America's Cup- First glimpse of new TV package from Media Trials

by Richard Gladwell on 9 May 2011
The first video images from the America's Cup Media Trials have been released, showing clips from the much vaunted enhanced television coverage.

A key part of the new offering will be the on-screen virtual lines overlaid to show laylines, which boat is ahead and behind and by what margin, and other on-screen information.

Unfortunately there is insufficient continuous footage to be able to determine if the system is an improvement over the previous America's Cup coverage which relied heavily on Virtual Eye's computer graphics to provide similar viewer information.

What the clip does show is what information can be overlaid - including boat tracks. A section of the video shows a 3-D view of the racing.

Press pause in the clip to get a closer look at the information that is being displayed.

Early in the video (11secs) we can see the America's Cup silhouette superimposed on the water, possibly confirming rumoured on the water advertising, similar to that used on the grass of sports stadiums.

This is not the final product which will obviously be refined in coming weeks and months, however the test will be how the enhancements work in the context of an overall package, and whether it tells the story, which will not become clear until the racing starts in earnest later this year.