Rolex Sydney Hobart Website to interface with Google Earth

• NEWS
• 22 Dec, 2005 10:16:00 PM

Rolex Sydney Hobart Website to interface with Google Earth

Building on the world first feed for its Sydney Gold Coast Yacht Race in July this year, for the 2005 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race CYCA has given viewers the option to see the positions of the yachts on a map in the original Yacht Tracker application, or alternatively to view the race in Google Earth, with yacht positions and standings updated every ten minutes.

Building on the world first feed for its Sydney Gold Coast Yacht Race in July this year, for the 2005 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race CYCA has given viewers the option to see the positions of the yachts on a map in the original Yacht Tracker application, or alternatively to view the race in Google Earth, with yacht positions and standings updated every ten minutes.
 
Google Earth is a 3D interface to the planet.  It combines satellite imagery with a model that can be zoomed, spun and tilted.

The application to allow on-line spectators of the race to view the boats superimposed on photographic images was developed by the CYCA's website developer partner, Massive Interactive, in conjunction with the CYCA.

Adrian Wiggins, Producer at Massive Interactive, said "when Google launched the free Google Earth application earlier this year we saw the great potential for showing the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race.  We at Massive hope this brings a new dimension to the race for online spectators."

This new feature of the race website has been in development for the last 4 months in a co-operative endeavour between Massive and the CYCA, and has been released today. 

Getting it working

1. Download and install Google Earth
2. Open the race feed file: cyca_rshyr_yachtrace.kml 

This will install a network connection to the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race site and will show yachts from just before the race start at 1:20 PM AEST on 26 December.