Comments on: Formula 1 - A step closer

By: Heikki Kovalainen

Heikki Kovalainen — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 17:00:15 +0000

At the car Show is unveiled new Megans and Clios, both badged as Formula 1, and in the yellow used by the team. The Renault Clio F1 Team R27 is aimed at those that want performance, fashion and driving pleasure, the company said. Released in the first half of 2008, it comes with a two litre, 200bhp engine. The Megan F1 Team R26 is a two litre, 230bhp turbo, starting from around Dhs85,000. Both will sport an F1 plaque on their body.

By: epredator

epredator — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 07:15:07 +0000

We dont reverse engineer any feeds. This post was about what we could do if the feeds were available, and some other people have commented that they have been reverse engineering.
The data feeds I have access to are for wimbledon and tennis as that is through the company and licensed.
It would be great for F1.com to make this data open not hidden in an applet, but media rights are a complicated issue, muddied by web 2.0 needs

By: jonathan

jonathan — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 05:21:07 +0000

Hi, i’m wondering how u manage to reverse engineer the live timing, i meant to do it for my lil desktop. i’m planning to put it on my personal application. could u get back to me soon? cheers

By: Jacek

Jacek — Sat, 12 May 2007 12:25:02 +0000

Wilfred would you mind sharing your applet with me? I was meaning to reverse engineer the protocol as you did - but since you’ve already done this…. please email me @ gaceknews (at) wp.pl

By: Aleister Kronos

Aleister Kronos — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 15:41:39 +0000

Haha! Is that the car I saw crashed up in the Mercedes SIM in SL, and that I personally hold responsible for lagging me so badly I had to logout (there otherwise being only 3 people on the sim)?

y’know? I think it might be.

By: epredator

epredator — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 06:04:13 +0000

Wilfred, thanks for the comment. I do use the live formula one timing applet when I watch teh races live to complement the TV coverage. As you point out the issues around data are legal ones.
At the moment the latency issues may well meana live one to one car positioning may not quite be there yet, but as we have proved with tennis we can get positional data in and play ball trajectories at speed.
Even the applets turned into a HUD in SL and other virtual worlds would be great.
Publicly avalable data to allow any sort of f1 mashup would be great then we could all have a go.

By: Wilfred

Wilfred — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 02:58:41 +0000

The formula one live timing data is already available online. On the formula one website (www.formula1.com) its shown in a little java applet that shows sector times and overall positions during practice, qualifying, and the live race. Its exactly the same data and format as what the teams see.

The protocol itself is actually easily reverse engineered. It consists of both “snapshots” (which works for those behind proxies), and live streamed updates through a direct tcp/ip connection. Ive made some custom viewers with it (mainly to get a nice view of it in full screen), and a simple extension would be to relay this data into second life. The main technical issue is the latency. It would be amazing if SL could host a live representation of the race (like a 3D viewer of the whole track), but i suspect it would be difficult, because SL prevents objects being moved around by script too much by having them run out of “energy” to prevent abuse.

The other issue is legalities. Anything thats shows F1 data to the general public, especially live timing information, would need to be officially approved by the F1 organisers i suspect.

By: Mark Alexander

Mark Alexander — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 13:44:05 +0000

How HOT is that car =O *melts*