

Inside Larry Ellison’s Insane Plan to Turn America’s Cup Into a TV Spectacle - lnguyen
http://www.wired.com/playbook/2012/08/ff_americascup_ellison/all/

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lancewiggs
The sailing in the Olympics used much of the technology mentioned, including
painting virtual lines on the water. The article feels overwrought, but the
racing will be amazing. The new big Team NZ yacht is just near me here in
Auckland, and feels like a tethered wild beast ready to be unleashed. Watch
out for the rise of fixed wing sails, possibly transforming the yachting
industry.

~~~
Gibbon
I'm also in Auckland.

We went down to the wharf to see it the day it was launched.

Staggering size...

It's a catamaran with a 13m (42.7 ft.) tall solid wing and is expected to be
able to hit 50 knots (90+ km/h).

They have to anchor it to a tonne and a half of ballast just to keep it from
taking off on it's own.

~~~
cobrien
Hey Gibbon -- I'm not sure what catamaran you were looking at, but the
America's Cup boats are actually even LARGER than that ...

The AC45 (the boat being used in current cup events while the larger AC72's
are being designed and built) uses a 21.5m (71ft) wing ... and the boats that
will be used in the actual Cup (the AC72) are even larger beasts -- a wing 40m
(131ft) tall [1].

The design of and technology going into these AC class boats is fascinating.
It's been a lot of fun watching the AC45's race and the AC72's will be quite a
sight out on the water once they begin pushing 'em to their limits.

[1] [http://www.cupinfo.com/en/americas-cup-2013-boats-
ac72-ac45....](http://www.cupinfo.com/en/americas-cup-2013-boats-
ac72-ac45.php)

~~~
Gibbon
Yeah I got the numbers from a local newspaper article.

It was definitely the AC72 that we went to see.. it was launched in July and
completely towered over all the over yachts and surrounding buildings.

The numbers, I guess, are from the AC45 that was launched months ago. Looks
like the numbers weren't accurate, but that's the NZ Herald for you.

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tedunangst
_It takes an active imagination to see sailing as a spectator sport_

Don't let that stop you from writing 5000 words about it. This reeks of "pick
someone to hate, find a reason to hate them, write it up".

~~~
vidarh
That's not the tone I get from the article at all. It starts that way to play
up the difficulty of what he's trying to achieve and set it up so that the
people it covers later seems even more gutsy and/or amazing for trying and/or
achieving the goal.

In this case, the hero and focus of the article is not Ellison, but Stan
Honey, the guy behind the new software system, and Ellison is just the force
of nature that set the stage.

A lot of Wired features are written that way and there's very rarely any venom
in it.

In this case even Ellison is painted relatively sympathetically, as the
eccentric billionaire trying to do something slightly crazy but that might yet
have a chance of success against really tough odds. It describes some problems
he's run into, but it also cites people who see what he's done as positive.

~~~
carmen
NBC aired a race from Newport a month ago, and a similar round of articles
circulated. does anybody remember all the 3D racecourses and SGI logos
everywhere in 1992 america's cup? or all the wild Quokka webcoverage of the
95-98 stuff?

------
marquis
Yachting is a fascinating sport: it's extremely technical as well as
exhilarating and team-building. I've had the pleasure of being in the tech
area during some races where the GPS equipment is managed, stressful stuff! If
you're near a body of water and have some time to take some sailing lessons
before the cup next year, I guarantee you'll get hooked on many levels (it's
also great exercise).

------
aaronbrethorst

        Part of the problem with hockey on TV is that flying pucks
        move so quickly they are almost invisible to the at-home
        viewer. Honey proposed digitally inserting a blue glow
        around the puck that would lengthen into a contrail whenever
        it was moving faster than the eye could see.
    

Funny, the first place I ever read about this was in Wired in the mid-90s. I
think they called it "pucktrax." There's virtually no mention of it online
anymore, except for a handful of snarky forum posts deriding Fox's use of a
"gaudy blue flame."

see: <http://www.tribalwar.com/forums/archive/t-606021-p-37.html>, among other
places.

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Groxx
Doing it for (American) football made it _much_ easier for me to follow along.
I suspect the same will be true for yachting. Personally, I love it.

------
sirribbett
I just found out that the monohulls are gone... I doubt I will watch any of
the next America's Cup races.... The catamarans never will have the class and
beauty of the real sailboats! Just like in skiing..... I'd rather watch a
downhill than a half-pipe! The America's Cup is about sailing.... Bring back
the sailboats... Please!

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jfb
I saw some of this at the ballpark this afternoon. It was pretty nifty, and
the boats are unbelievable. Helped that it was gorgeous out.

------
nirvana
This is great news, as sailing is a wonderful sport, and the TV coverage of it
in the past has often been hard to find, quite inconsistent and very poorly
done.

I don't know why WIRED is increasingly becoming such a snotty, hostile and
tabloid publication. I guess it's cool to hate on Ellison for putting money
into a wonderful sport.

While we can't afford these huge multi-million dollar boats, we can have much
of the same excitement in our own lives racing $20,000-$30,000 boats. And you
don't even need a boat-- since crews tend to be 5-7 people owners are often
looking for crew!

Good coverage of the Americas Cup will hopefully help bring more people into
the sport of racing.

~~~
bofussing
I am sure the legions of budding professional sailors hope that the America's
Cup series will be a commercial success too. The line-up of sailors in the
current series is literally a who's who of elite sailors, if they cannot do
well out of this series the prospects are not bright for those further down
the food chain.

------
suyash
Can't wait, best time to be in SF and work for Oracle!

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nikcub
> The software for the NFL’s virtual yellow first-down line has been rewritten
> so that it can paint course boundaries on the surface of the water.

Sounds like bad software design. Should have written one generic program that
can paint lines and expose an interface to it

