Cool, Cool Stuff

So on Thursday, I got some 'hands on' time on one of our new products that is going to blow away the viewer (well, maybe not - but if they knew how technologically cool it is - it would).

As you may know - if you've been reading my blog - our system allows us to know where each car is down to 3/4 of an inch on the actual track.

Now, imagine that you take that 'real time' knowlege and marry it to a virtual (animated) video of the cars on the track. What's been done by the geniuses in the Sportvison HOS (hall of science) is to make a program - that looks kinda like a video game. You make the world that the game exists in - to be the exact track that you're racing on. And when I say exact track - I mean the exact track. Every single inch is made to match the track - complete with the fence posts around the track being exactly in the same place and the banked turns being EXACT. I think you understand what I'm saying here - exact.

Then you make a model of each car that's dimensionally exact- and you make the 'skins' for that car look exactly like the real thing.

So, marrying our GPS location technology for EVERY car on the track - with this animated recreation - we can run the actual race in a virtual reality in REAL TIME. I hope this is making sense so far - it it's not let me know and I'll explain further.

Now, the question would be - so why would anyone want to watch the animated race instead of the real race? The answer is - you don't watch it instead of the real race - you watch it as PART of the real race. Not only does this REAL TIME animated race exist - but we can show animated (camera angles) from ANYWHERE along this race.

This means, that if a particular passing sequence is exciting (and I suppose they can be exicting - I'm not a Nascar fan), we can make an instant replay of the pass from any point of view we want. We can show the pass from inside one of the cars that's being passed, we can show it from a viewpoint 15 feet in front, behind, beside, under, above - ANYWHERE.

We unveiled this new product to the director and producer yesterday and they went bonkers for it. Here's a cool thing - I may be one of the 'back up' operators for it. The design of the program is much like a camera operator and a 'non-linear editor' combined. (A non-linear editor is a program you use to make video with and most people who know me know that I can make a mean video and pretty quickly and efficiently). So, I have some good skills that I think will lend to me operating this puppy in the future. The full time gig will go to someone who works the whole season.

Anyway, this new product alone may be worth checking out the Bud Shootout tomorrow.

Other than that, I did some camera registrations (getting things set up for the show basically) and I had to be on standby for a number of hours yestersday. The 'no see ums' (tiny little gnat style bugs) were really bad on the roof, so we found a place just below to wait on some technical stuff to happen before we went to the cameras. We had our radios and could be at the cameras in 2 minutes from the time called - but we ended up having to wait for hours due to some software and hardware bugs that were finallly ironed out by the geniuses.

The spot we found to wait was pretty posh. It's a skybox- and we just watched the cars go round and round the track during practice. Not a bad gig (although I prefer actually working rather than waiting - but hey, it's my job - I can handle it).

More Daytona 500 Preparation

This is pretty cool! My work credentials gives me total access to any where in any of the race tracks that we'll be going to. It allows for a lot of neat views of things that most people don't get to see. Of course, we have a responsibility to not abuse our privileges and such - and so for the most part - no one does.

Here's some photos and some explanations:

The TV compound is really filling up. It's amazing just how much equipment is being devoted to televising and other media outlets for this race week.

This first photo is of the TV compound on Friday the 2nd of Feb.



This photo is taken on the 7th. You can really see a difference



The track grounds and infield are starting to get a lot of attention as well:

In this first photo (from Sunday the 4th), you can see that there's not a lot of activity on the infield and they haven't yet started addressing the logos on the grass:


In this second photo, you can see (just 3 days later) that the infield is filling up with all the racer's crews' gigantic RV's and semi trucks. They've also started making the grounds look better.


My job has me all over the entire racetrack (I'll make a graphic in the next few days showing you what we do (in general terms). The following photos are just of the racetrack from several places:

Here's a photo from when I was driving on the track near pit road


Here's a photo of the Richard Petty Driving School Cars coming by at about 150mph. It's amazing how fast they seem to be going when you're this close


Here's a photo from one of our camera positions -going into the backstretch.

Tornados in FL

As you probably heard on the news - tornados ripped through central Florida early friday morning. The 2 most affected counties were Lake Co (the county that Quest Air Flight Park is in) and Volusia Co - the county where we live.

Jan woke me up at 4 am and I heard it thundering outside. She's not a thunderstorm lover to any degree. I'm sure she wasn't able to sleep at all while it was thundering, but I went right back to sleep.

This morning the news was full of tornado incidents. It turns out that one touchdown was just 2 and 1/2 miles from our house in New Smyrna Beach. The photo at the top shows some of the damage from this twister. I took the photo at the top from a local news website

The photo below shows the relationship of where this one touched down to where we live. I'm kinda glad I slept through it.


The following photo is one I took as I drove to New Smyrna Beach this afternoon after work. Most of the area was blocked off due to damage, but this was along US 1 (a major road).



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Regarding work, we continued setting up the truck and testing other items today. We set up a camera system and powered it as if it were out in the infield to make sure we were getting sufficient power to our data boxes and to make sure that our data signals were getting back to the truck.

ESPN brought in their brand new mobile broadcast studio. This thing is amazing. It's a broadcast booth that will be driven out into the infield and it has a scissors lift that will raise it up about 15 feet. The announcers will then have a mostly unrestricted view. I think maybe they just buy these things because they can.


The photo below is of the inside of the A unit.

Day 2 at the Daytona Speedway

So, here's the gig. They bring in 4 techs to start the process of getting all of our stuff ready for the race. The Sportvision truck has to be rewired for some of the new stuff we're doing so we spend much of the day wiring up the racks in the truck. It's hard to explain just what that entails. Here's photo or 2 to help with the explanation


The photo above shows the back of the main rack - actually just a portion of it. There's a walkway behind the racks so you can wire and rewire all of the components that are in the rack.


The photo above shows just one of the bays in the rack. You can see how there's an unbelievable number of wires just coming in and out of this one bay.

Today we also finished with the installation of 4 antennaes and base stations on top of the roof of the main grandstands. There's a little bit of seating up on the roof that's mainly for the spotters for each crew that's racing. The top of the roof will also be where approximately 6 TV cameras will be set up. We will have our equipment (the same equipment that we use in football) on 3 of those rooftop cameras.
You can see one of the camera platforms and the seating for the spotters in the photo below.


One of the things about all of these sports venues that I get to visit - that really appeals to me is the structure and architecture. Most of the football stadiums that I visited are made of concrete and steel. I'm not an engineer of any type, but the combination of concrete and steel is an amazing thing. Concrete has tremendous compression resistance and steel has tremendous tensile strength. When you combine the 2 together (like you see on an average interstate overpass) you get amazing strength. I've always thought it pretty cool the way they put this to use in stadiums so that they can allow for the combination of unobstucted views on the 'field' side and lots of room for people to walk on the 'outside and under' the stadium.
So, I find it interesting the way they decided to build the Daytona Raceway. It's all steel girders. This type of construction is plenty strong of course - but does not allow for lots of room for people to move around under the seating. I walked up the steps to the grandstands today and was amazed at the difference in feel compared to a football stadium.

It could be because of the year that the Daytona Speedway was built (1958) - this is simply the construction method of choice.

Here's a photo of the girders from ground level looking up.


Yesterday, I posted about the size of the television compound at this event. I took the photo below from the roof today and it does not have all the trucks in it. This is what it takes to get these races to television and the internet. Pretty amazing.