Yacht-race graphics glitch a huge letdown

By PETER GRIFFIN

For a while last week I thought I was watching a promising Kiwi internet company doing its best to commit commercial suicide.

Virtual Spectator was back to bring us Louis Vuitton Cup action online, promising 3-D graphics of the yacht races in real-time - computer speak for "as it is happening".

As it happened, nothing happened. I thought the problem was that my 56Kbps dial-up internet connection just wasn't coping with the real-time nature of the race, unable to get the constantly updating data to my machine quickly enough. But then calls started coming through - from people on fat broadband links. They too were caught up in the virtual freeze as the boats sailed on in the real world, cutting their paths around the Hauraki Gulf. Virtual Spectator had crashed and burned - just like last time.

What made it worse was that last Monday's highly anticipated race between Prada and Oracle had been excluded from the TV coverage of the racing. Here was a chance for an enterprising company to take the lead where the big networks couldn't get their act together.

As it turned out, the race was just getting underway when Virtual Spectator dropped the ball itself - some server fell over in the US apparently.

The big-name sponsors Yahoo!, SAP and UBS Financial Services and Louis Vuitton must have been cringing, wondering why they had taken a punt on a tiny New Zealand company.

Microsoft co-founder and billionaire Paul Allen thumped his keyboard and resorted to making regular calls to the OneWorld syndicate to check on the progress of the crew he is financially backing.

More importantly, those poised with credit card to buy their US$24.99 ($52 ) subscription would have been happy they hadn't signed up earlier.

It all seemed like a massive let-down. We knew Virtual Spectator had come up with vastly improved graphics for the cup and here was an opportunity to show the web could be used as a viable, alternative viewing medium - that people would pay for.

As it turns out, all Virtual Spectator needed was a little time, and some high-level stress testing of the service that would reveal its limitations when thousands logged on at once.

Friday, however, was the real deal. High winds cancelled sailing midweek, giving Virtual Spectator two days to sort themselves out and prepare for the onslaught that would come again when racing resumed and an increasingly sceptical online audience again logged in.

As the Friday afternoon races progressed a small crowd gathered around the PC in the office to take in the cup action. Everything worked without a hitch, proving that when Virtual Spectator gets it right the results are visually stunning. The motion of the boats was smooth, the nautical statistics refreshed quickly.

Many onlookers thought it was even more compelling than the TV coverage, almost soothing to watch.

But as I clicked my mouse to change from course view to helm cam, I got the feeling something big was still missing. It finally dawned on me - sound was what was missing. It's easy to get drawn into the graphics of the racing, with Rangitoto perched in the background and the wash of the boats streaking across the screen. But despite Virtual Spectator's claims that it would be offering audio commentary to go with the racing coverage, so far it's been silence that has accompanied the race action - not so much as the creak of a mast or the flutter of a spinnaker.

Instead, Virtual Spectator has a text-based commentary with a new paragraph popping up regularly - no substitute for the musings of a seasoned commentator.

Even the text updates have their critics.

"Please do something about it," begs one subscriber in the Virtual Spectator online forum.

"As it is now, the comments appear too long after whatever has taken place."

"What commentary?" asks another. "For a product I have paid money for the value so far is about nil."

The problem with audio commentary is not technology, says Virtual Spectator. It simply doesn't have the licensing agreement to include audio commentary in the package. It can't, therefore, take commentary from TVOne and stream it over the web.

Until there's audio, however, the racing service will continue to have a stripped-down, entry-level feel to it.

Enterprising PC users equipped with a TV tuner card should be able to open TV coverage of the racing in a window on their desktop, getting the best of both worlds - TV footage and the booming commentary of Peter Montgomery, with the lush graphics and real-time statistics of Virtual Spectator.

It's early days for Virtual Spectator and the cup racing. If the company wants to build on the big branding deals it has clinched, it will have to prove it can deliver day after day, hitch-free. Just about anything can go awry with the mass of cables and servers that make up the internet. Let's hope nothing goes wrong during race time from now on.

* peter_griffin@nzherald.co.nz

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