We've just returned from running the tracking for the World Grand Prix Gliding Final in Santiago, Chile. The event was a massive success, both from a competition point of view and also a tracking perspective.

Yellowbrick presented the action with a 3 minute delay to the World, and on the final day we had 13,500 people watching online - the coverage was produced in 3D using Google Earth and also had video feeds mixed in with it. Feedback from the public was absolutely fantastic - whilst Europe was in the grip of winter, everyone loved being able to watch a gliding event on the other side of the World whilst tucked up in front of the fire at home!!

This is the 4th Grand Prix gliding event we have covered, and we're still learning. It's the first event where we have employed the new Google Earth based method of presenting the action (previously it's been video streaming from the site) and this aspect of the technology was particularly pleasing... by using Google Earth, the bandwidth consumption from the competition site itself is kept to a minimum, plus the viewers don't need any specialist software to watch the races - they can just go to a website, install the simple Google Earth plugin, and watch. With our web-based viewer they could even control the view, choose which glider to watch and fly with the pilots - or simply sit back and listen to the commentary, watching the commentator controlled view.

Without this new approach we simply would not have been able to present the competition to so many people - limits of video streaming to thousands around the World would have been very costly, and local bandwidth would have prevented the quality being good enough.

We're looking forward to the next airsports event now, and will soon be branching out into ballooning, hang-gliding and more.... watch this space!!

You can see pictures of the new Airsports Yellowbrick v2 in the Gallery section.