". I wonder if that is true or just rubbish. Seeing that professional winner topspins are that far away from that mark?! Not sure what the fastest smash ever was.

With some simple math, 180 km/h is equal to 50 m/s; thinking logically I would believe that is impossible to hit.
 
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Depends somewhat on the way it’s measured. The ball loses velocity fast.

Exit velocity might be very high; average velocity over (say) a full table length is much lower. And with the distances over which Mizu and XX play faux tennis, again much lower.
What you write were my thoughts as well.

If you google for the 180 kmh myth there are quite some results. Even wikipedia.de talks about speeds up to 180 kmh :p
 
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I stumbled upon http://www.jayandwanda.com/tt/speed.html (again) and I think it gives a convincing analysis and ballpark figures. Using a velocity meter, my peak was 82km/h (averaged over 300cm; exit velocity about 100km/h); apparently Korbel managed slightly more with an average of 89km/h over that distance (exit velocity near 110km/h). I don't think it gets much faster than that.
 
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