Some people have asked about how the loading/fire effect was done on the Sprint Nascar Monster Burnout site.

Well, it's quite easy. Every vertical line on the loading bar is a emitter of 10,000 pixel particles that travel up in a sinusoidal pattern with a random phase each. All of them leaves a trail on the bitmapData which a colorTransform fades to black, on top of that there is a blurFilter on the bitmapData too. In total, when the loading is at 100%, there are 100 x 10,000 = 1,000,000 pixel particles moving, leaving trails, changing colours and the blur on top. Quite simple and I think it looks good, if you wonder how come the effect also runs fast on a G4, well... think a bit more ;)

UPDATE: Well, this was clearly (or maybe not) a April fools geek-joke. Click here to see real explanation of the effect.