Follow the departure in real time

In an announcement Wednesday, Microsoft announced its new partnership with Red Bull to showcase Red Bull's freeride mountain bike downhill competition, Rampage, on Internet Explorer 11, an event that just premiered Oct. 11-13, 2013, in the southern Utah desert.

The event was broadcast live throughout the weekend, allowing viewers to vote directly for the winner. With the updated website the highlights of Rampage can be conveyed even more impressively, Microsoft says. The site presents a 3D map of the downhill course, rider biographies, videos of the descents and a behind-the-scenes look at the event. In particular, it uses Web GL to take advantage of a new capability for creating 3D content.

To create a geographically accurate, three-dimensional model of the Rampage terrain, the developers collected 3D geospatial data about the location of the course and its surroundings from the area around Gooseberry Mesa. As a further step, small GPS devices were attached to the mountain bikes to record their exact position during the descent. Finally, the developers used the time stamp of the GPS data and matched it with the exact GPS data from the riders' video footage.

The combination of these three data sources creates a whole new kind of physical awareness of athletics presented at Rampage, Microsoft's announcement said. This should inspire Web developers around the world to rediscover the possibilities of the Web.