The football World Cup is almost upon us. Many millions will watch the tournament unfold on TV screens around the globe. But what if you could enjoy a mini virtual reconstruction of each match on your dining table instead?

To create such an experience, Konstantinos Rematas and colleagues at the University of Washington trained a machine learning algorithm to convert 2D YouTube clips into 3D reconstructions.

They began by gathering footage from the football videogame FIFA. “I had to play FIFA 2017 for, I don’t know, …