TeraVolt enhances Red Bull Erzbergrodeo with data measurement technology and live AR and VR graphics

Five hundred motocross riders, 30km of track, four hours of racing and only 17 riders at the finish line. The Red Bull Erzbergrodeo in Erzberg, Austria, is the toughest motocross race in the world. The riders must pass 27 checkpoints in an active iron ore mine, guaranteeing an action-packed race.

For this year’s race, TeraVolt, in co-operation with its long-term partner Red Bull Mediahouse,  provided viewers with a visually enhanced race experience in front of the various screens tanks to a variety of digital enhancements.

During the long race, it is often unclear at which point a driver has caught up or lost positions. Where were there key points? Where was the race decided? TeraVolt’s task in developing the technical and editorial workflow was to determine drivers during the race. Besides the positions, it should also be possible to quantify the performances based on tracking data and thus determine the driving skills on the track. The data had to be integrated into the workflows of the television broadcast and aggregated and visualised for editorial storytelling in an appealing and comprehensible way.

A particular challenge was to determine the drivers’ positions live and process them in real time and make them visible. The local conditions make this almost impossible, as the network coverage is poor because of the large and mountainous area. In addition, the route is not finalised until a few hours before the race, and the athletes sometimes travel at very high speeds in the terrain.

For these challenges, the TeraVolt team, in collaboration with various technical service providers, identified and implemented a technology for data measurement and connected it to the data interface used. The main task was to reduce the latency as much as possible. In parallel, the ideation and the creation for the visualisations during the pre-show and live show of the TV broadcast took place.

For this purpose, augmented reality and virtual reality TV graphics were developed to build excitement, particularly among young target groups. Besides the visualisation of the performance data, great importance was attached to the visualisation of track highlights and key points to bring the challenges closer to all viewers and to bring clarity and transparency to the racing action.

In the Red Bull TV app, all information could also be experienced individually via an independent augmented reality mode. Live generated and KPI aggregated data from Erzbergrodeo 2023 was so brought to life.

This innovative approachcallowed viewers worldwide to experience motocross action in a whole new way.