Aussie-built Doarama finds home in X Alps classic

Australian software that lets extreme sports enthusiasts share glory has found a home in a rugged Swiss Alps event.

Data61s Doarama plays back extreme sports events in real time, matching video footage with a player's location in virtual terrain

Australian software that lets extreme sports enthusiasts share moments of glory has found a home in a rugged Swiss Alps event.

Red Bull, known for its energy drink and sporting challenges, is using Australian digital research body Data61’s Doarama software to share a 1000 kilometre extreme sports race held through the Swiss Alps.

Some 32 participants walked and paraglided from Salzburg to Monaco in what Red Bull said was the “world’s toughest adventure race”, its X Alps classic.

Data61s Doarama

For Data61, the new amalgam of National ICT Australia and CSIRO’s Digital Productivity business unit, the partnership with Red Bull may be the start of Doarama gaining momentum as an event social media tool.

While Doarama is popular among enthusiasts, it’s yet to be successfully commercialised.

Anyone who walks, runs, hikes, skis, glides, rock climbs, flies a drone or paraglides can use Doarama’s GPS track visualisations to graphically depict their actions on social media posts and share in emails.

Data61s Doarama

Before they start their journey, users load a smartphone app that constantly records GPS position during their event. Afterwards, they upload the GPS file and any video taken with action cameras such as a GoPro to the doarama.com website.

Doarama creates a trail showing the route of the action using Microsoft’s Bing maps. In a competition situation, multiple trails can be shown together.

The event can be replayed with participants moving along their trail in virtual terrain in synchronisation with the action video playing in a window beside it. The virtualisation offers a visual content to the action.

Data61s Doarama

Doarama is free to use, and Data61 says some 1000 people use the site daily. Users can upload their “tracks” to the website and share their action. Currently the site features uploaded tracks from countries such as Turkey, Iceland, Macedonia, Austria, Italy, Portugal, France and Spain.

A Data61 spokeperson said the organisation hoped its partnership with Red Bull was the start of the software being adopted commercially and that it could find a niche among extreme sportspeople, event organisers, action cam makers and social networks.

Red Bull action with Doarama can be viewed at http://redbullxalps.com.