![]() ![]() But these calculations take hours to run on many high-performance computers. This allows the studios to create realistic pictures of how smoke curls, how a fire's flames lick, and even how hair or fabric blows in the wind. Studios such as Pixar already use physical laws, such as the Navier-Stokes fluids equations, in their animations. The UW researchers' breakthrough was figuring out how to simulate and display complex systems very quickly. "How the drivers use drafting to save gas, pick up speed, et cetera." ![]() "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. 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. The Draft Track application calculates air flow over the cars and then displays it as colors trailing behind the car. Working with ESPN, a Chicago-based company named Sportvision developed the application for NASCAR competition. 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. 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. to create a new effect for racing coverage. The algorithm, first presented at a computer graphics conference last August, was since used by sports network ESPN and sporting-technology company Sportvision Inc. 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. ![]()
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