WHAT IS VS?

Virtual Spectator is unique, bringing all the excitement of the World Rally Championship to a faithfully reproduced virtual environment on your PC. With brilliantly modelled and rendered WRC cars running through geographically accurate stages, it's one of the best ways to follow the World Rally Championship. And because it's virtual, you can get footage and insight that you wouldn't even be able to in real life.

It works like this: all the WRC front-runners' cars are fitted with a Global Positioning System (GPS) unit, which logs the cars' location via satellite, some five times every second. VS then takes that information, and uses it to reproduce the rallying action in a virtual environment that you can download and view entirely at your own leisure. It gives you a brilliant inside look at the World Rally Championship that you simply can't get anywhere else.

3D PARALLEL RACING

Because of the nature of the Virtual Spectator environment, Virtual Spectator can do things that aren't possible in the real world. You may have seen Jon Desborough and Robbie Head using VS to compare stage times and driver techniques on Channel 4's World Rally programmes, overlaying cars as if the drivers all started the stage at the same time. Well, now you can compare the drivers for yourself by signing up for Virtual Spectator.

So, say you're a McRae or Burns fan, you can drop the respective drivers' cars into the same stage at the same time, to see who is fastest and why. It's a fabulous way to compare driver techniques, too, as not only is the car's road position logged, but its direction is simulated too, so you can see drivers travelling sideways just like they do in reality. You simply can't get a more up close and personal look at the ins and outs of driving a modern WRC car to the limit.

UPDATED CONTENT AND RESULTS

Not only does Virtual Spectator place the power to fully analyse the World Rally Championship at your fingertips, VS will also bring you a regularly updated editorial content and results service. You'll get World Rally news and photos from all of the events, as the WRC straddles the globe during the course of the 2002 calendar.

Through five continents and fourteen countries, VS will bring you stage schedules, maps and rally details. And for those who want to know more, you'll get opinions on the rally and its protagonists, as well as local weather information. Virtual Spectator gets you closer to that action than has ever before been possible.

FUTURE FEATURES

Virtual Spectator is already a superb way to get closer to the WRC action, but the package is going to get even better. During the course of the 2002 season, additional features will be added. Look out for live, aerial tracking of the WRC cars as they make their way through the challenging stages, which will be followed up by audio- and video-highlights, including in-car footage which you'll be able to overlay onto the external digitised view. Full analysis of the rally's weather conditions and additional commentary will also join team and driver biographies.

The detailing will be improved, too, with the option of a closer look at the surroundings coming later in the season. As the drivers scream past the roadside, trees and hills, you'll actually be able to see these when the option is added later this season. More data will be taken from the cars, too - it'll be possible to see full roll/pitch/yaw data, acceleration and braking characteristics and even, amazingly, the heart-rate of the driver. Eventually, the entire Virtual Spectator experience will be offered completely live.