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It was the summer of 2002-2003 and Auckland's harbour was filling up with the superyachts of the rich and famous who had sailed in to watch the Louis Vuitton Cup challenger series - and the America's Cup races.
Meanwhile, in an office near the Viaduct Basin, an ambitious project was underway to give everyone a front row view of the racing.
Virtual Spectator, a small graphics company set up by entrepreneurs including Ian Taylor and Craig Meek, wanted to give America's Cup viewers an alternative to the straightforward television coverage of the event.
Using the internet, 3D animations of the yachts and the race course were replicated, using data fed wirelessly from sensors in water-tight boxes carried on the racing yachts and dubbed "orange roughies".
For $35, subscribers could access all 120 Louis Vuitton and America's Cup races on the internet, changing camera angles of the animated maps, viewing numerous sets of data, zooming in and out and even fast-forwarding through races already started.
It was a very good idea, but one too far ahead of its time. Local subscribers were mainly connecting to the service over dial-up internet connections so the animations stuttered and froze.
If the New Zealand's Cup defence had turned into a fiasco, the new concept in sports event coverage wasn't far behind.
Despite having big plans to provide internet coverage of other major sporting events and even rock concerts, Virtual Spectator didn't survive the fall-out. Haemorrhaging money, the innovative little company was eventually bought out of receivership by investor Neville Jordan, who built it up somewhat then sold it to a Bermuda-based venture capitalist.
Meek is involved in resurrected internet-based plans for coverage of the 32nd America's Cup, called Desktop TV, which has been created by his company Go Virtual Sports.
The plans are more ambitious than they were for the last event. As well as live 3D animation of the racing (with commentary in English or Spanish), there will be video highlights, a streaming radio station and news reports supplied by Herald and Radio Network owner APN.
A game called Virtual Skipper lets you take the helm of one of the boats and test your own match-racing skills. There's live multi-player racing with other subscribers via the internet.
It all sounds very sophisticated - but then so did Virtual Spectator back in 2002. This time however, Meek has broadband on his side. There were barely 100,000 high-speed internet subscribers in the country back then. Now there are close to 500,000.
The appetite for web-streamed, mass audience events has also improved.
The turning point seems to have been the Live 8 concerts held in July 2005. AOL's live internet coverage of the event was lauded. Web streaming of everything from the annual general meetings of companies to major sports and cultural events is now common, thanks to improved video compression technology and the greater penetration of broadband. The creators of Skype and Kazaa have an internet television network in the pipelines. It's called Joost.
However, Meek seems to remain wary of putting a huge load on some of Desktop TV's services.
"As the complete America's Cup Desktop TV content is downloaded to your PC overnight, you will not experience any stoppages or buffering when watching Desktop TV," the website notes.
"You just need to make sure you set your computer to download Desktop TV content by leaving your broadband connected and your browser open overnight. Do not switch off your computer."
In other words, a trickle download strategy is envisaged for some of the more bandwidth-hungry services such as video streaming.
How well the live 3D animation works this time will determine the fate of Desktop TV as that's what most people will be tuning in for.
And it's yet to be seen what appetite there will be for the service, given the pricing, which seems a little high.
The Desktop TV package of video highlights, some animation, radio feeds and news stories costs $50 for the length of the cup racing season. The 3D live sailing animation costs $56 on its own. At those prices you'll need to be a big yachting fan and will demand a smooth, stutter-free experience.
There's no argument that Virtual Spectator was a visionary concept. Let's hope one of its creators can successfully reinvent this intriguing internet technology.
