Introducing thoroMotion: visualize any horse race

[thorobasePA]

Hello everyone, I'd like to introduce my newest innovation for horse racing; I call it, thoroMotion.

thoroMotion is a multi-dimensional horse racing visualization and handicapping analysis tool. In simple English, it enables you to understand how a race was run using just official chart data. Think of it like a 'Trakus for the rest of us'!

http://www.thorobase.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/full_example.png.jpg

With thoroMotion, you can review a race in it's entirety, watching how each horse ran their race, what moves they made, the race shape etc

For trip handicappers, you can combine your own trip notes with the chart data, and have a completely custom view of a race on hand.

thoroMotion is 100% free and will be open-sourced this week. I'll start showing horse players how they can use it and how to customize it themselves.

There is simply too much to describe, so see thoroMotion in action here (http://j.mp/dy7pV1) and let me know what you think!

Thanks, Robin

[46zilzal]

Howard Sartin borought this out in about 1990

Just a single letter difference as his was Thoromation....Still works very well.

[thorobasePA]

Hi 46zilzal,

Afraid I'm not familiar with "Thoromation" ('thoroMotion' is a portmanteau of 'thorobase' and 'Motion Chart') but I'd like to be able to check it out.

I wouldn't be surprised if similar attempts have been made before but I think my effort has some significant attributes:


It's HTML/Flash based - it can be used on any webpage and will run on practically any operating system and browser.
It's 100% free and will be open-source so anyone can change it if they wish.
You will be able to use it with any data source you wish.
It will easily integrate with user-generated content, like trip notes data, which can be shared with social networks.
It's based on Google-supported technology.


I'd like to know if you have any suggestions about how to improve thoroMotion based on your experience with Dr. Sartin's product.

Thanks!

[46zilzal]

here is a recently posted stop action example of Thoromation.

[thorobasePA]

That looks, well, dated and it looks like that was posted on another forum (paceandcap) that I'm not a member of so that's why I wouldn't have seen it.

There's no reason why thoroMotion couldn't do exactly what "Thoromation" does - like I said, it will be open-sourced so if it takes anyone's fancy they can make thoroMotion into whatever they please.

That also looks like Windows/MSDOS executable. Every part of thoroMotion is built using web-enabled APIs, from the data source that supplies the visualization, to the chart itself, that are platform agnostic. You can pretty much do anything you want.

Thanks for bringing it to my attention though.

[Charli125]

I won't have time to mess around with it much until tomorrow, but at first glance, I think it looks very cool.

[46zilzal]

That looks, well, dated and it looks like that was posted on another forum (paceandcap) that I'm not a member of so that's why I wouldn't have seen it.


Think I DID SAY it was out in 1990 and you can access that website anytime ( you have to register and be a clone to post however)...dissenting opinions not allowed.. ALL that is known, according to their point of view, is written in the Follow Up magazine and will forever be the ONLY truth in the world...

EVEN THOUGH many others have solid evidence as to what they spout as dogma is full of hooey.

[Charlie D]

tb

:cool: nice little toy you've made there :)

[onefast99]

Pretty cool I did notice how dollar bill went from 5/2 to 2/1 around the far turn.

[Tom]

Nifty program.....looks like it might be useful.
I will give it a good try out.

Please.....stop 46 from yet another thread hijack! (and unwarrented personal attacks)

[Deepsix]

Not sure just how I'd use this visualiztion? Its based on the results charts AND if I want that info I can simply review the race video. Now.... build the program that can compile the last three races of each entrant (for example) and then based on their prior performance, adjusted for weight, bad trip, etc. , PROJECT how the future race might unfold~ well, that might be fun to play with. It just seems, due to my lack of imagination, that replays of the actual races has the advantage over this product.

[Stillriledup]

Pretty cool I did notice how dollar bill went from 5/2 to 2/1 around the far turn.
:lol:

[thorobasePA]

Thanks for your comment Deepsix!

Not sure just how I'd use this visualization? Its based on the results charts AND if I want that info I can simply review the race video.
Absolutely, the race video will always be superior for race reviews. However, I've found videos in horse racing tend to be hard to come by for the average racing fan and you can't use them wherever and however you want to.

