With my 'black' badge firmly pinned to my lapel, I made my way directly to the Hornby stand on arriving at ExCeL. I was late after being delayed for hours on the DLR train. Those that know it will understand. If London gets 2 inches of snow, the whole place grinds to a halt. It took me over 2 hours to from Shepherd's Bush to the Docklands in the icy slush. All this for some little toy cars...
	The Scalextric Sportworld stand Click on the images to enlarge.	The large Scalextric stands in the forefront of Hornby's stand were impressive. The trains were at the back giving me the impression that the cars were taking a leading role. I immediately saw the Sport Digital System and the MotoGP bikes, but was drawn first to the Scalextric Sportworld demo. Michael Lawson, the Sportworld software developer was at his laptop racing on the system. Adrian Norman, Scalextric Public Relations Manager was actively making sure that everything was in place for the show and that the demonstrators had their systems running correctly. I also spoke to Dr Tim Moore who was responsible for the electronics within the system. Michael Walters, Scalextric Products Development Manager also explained some of the business aspects of the new product line to me. Michael Lawson was available and I was fortunate to get a lengthily demonstration of the Scalextric Sportworld system. This system is still in development and will be ready in the Autumn of 2004 (Christmas at the latest).
The Sportsworld Base unit and Digital hand controller	The system comprises of normal Scalextric Sport track, normal Scalextric analog cars with no modifications, a Base unit that has optical sensors in a half-straight track piece, digital hand controllers and one or more special passive 'current break' track pieces that are inserted around the track. These special pieces are simply breaks in the track and are used to help the Base unit determine the exact position of the car on the track. When the car is in between the base unit and the break piece, there is another proprietary system at work to determine the position of the car. The position is then shown on the computer monitors. This technology is highly secret, but I'm sure we'll either figure it out or hear about it soon. The Base unit can be used attached to a computer, but can be used by itself too. So for those that don't have a computer by the track, the race profiles can be loaded into the base unit via a USB connection and then taken back to the track to use independently. The first aspect of the Sportworld system that is made known to the public is it's Internet connectivity and ability to connect to other tracks enabling virtual races around the world. This is a cool feature, but actually is something that many users might never use. The rest of the package is so feature rich that some people might be happy enough to remain unconnected. I'll come to this later.	Michael Lawson
Track Design	Track building. What RMS lacked before, is made up for in this new system, developed with the Intel/Macromedia Shockwave 3D graphics engine allowing very fast and superior building procedures. Remember that RMS was developed in Visual Basic so this platform allows for more versatility and is visually much more interesting. It enables you to create a 2 to 8 lane racetrack from your inventory of pieces creating shopping lists of needed pieces as it goes. It includes tools and functions such as elevation, video camera position, track join, scenery, spectators and buildings (Think big - I saw the Monaco Casino). The track is built on a flat grid, but soon is dropped into a full landscape. Backdrops of City, countryside or desert environment are available and the terrain under the track takes on the form of the environment. The landscape can be molded, raised and lowered, can be brought up to trackside level and can have cuttings and banks added The mechanical properties of each track piece is built into the system so it knows how it will flex and bend. Building the track is intuitive and easy. One can add, replace and insert track pieces anywhere. If you add a Classic piece to a Sport track section, the system will automatically insert a conversion piece for you. You can build different sections at the same time on the building landscape allowing you to plan ahead. Track can be pulled up to form bridges and elevated sections with a feature that even has the possibility of creating spiral ramps. These changes in level follow the physical properties of the track too, preventing you from making errors.	Demo track #1
Pit Garage Pit Lane Tuning tips	Demo track #2 to demo the connectivity aspect. Scalextric had these two identical tracks set up on either side of a partition.	Video. The cameras that you set-up in design mode (ground TV crew, camera cranes, camera towers) will determine what your race video footage will look like because every track you design becomes part of the video of the race. You have full control on all aspects of the video. The footage is shown from the camera points and from the in-car camera from each lane and for each car. This is similar to what you saw in RMS for the supplied tracks, but for you own custom track. Very cool. Video is shown as the race is run and can be recalled for viewing after the race. Crashes are slightly over dramatized in the video sequences, but it adds to the fun. Track. The layouts that you use must be the same if you are going to race over the Internet. You can have a 2, 4, 6 or 8 lane track. both racers must have an identical circuit. If you want to race on a four lane circuit, you must both have the same four lane circuit selected within the software. That is not to say that if you only wanted to race on lane 2 of that circuit that you couldn't build just the first lane pair to physically race on. Pit Garage. We all love to catalogue our cars and this system allows us to do that with a couple of cool features. You have a 3D view of your cars (Scalextric of course and over 150 to start with). Any car can be added to the car catalogue and that includes those from other manufacturers. Pictures of those cars can be grabbed into the system. For 3D coverage the cars will be represented by "proxy" cars which will have a user selected colour and the users defined name and number on the side. The Pit garage also includes virtual car tuning and full details on all mods that you have carried out on the car - allowing you to keep track of the performance and their effects on the track times. Track times are also saved with the car so you can see at a glance which car in your garage is fastest for a particular circuit. The Pit Garage has built in tuning tips - Adrian's worldly knowledge I suppose has gone into this giving tips and tricks on getting your cars to perform at their optimum.
