Computers Expose The Physics of NASCAR
Posted by sky | Tags: Car, Game, Math, Sports, Technology, algorithm, fluid-dynamics, real-time, simulation
From Physorg.com.It's an odd combination of Navier-Stokes equations and NASCAR driving. Computer scientists at the University of Washington have developed software that is incorporated in new technology allowing television audiences to instantaneously see how air flows around speeding cars. The algorithm Model Reduction for Real-time Fluids, first presented at a SIGGRAPH computer graphics conference last August, was since used by ESPN and sporting-technology company Sportvision Inc. to create a new effect for racing coverage. The fast-paced innovation hit prime time in late July when ESPN used the Draft Track technology to visualize the air flow behind cars in the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard, a NASCAR race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The Draft Track application calculates air flow over the cars and then displays it as colors trailing behind the car. Green, blue, yellow and red correspond to different speeds and directions for air flow when two or more cars approach one another while driving at speeds upward of 200 miles per hour. "What ESPN wanted to do is tell the story for the viewer of how drafting works because it's such a big part of the event," said Rick Cavallaro, chief scientist at Sportvision. "How the drivers use drafting to save gas, pick up speed, et cetera." Zoran Popović, an associate professor in the UW's department of computer science and engineering, and two students wrote the code that dramatically speeds up real-time fluid dynamics simulations. To make the simulation work in real time and be interactive, "you kind of need to rethink the math problem," he said. The new algorithm first simulates all the ways that smoke, fire -- or in this case, modified stock cars -- can behave. Then it runs the simulation for a reduced number of physically possible parameters. Popović imagined that the first applications would be introducing interactive simulations in video games that would allow players to drive through a smoky fire, interact with the weather in a flight simulator, or drive racecars in a virtual wind tunnel. Other research results from his lab were licensed to the game industry and then adopted in video games. Sportvision creates technology to enhance sports coverage. The company has already developed add-ons for ESPN's NASCAR coverage, placing Global Positioning System receivers, inertial measurement systems and telemetry on each car that can determine each car's speed and position several times a second. Now company engineers will use data from those sensors to model and display the air flowing over the cars.Previous Post Next Post