During the broadcasts, the timing a scoring on the left side of the screen often changes while passes are being made before the riders both pass the finish line. It seems that there is only one timing loop on the track and that it is on the finish line. If these passes are being accounted for during the live broadcast and there is only one loop, does that mean someone is making these changes by hand?
Often, I see a rider start shooting down the list from 4th to 19th place when they aren't picked up by the finish line loop. Then a few turns later, they start moving back up toward 4th place on the scoring list.
Is there a loop near the end of the start straight? They somehow have a list of riders a few seconds after the start and then it disappears until the pack hits the finish line.
Is this something FELD needs to invest more money into? More loops would be cheap to install and the software to handle that could be written from scratch by an AI model in seconds...
Tampa had 5 segments, so there where 5 timing loops.
You can view the segment times on the AMA site:
AMA Supercross - Live Timing and Scoring
I'm sure he knows there's more than one...but the OP isn't wrong regarding Tampa. A rider would be 2.135 behind another and it wouldn't update until they crossed the finish.
Was confusing at one point. That was where Webb was pressuring Sexton and the camera pulled away a bit before Sexton went down in the whoops. Score chart then showed that Webb was dropping quickly from second back to outside the top ten. At that point , I thought Webb had fallen but then when they brought the camera back to show it was Sexton went down and not Webb, the score board changed shortly after that. Not sure what caused that?
Ah yes, Tampa seemed particularly terrible. I really wish they would get the timing sorted for good instead of the shit show nearly every week. I believe AMA is in charge of the timing and Feld relays that to the graphic overlay.
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I'm happy that 90% of the time they are showing "time behind leader" instead of dumb things like "brand logo", "fastest lap" or "rider gaps".
But overall, the leaderboard has been horrible this year. Why does the leaderboard usually post the leaders within the first half a lap during heat races, but the LCQ's it seems to take at least a full lap before they start showing the leaders?
I don't understand why they have so many technical problems.
I noticed it too but, it wasn’t that hard to figure out there was something going wonky with the scoring and had to pay closer attention to what was happening on screen. I still get amazed when you can hear the crowd going nuts about something and both the cameras and announcers don’t react or mentioned anything, it’s like nothing happened!
Yeah, Tampa was strange. A few times I thought one of my favorite guys crashed out of the race, only to get re-inserted where he belonged.
Most likely the different timing loops is picking up cross signals. Not much room to play with in SX even if riders stay on track. Riders going outside the track could mean it both misses a loop, but also that it gets picked up by another loop when the rider is actually 30sec away from passing it.
I think Webb crossing the next two loops without Sexton crossing either of them messed it up during that point. I noticed that, too
That's a great point, I didn't think about riders going off track and missing or riding over a loop in the wrong order.
it was haywire all night, I think even the announcers stopped depending on it for a while.
it was just some kind of glitch. Maybe they had a loop in the sand and then it got so deep on top it couldn't read correctly.
Not sure they need to switch providers on timing and scoring, mainly because I don't think there are many other options.
I seem to recall the company that does it bought out most of their competition, including trackside. I think they still do some stuff under the trackside brand but I believe the parent company even does Indianapolis motor speedway and MotoGP.
MYLAPS Sports Timing and Trackside software announce Motocross Partnership - Motocross Press Release - Vital MX
It has been bad the last 2 weeks which seemed to coincide with trying to add a loop just to the whoops. At Houston the time gaps would jump around as they approached the whoops and go back to normal after the whoops like the transponders were picking up a signal from the lane adjacent to the whoops.
The tech is here, just not in moto. Which is understandable as were are a very unique sport in the way we score races. Most event timing software/hardware doesn't operate in the same parameters as supercross and motocross. So our hands are tied to someone to do the upliftings.
Which if you are a software and timing company it's way more lucrative to build software for running, cycling or something of that nature. Not many sports are scored the same way motocross is and supercross for that matter as well. So basically building a system for this type of racing isn't really smart if you are business.
I would estimate it would cost around $300,000 in development and then you would probably need a team year round to keep it updated and installed properly every weekend so through another $100,000 in staffing or so if you're lucky. Not counting the expenses of buying the hardware and up keep.
Time behind the leader is a nice stat, but I would appreciate current lap times more.
Would be Nice if the board can alternate these stats.
I don’t recall this being an issue like this in last years. After the first 5 times I thought someone must have fallen I just started glancing at and waiting for it to correct. No clue why it’s so bad this year so far. This is the type of thing that’s supposed to improve with technology
I thought the rain is what messed up Tampa timing and scoring so bad. It was getting jumbled in the mains a lot.
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