With thoroMotion, you can do whatever you want. Imagine having your own website that works off your racing database. When you click on a horse you get a web page with 10 thoroMotions representing the horse's last 10 runs. Within a couple of minutes you can get a pretty good idea of a horse's running style, without having to wait for videos to load or stream.

Or imagine a web page with the thoroMotions of all that day's results. Want to know if there was a track bias? Play all the visualizations at once and see if speed on the lead was holding up etc.

And this is just the basic stuff, you can alter the visualization to do whatever you want because it's all based on open technology. I'll be showing some examples of programming 101 with thoroMotion and the thorobase API.

Now.... build the program that can compile the last three races of each entrant (for example) and then based on their prior performance, adjusted for weight, bad trip, etc. , PROJECT how the future race might unfold~ well, that might be fun to play with. It just seems, due to my lack of imagination, that replays of the actual races has the advantage over this product.
But you see, you don't have a lack of imagination! thoroMotion can do exactly what you say - the data that it uses just has to be in a particular format; what that data represents is up to you! It can be an previously run race, or it can be a projection! It's totally configurable and because it's open-source who knows what innovations others will come up with.

How about advanced algorithms? Imagine reviewing the video a previously run race on TV with blazing fractions where the leader still holds on to win. Imagine being able, with a simple search command, to return visualizations for all other races, at that track and with those race conditions, that had similar race shapes.

Then imagine being able, with one click, to "watch" all the next-time-out performances of all the horses that closed off the pace those days, on a single webpage, to see how often a big performance was coming. Imagine doing this from a mobile device while at the track!

[GameTheory]

Thorobase,

You've done some great work on several fronts in a short period of time. We need more people like you. THANK YOU.

[Vinnie]

ThorobasePA:

WOW!! Your product appears extremely innovative in its content. Very Cool stuff indeed. Thanks for sharing... :)

[riskman]

Thanks for sharing this imaginative piece work on the PA forum. I will certainly be playing with this to determine where it ill be most useful for me.

Let us know when you create thoromotion that will accurately predict the final result before "and they're off " :)

Regards

[thorobasePA]

@GameTheory, @Vinnie, @riskman Thanks very much for your kind comments.

I'm also looking for feedback and ideas about what people would like me to demonstrate with thoroMotion, so if anyone here has some idea, no matter how crazy, please say it and I'll get on it.

[DeanT]

have you done any DD with Bris data files for projected races Robin? eg running races based on running styles, pace figs and late figs bris provides?

Nice job btw! Cool stuff.

[thorobasePA]

have you done any DD with Bris data files for projected races Robin? eg running races based on running styles, pace figs and late figs bris provides?

Nice job btw! Cool stuff.

I'm sorry I don't know what you mean by "DD"?

My work on thoroMotion actually spawned two projects: thoroMotion charts themselves, plus a framework that would standardize horse racing data. I've called this framework, thoroData, and built an interface around it to access that data (the thoroData API).

thoroMotion itself has an API (it's a wrapper around Motion Chart from the Google Visualization API) so everything together I call the thorobase API.

Right now, thoroMotion is in its nascent stage, and should be considered by much an "alpha" release (very unstable) as it's likely to change as it matures.

So, to answer your question in a roundabout manner, thoroMotion can be configured to do whatever you want it to do. If you want it to incorporate projections, or BRIS pace figs, or running styles, or whatever, it can be modified to handle it. The only limit is your imagination - within limits :)

Ideas of how to use thoroMotion are great, and are exactly the responses I'm looking for. I'm putting the code up on GitHub this week and will start basic tutorials of how to use it soon. It's JavaScript, which is not my #1 language, so I've a few design considerations to clear up first.

Also realize that because it just needs chart data to work from, it can visualize any race and that could include Man O' War's races, Secretariats, Colin's etc. I could team up with that DRF archiving project in Kentucky to do that. Just a thought.

[DeanT]

Sorry Robin, in work mode today. DD is due dilgence and I should say "beta testing" to a programmer. :)

I am daft with this, but it sure would be cool to see some of the programs out there who give pace, speed and alternative ratings and if they somehow could run a race graphically with those figs.

It is pretty cool what you have done and I would love to see some sharpies work with it. It would be so cool to have a software challenge or something where the Derby is run with various programs and see who comes closest to reality.

Anyhow, great work and I wish you the best with the project.

