Tech Analysis: Virtual Spectator

Powerboat P1’s Virtual Spectator software is – quite literally – the best way to watch all the race action, without ever having to leave your sofa. We explain how this innovative system works

Speed matters, especially in Powerboat P1. But few things in this high-octane adrenalin-fuelled sport are as fast as Virtual Spectator. No, strike that. Nothing is as fast as Virtual Spectator, the online technology that brings to your computer screen accurate 3D simulations of every race, even as it unfolds.

Virtual Spectator allows anyone with an internet connection the opportunity to view all the action, from many angles and from any boat. You can also watch it live – as it happens – or go back over a race whenever you like. It has revolutionised Powerboat P1 for many spectators.

An how fast is it? Four times per second, every second of the race, Virtual Spectator receives the coordinates of every boat – its location, its speed, its heading and so on – from GPS transmitters mounted on the hull. This data is sent by either a GPRS or RF (radio frequency) network to a sophisticated database in San Jose, California, where it is distributed to the worldwide web and thus to your computer screen.

From venue to computer screen, it takes just eight to nine seconds – and that delay is mainly down to how the internet works. For the same reason, P1 Radio’s race commentary also broadcasts about eight seconds after the live action.

That happy conjunction presents an enticing opportunity for online viewers on race days. You can listen to P1 Radio while watching the Virtual Spectator simulation. It’s like a live TV broadcast, but with one important difference: you’re the director. With Virtual Spectator, you can cut from one boat to another, change the camera angle on that boat, pull back to an overview of the field, zoom in to a specific incident, and so on.

“One of the incredible things is that you can get camera views you’d never get otherwise, even from a helicopter,” says Peter Lamb, CEO of Virtual Spectator International, Australia and UK. “You get a real sense of how fast these boats are going because you can get on board and travel two metres away from other boats at 100mph. I think it’s one of the best uses of the Virtual Spectator technology that I’ve seen.”

That’s high praise, because Virtual Spectator has helped bring new viewer perspectives to a wide range of sports, including the World Rally Championship, football’s 2006 World Cup, Test Match cricket, the Volvo Ocean Race sailing competition, international rugby, rowing, and even squash. “Name a sport, really, and we’re there,” says Peter.

Powerboat P1 posed specific challenges for Virtual Spectator, though. “To get the 3D representation of the ocean and the swell looking right – the wakes, the rooster tails, all of those things –  that required an immense amount of R&D and mathematics,” Peter says. “But it’s vital that if a boat hits a wave at a certain speed and the swell is at a certain height and the wind is coming from a certain direction, that boat reacts on screen in the way that it will in real life.”

Another challenge was the timeframe: they had just six months to get everything ready for the first race. “That’s half as long as you need to pull off a project like this,” says Peter. But they managed it – thanks to a team of 22 talented people working full time in New Zealand, Oklahoma City, Toronto, London and Bermuda.

It’s fitting that the genesis of Powerboat P1’s Virtual Spectator reflects the championship’s global nature. And Peter isn’t the only person within Powerboat P1’s international firmament to enjoy its benefits. Many crews use it for post-race analysis. Like any online viewer, they can fast-forward, rewind or pause the action to ponder tactics and find quicker racing lines.

“We get lots of feedback from the teams,” Peter says. “The #77 Lucas Oil team, for instance, use Virtual Spectator religiously, both during and after the race. They think it has made a huge difference to their tactics and how they compete.”

Another advocate is Stefano Acanfora, pilot of the #38 Baia High Performance SuperSport boat. “Virtual Spectator is a great opportunity for us pilots to review the stupid things we do in the race,” he says. “After every weekend, I use it to watch the race again – calmly, trying to understand if I took the right path. I look at every moment of the race because you can better understand if every decision you took was right or not.”

Teams are using the technology just like Formula 1 drivers and technicians study telemetry. But Powerboat P1 organisers also draw on it, to help resolve conflicts. It lets them analyse a racing incident and everyone involved can see more clearly who was at fault. Organisers are even using data from Virtual Spectator to help make course layouts safer and more spectacular.

So Virtual Spectator helps organisers to resolve disputes quicker – and teams to go faster. But they will never be able to match the speed with which Virtual Spectator gets data from venue to computer screen. Let’s say you’re online in mainland Europe watching the Powerboat P1 Vigo Grand Prix of the Sea. Data from all the boats goes from Vigo to the number-crunching powerhouse in San Jose, America, and back to your screen in Europe: roughly 11,000 miles in eight seconds. Or the equivalent of five million miles per hour. And you thought Evolution class boats were fast.