Two Formula One fans are chatting after a Grand Prix:
"Listen, what was the race like?"
"Oh, exciting! Damon Hill became a Champion, - he led throughout the race and
won Grand Prix! Schumacher and Hakkinen did very good too. Jacques Villeneuve..."
"Well, what about Frentzen?"
"I'm sorry?"
"Heinz-Harald Frentzen... I am a big fan of this one and would like to know
something about..."
"Oh...yeah, but I have nothing to say, I guess. He didn't spin and was not
showed at all."
Unfortunately this is not a joke. What you see is what you get, - but Formula One fans watching a race on their TV are allowed only to see some fragments provided by a camera man focusing his lens on a lonely leading car, while thrilling fights are often unfolding at the opposite end of the field. One is reminded of the article "A Plea for Better Coverage, not Rules" by Dion van de Nes published in the German issue of Atlas. "Let us see the cars in back as well as in front!" - pleads Dion and millions of people all over the world would plead in perfect unison with him.
So you want to see the cars in back as well as in front? One day you may be welcome to.
At the scheduled time of some Grand Prix, - Spanish for example, - you switch your computer on. Yes, the computer, not a TV set. While the system is coming in you place yourself into the comfort of your chair, but all your nerve strings are still impatiently strained and your fingers restlessly tremble on a keyboard anticipating the race. Let your software run (it might be called something like "Multi-Magic Formula" for example), - and now you are ready for the event.
The Circuit de Catalunya appears on a screen. Look at this construction, majestic in its natural beauty, enclosed in a picturesque mountain scenery, with its track surface looking like a giant snake intoxicated with the hot Mediterranean sun and relaxing mesmerized encircling the meadowy hills lightly shadowed by clouds. Make this snake awake, - you are not a mere passive viewer! Your three-dimensional camera view is in your full control and you are free for any movement in this full-colored high-performanced 3D space, which Multi-Magic Formula kindly generates for you in real time.
While all cars are still speechless on the grid, you condition yourself for your new role as a F1 camera man. You investigate track conditions, explore its corners, chicanes and hairpins as you navigate in three-dimensional perspective, where all 3D modeled objects are identical with their real entities located at the Circuit de Catalunya. And you certainly place your camera view close to some car, which is your favorite one, so as to make her examined intently from all sides. When the 30 second board is shown, and then the green flag, for the start of the formation lap, finally the cars burst into life. You would better fly your camera up into the sky and from a helicopter' point of view look at the giant drowsy snake rise into life, and being miraculously transformed in a serpentinously winding sparkling creature, - this are the cars warming themselves up. And don't forget you are in interactive mode, - click on the object you choose and look for some knowledge in addition to all current information from the track which your monitor is permanently provided with.
Now all cars are in position on the grid again (don't miss the start!). After the five seconds signal is given, you are ready to focus the lens at the start battle unravelling before your eyes. Keeping up with a leader, you rush headlong into the first Elf chicane and take the most comfortable viewing position, waiting for your favorite racer while he is wrestling with the asphalt in front of the corner. After the competitors have their positions at the track more or less shared and the first leader is defined you are able to switch your attention from one car to another, make your camera panoraming over the circuit, follow some of the leaders with your careful look, give encouragement to your favorite struggling somewhere at the bottom of the grid, or merely have the camera fixed motionlessly and relax with some lemonade for a time.
This is only one kind of activity that "Multi-Magic Formula" could presents you. The virtual event in real time generated in front of your eyes coincides absolutely with a real Grand Prix event which takes place at that very circuit at that very time.
The virtual track surface (as well as all cars moving on it) is modeled and textured so as to coincide with real objects in the smallest details. At whatever point of the world you are stationed, the virtual Ferrari F310 moving on the screen of your computer appears to be faithfully repeating each move of the real car simultaneously driven by Michael Schumacher at the Circuit de Catalunya, - as if they both were indistinguishable copies reflected in each other.
You don't have to be confined to the TV screen worrying about imperfect F1 coverage in your country any more. You don't have to limit yourself to TV pictures an operator carefully provides you with nor to the commentator's rambling which just exasperates you! Of course you are free to have your TV set on as well and pay attention to these both time to time. You are free in your choice to direct your inquisitive eye at that area of a track you would like to see, or refer for some information you are interested in at the moment. You are free to look for your own way of "participating" in the event.
Dream? Not at all. "What lay hidden under the snow today cometh to light tomorrow".
Multimedia products become more and more popular. Dizzyingly progressing technologies of creating Virtual Reality exceed the narrow range of computer research laboratories and will sweep over the world to extend, influence, and enclose a vast spectrum of activities. Computer games, entertaining rides, interactive education programs and teaching tutorials will advance and operate projects in such fields as industrial production and design, space and geographic exploration, medical expertise and diagnostics, criminalistic analysis and investigating experiments. So why doesn't Virtual Reality effect an increasing expansion to Formula One? The time has come.
The programming product, that could be called "Multi-Magic Formula Solution", briefly described above, should appear as the ultimate result of a project of real-time F1 interactive coverage. Coverage of Grand Prix events via multimedia features and modern technological achievements in the 3D Visualization field. The main and principal new formula of building up such system is to create not merely a virtual space but a Virtual Timed Event. The event is generated on a computer screen and appears as an "artificial" copy of a REAL simultaneous timed event. How would it be attained?
This real-time process includes following consequent operations: 1 - taking digital information (data) from real moving objects (cars); 2 - transferring data from an information source to a local user (your computer); 3 - processing data (working it over and transforming digital symbols into computer graphics images). The output of this process we can see on a screen is a perfectly organized three-dimensional graphics environment, - with all applications and 3D objects moving in it. Each of these three main steps is maintained and controlled by using specific electronic devices and programming solutions.
Motion/Tracking System is responsible for getting information about cars' movement, - it identifies object' location in a space (as well as its alignment) and transforms the analogue information into the digital electronic code. Motion/Tracking System, which is well-known in computer graphics design and wide-used in such field as Movie Special Effects production, is based on so called sensor-transmitter-receiver devices.
Let us give one example just to make the operating principle clear: if you need you 3D computer modeled persona to make any move (walking, jumping, running, swimming, etc.) in the most natural way, you would easily succeed by applying electronic sensors to some parts of a real human body, so that if a real human being moves, his computer equivalent appears moving on a screen in identically the same way. It happens to the computer model "receiving" signals from the human body (via sensors and a transmitter) that make it repeat all body' movements simultaneously.
In our case we set an electronic sensor on a F1 car, transmitter-receiver system passes the information to the Internet server (and from there to all local users), while special software (running on your computer connected to Internet) asks for data, processes it and outputs onto a screen as completed result. If our tracking system is programmed to update information just about 15-20 times per seconds (taking into calculation the transferred data volume that seems minimal), it wouldn't take a bit of doing to make cars on the screen move continuously, without any distinguishable delay or interruption. And don't forget, you find your computer "competitors" repeating all sorts of real dizziest F1 maneuvers, - chases, passes, spins, collisions and crashes (unfortunately!) and pit-stops, of course!. You can watch them from any point of view - you are free to choose.
Once starting to elaborate upon this theme more and more variants are identified that give an opportunity for not only creating a Highly Realistic Virtual Event, but involving users to become interactive in this virtually organized dimension:
We are waiting for you, Magic Formula!