[thorobasePA]

Gotcha, yeah I had considered bringing in some testers but I only do this in my spare time and I just wanted to get it out there ("Ship It!") to gauge the racing community's reaction.

Right now I've only built one implementation of the thoroData API, to parse BRIS Import Chart result data files. Obviously if you are a handicapper who uses these, you can start benefitting from this straightaway.

I think I'll do a demo of building a projection thoroMotion soon - seems quite a few people are interested in this.

A Derby competition is not a bad idea at all. Actually the very first thoroMotion I built (manually inputting the chart data!) was just after the 2009 Kentucky Derby with all 20 runners. Then I added in the data for "width-from-the-rail" for each horse, at each point-of-call. Being able to review the race in whatever manner I wished was great, and (apologizing in advance for this horrible 'redboard') it did allow me see the significant effort Summer Bird put in in that race, far better than the chart implied. I bet SB to win the Belmont later in June.

Actually that story reminds me of another funny anecdote. I watched the KY09 Derby video over and over again to input the "Wide" data, I remember seeing that one horse, Hold Me Back, just didn't seem to be matching up on the video and the chart/thoroMotion, but I put it down to my inexperience with US racing. A few months later, Steve Haskin wrote about noticing it too and Equibase had to revise the chart. I felt both silly and validated :)

Thanks for you kind words Dean.

[togatrigger]

How do you know how wide the horse went? Is that in the Import Charts Files? What are the columns for that chart? I've looked over Brisnets website without seeing any schema diagrams for databases or just column labels. Thanks.

[thorobasePA]

How do you know how wide the horse went? Is that in the Import Charts Files? What are the columns for that chart? I've looked over Brisnets website without seeing any schema diagrams for databases or just column labels. Thanks.

Excellent question togatrigger.

The data for the how wide the horses went I entered manually, it's not in the Import Charts Files. The API allows you to combine user-generated data with the official chart data, as demonstrated on thorobase.com

I'm investigating using a hosted platform that, when a configuration option (e.g. "find wide data") is selected, will look for a user generated data applicable for this race. If it finds it, it will combine it with the chart data you have supplied. You can also modify the incoming data if you disagree with parts of it. I was all set to use Google's Fusion Tables API with thoroMotion until I discovered it requires authentication with Google Servers (i.e. you would need a Google Account), which is a complex issue plus I don't want to require thoroMotion to be bound to a particular company's user account systems.

I'm thinking maybe I should host these data files on thorobase.com itself.

If you don't supply "wide" data, it defaults to use the PP so the horses basically run in lanes (like the 100m in athletics).

[Partsnut]

Robin, You did an excellent job on your new open source software.
It's a great graphical representation. I'm sure it's going to be even better in the future. :)
Please keep me updated.

[togatrigger]

One last question on the interpretation of the application,

When I set the side to "Wide" and base to "Time", I expected to see, essentially, the race if the track were stretched straight. This is not the case. I assume the time data is set to the data in the charts for each horse and not modified by lengths back.

Great work!

[thorobasePA]

Thanks Partsnut! (I noticed you launched a new blog recently too).

The best ways to keep up with the latest on thoroMotion (http://www.thorobase.com/2010/02/22/thoromotion/) and thorobase are:


Subscribe to the mailing list at www.thorobase.com (http://www.thorobase.com) - sign up with the form on the right

Subscribe to the RSS feed (http://feeds.feedburner.com/thorobase) for use with a feed reader/aggregator (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aggregator).
Become a fan of the thorobase Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/thorobase/297900563502).
Follow @thorobase on Twitter (https://twitter.com/thorobase).
Stick around PaceAdvantage.com! I like this racing forum the most, I think I may announce my work almost exclusively here.

[thorobasePA]

One last question on the interpretation of the application,

When I set the side to "Wide" and base to "Time", I expected to see, essentially, the race if the track were stretched straight. This is not the case. I assume the time data is set to the data in the charts for each horse and not modified by lengths back.

Great work!

This is true, "Time" is not really time, it's distance travelled by the race leader.

The reason for this is that thoroMotion uses Google's Motion Chart and it requires, to allow the playback functionality, a column representing defined types of dates or times. The lowest time granularity it allows to is "hours:minutes:seconds" but I think that doesn't really work for judging how far a race has progressed, especially since the playback's maximum run time is 40 seconds.