Race Briefing Qualifying Race Championship	Race management. You can preview the circuit that you have built, set the conditions such as weather, pit stops, false start, crash and burn and yellow flag settings. Weather affects the control of the car, adding 'slippery' conditions at random stages of the race (your controller becomes less efficient). Crash and burn cuts the current to your track when you crash. Yellow flag automatically sets the speed of other cars to 50% in the event of a crash until the situation is fixed. Driving profiles and strategies. You can set how you would like to race. Determine how much fuel you would like to take on board (playoff between weight, speed and staying time). Tyre strategy and throttle profiles where you can pre set your curves for acceleration and braking. Remember that the hand controllers are digital so what used to be achieved by swapping out resistors is now controlled by the machine and you have full control on that even the ability to change a throttle profile during the race with one of the two extra buttons on the  controller (the other upper button is for immediate braking). You save strategies for each driver and are able to call up stats of previous race data. Qualifying. This lets racers race flying laps to determine pole position. During a qualifying session high visibility text keeps you updated on how you’re doing on the track, with lap times for the current lap, your fastest lap and the current pole position time. After each session the current qualifying order is updated ready for transfer to the grid. Racing. Race Modes: Choose from Grand Prix, NASCAR, Endurance, Rally, Rally Stage, Drag, Arcade and Pursuit modes. You have your countdown and then you're off. The position of the cars is emulated on the computer screen and if you have a large screen for the spectators, all the better. The coverage of the race is shown via the cameras that you set up at the start or the in-car cams. The views can be rotated or pre-selected or randomly chosen. Generally they follow the cars similar to what you see on a televised race. The timing of the race is done by optical sensors and is to 1/1000th of a second. So clubs will find this piece of kit very useful. That's an interesting point - this software and kit will fit in very nicely in a club with track up to 8 lanes. I see nothing stopping you using it with a routed track or a track of another brand. For racing, there is a tournament with qualifying and heats and then once information is saved after the race it is combined with other race info to make up championships. Extra features like Pit crew animation enhance the pit stops and gaming pleasure. You can force the pit stops and enable the drivers to watch the cars get faster as the fuel load gets lighter. You can set an Easy Drive option that regulates the car speed depending on the drivers ability. If you have a computer that struggles to render the 3D images, you can turn off the 3D view and have a simplified 2D view. You can also select to only view the cars and the track and leave the scenery out to speed things up. This would increase the screen refresh rate and have less flicker and jerky car movement.	The Sportworld Base Unit and digital hand controller. Upper thumb button for braking, lower button for selecting throttle profiles.
Raceworld	Virtual racing. You can race against other drivers. Either someone on your own track or someone on the same layout design, but somewhere else where both of you are connected to the Internet. When you connect your system to the Internet, you log on to a central server and then once the race has been organized and initiated, the interaction becomes peer to peer to save bandwidth and increase speed. On can host a match, participate in one or even just be a spectator to a race hosted elsewhere. I'm sure this will open up a market for people to host events and races. SlotForum could have an annual (by invitation) championship with a specially designed track, sponsorship and drivers all racing for a trophy and big prize at the end of the season. When you are alone, you can also race against a virtual car by yourself that appears on the screen next to yours. Also, like the Challenger, you can have the system control another physical car on the track next to yours. This car can be any car in your collection. It gets better, because this extra car could be you (in a previous race). You save your best time and allocate it to a car, you then race against it on the next lane. This is great as you can only get better by doing this.
Telemetry	Telemetry. Yep, you've seen it on F1 and you've wished to have it too. Now you've got it. Full car  telemetry is saved an enables you to graphically monitor your progress around the track. you can see where you used the throttle and brake, you can see car speed and acceleration against it's position on the track and in the time of the race. You use this info to improve your time and to modify the car and throttle profiles accordingly.
	Compatibility. This system is not designed to be used with Scalextric Digital right now. The two systems are independent although they share the same race management software. Digital 'chipped' cars will not work on the Sportworld track. The hand controllers are the same though and the box will look the same as the Digital Pro version. As I said, it works with existing Sport and Classic track and of course with all your existing cars. It would be great if one could combine all this new technology into one system, but that is most likely in a not too distant future. Sooner or later a rationalization of the market will harmonize car production. The market won't allow for 'Betamax' Fly cars and 'VHS' Scalextric.
	Doug Teggin  29th January 2004

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