It's not a sim but its delivery looks similar to a sim, so it must use
the same pc resources.
Is anybody gonna bite on this and subscribe?
Any idea of costs or hw resources (beyond their recommendations)
Looks sweet to me, but I can't seem to find any real-world comments
on the product.
Any info appreciated.
ok, ep
http://carbon.virtualspectator.com/wrvs
http://carbon.virtualspectator.com/wrvs/movies.htm
It's been used for the America's Cup (yachting) match racing. I was working
for one of the major sponsors at the time, so we got free coverage. Having
said that, 15 knots is somewhat slower than 160km/h, so I don't know how
well it scales to high speed coverage.
It worked fairly well on a P166 with a Matrox Millenium II & a 19" screen
running at 1024x768. That was a few years ago (97/98 I think).
Cheers
Hamish
"ElvisPresley2k" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...
Quoted text (15 lines)
> It's not a sim but its delivery looks similar to a sim, so it must use > the same pc resources. > > Is anybody gonna bite on this and subscribe? > Any idea of costs or hw resources (beyond their recommendations) > > Looks sweet to me, but I can't seem to find any real-world comments > on the product. > > Any info appreciated. > > ok, ep > > http://carbon.virtualspectator.com/wrvs > http://carbon.virtualspectator.com/wrvs/movies.htm[email hidden] (ElvisPresley2k) wrote:
I used Virtual Spectator to watch the last America's Cup challenge in
New Zealand a couple years ago. I was never much interested in sailboat
racing, but I became a big fan while trying out their software. Each
contender had speed, wind strength, compass, GPS sensors on board which
transmitted to a local receiver. This data was passed out through the
internet to those of us with the VS software.
I had what looked like a 3D animation of two sailboats moving across
water on my screen. They duplicate the course, angle, position, speed,
and other actions of the actual boats, including the change of sails.
I could swing the view around to a variety of angles and heights, as
well as choosing overlays of such graphics as wind direction and
strength, distance between the boats & distance of lead boat ahead
of the 2nd, and a variety of vectors from each boat which included
speed, angle of pointing, angle of travel, direction and speed made
good, and others.
And I was not limited to real time. I could pause while I went away
for a few minutes and then unpause when I came back. I could rewind
and watch a preceding event. If I came home late I could start the
displayed event from the beginning and run in sped up time until
it reached the present. And there was a running text commentary and
stream of still images from electronic cameras. No voice stream as
that would have been "broadcast rights".
The whole thing really used very little streaming data, and could
easily be handled by a dialup modem connection.
The CD that I bought after trying out just the software for the
first few events (the whole AC event of elimination rounds went
on for a few months) had lots of additional info such as the
history of the AC, a big section on rules with animated examples,
lots of background on each team as well as providing links to
web sites that had updated, current info.
I'm not exactly sure how VS is handling this rally event,
having only briefly looked at the site, but if there is any
way to provide a decent, remote viewing experience I would
expect them to be able to present it.
One final note about using VS for the America's Cup.
After a few heats went down I began looking for tv coverage
and finally found some on cable via ESPN2. It was lousy!
The tv cameras were not able to really cover the event as
well as I could "see" it in the 3D animation on my pc, nor
was the commentary as good. After watching a few nights
I gave up on television as a decent presentation medium
for sailboat racing and watched the remainder on my pc
using Virtual Spectator.