So what I use is "years" to simulate furlongs traveled by the race leader, but there is a long standing problem with years and computer dates so the earliest year I can use is 1901 (this goes back to the Y2K scare) not 0 (zero) to indicate the start of the race. Hence the choice to use a higher value (10000) with the right-most digit representing the furlong.

Anyway, distance combined with Lengths Back gets you the race shape. What you are describing I have built too and in fact, once I release the source code, you can easily modify thoroMotion to do exactly this.

I've even once built a version that made the dots run around the race area anti-clockwise to simulate the race (like viewing the track from a blimp above the track). But it turned out not to be a great visualization as having them all bunched together takes away a lot of the small moves forwards and back horses make during the race.

[Partsnut]

thorobasePA: Thanks Partsnut! (I noticed you launched a new blog recently too).

Robin, yes I have and it's all about horse racing.
Good luck with your new project.

[thorobasePA]

Hello again everyone! I've just updated thorobase.com (http://www.thorobase.com/2010/02/25/thoromotion-more) with more details about thoroMotion.

I've also created a video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHCQ9pgNT6w) (with captions of course) where I give a demonstration of thoroMotion and outline its main features. For those who found the original post a little confusing or long, this hopefully will help you.

I show how you can use the line chart view to instantly identify race shapes. I also demonstrate zooming in and out of the race area to focus on particular horses, and I touch on switching the axes to use a logarithmic scale.

As a bonus (and a thank you) to all you early readers and supporters of thorobase, I'm displaying the thoroMotions for all the final-day races at the 2009 Breeders' Cup. These just use the raw chart data, so no "Wide" data - the horses just run in lanes according to their PP.

Still it's fun to watch Presious Passion race way out in front in the Turf and almost hold on, and especially seeing Zenyatta scythe through the BC Classic field.

The BC09 thoroMotions will only be up for a couple of days so head over to thorobase (http://www.thorobase.com/2010/02/25/thoromotion-more) and take a look!

[LottaKash]

Hey Thor, a nifty little thing you've got there.....Nice of you to contribute to the forum....If anything, at least it looks like a lotta fun....Thx...Looking forward to your next iteration.,..:ThmbUp: :ThmbUp: :ThmbUp:

[Rferguson]

This looked like it might be something interesting but nothing in over week. is it fizzling out. are there plans to use this as a handicapping tool is so how what where and when?
Ron F

[thorobasePA]

This looked like it might be something interesting but nothing in over week. is it fizzling out. are there plans to use this as a handicapping tool is so how what where and when?
Ron F

Hello Ron, thanks for your feedback.

Yes unfortunately I haven't been able to spend much time this week on open-sourcing and designing tutorials for thoroMotion. There are a few reasons for this:


thorobase is all work I do in my spare time; this week I had significant commitments to both my employer and family.
After building another implementation of a data source provider parser, I wasn't quite happy with the design of the thorobase API and started work to refactor it to something more flexible.
While I could release the code as-is, I am aware that many horseplayers are not that comfortable with modifying software, so I want to make it as easy as possible for people to use it; this requires optimizations.
I investigated if any smartphones currently support thoroMotion; the answer is no (well, not yet). Flash 10.1 is due to be rolled out to certain phones in Q2 2010.
I investigated PDF text extraction code.


As for "plans" - well there aren't any. I want to get away from the traditional horseracing community's view of tools as "what does this let me do?" to "what do I actually want to do with this?". I want to make these tools as modifiable and customizable as possible.

I don't want to start "road-mapping" because I want to receive feedback from customers (you guys) about what you want.

So tell me!

[thorobasePA]

Just want to let everyone (who is interested) know that I'll be releasing the source code for thoroMotion towards the end of this week. I'll include some basic tutorials and walk-throughs afterwards too.

I changed the code to be simpler, as well as being easier to modify the thoroMotions, plus I finally arrived at what I believe to be an optimal and safe solution about how to incorporate community-generated data not included in race charts.

Sorry about the delay; hopefully I can make up any disappointment with some of the new ideas I'm working on.

[thorobasePA]

The code is now on github.com and thoroMotion tutorials will be coming soon. I've posted the details on the new thorobase API thread (http://j.mp/cjGaU2)