Part of our crew ventured down under last weekend as the Australian Grand Prix kicked off the 2016 F1 season in Melbourne. We were on-site to support the launch of exciting new virtual technology our team developed that could change the way fans watch motorsports.

At RCS, we’re calling it Virtual GP. It’s an application that pushes the limits of what’s possible with a real-time renderer for broadcast output. The system curates massive amounts of live telemetry data for all cars during each race, and presents it in a data playback interface to produce visualizations of action on the track in real-time.

Virtual GP allows a presenter to visualize, compare and analyze drivers’ racing styles in a completely digital and 3D race course environment. They can illustrate everything from where a specific car broke to when they used throttle, how they selected a driveline and even how all of these strategies change over time, using historical data banked.

Sky De and Sky UK were the first to tap the technology this weekend as a race analysis tool, but you can expect to see it in play more as the 2016 season progresses. We’ll continue to add new features to Virtual GP, so be sure to visit our blog regularly for updates. In the meantime, check out the video to see the technology in action.