Monday, February 9, 2015
Captain Risky
A short post this week - in fact no post at all. Just enjoy this Australian ad spot for an insurance company...
Monday, February 2, 2015
Check your lights
As usual at this time of year, the number of 'one eyed monsters' is clear for all to see : people who have one headlight out and thus try driving with the remaining headlight on full beam to try to compensate. It's irresponsible, it's not very courteous to other drivers, and it costs about $10 and 10 minutes of your time to fix. So go and get a replacement bulb - in fact get two and replace both at the same time - and swap out your headlight bulbs. Just make sure not to touch the glass part of the bulb or you'll very quickly have it blow again.
Caveat: if you have HID lights and one of those suckers is out, make sure to remortgage the house before visiting your dealership to get it replaced.
Caveat: if you have HID lights and one of those suckers is out, make sure to remortgage the house before visiting your dealership to get it replaced.
Monday, January 26, 2015
Racing game camera views
I've recently been putting a lot of time into Forza Horizon 2 on my Xbox One. And by a "lot" of time I mean it's quite likely I've spent more time driving cars in the game in the last couple of weeks than I have spent time driving my real car in the real world.
The game itself is great - like the original Forza Horizon but with most of the annoyances taken out. But it reminded me of something that I've never quite understood : the above-and-behind camera view. I'm not sure why the game designers continue to put this view into the games. It's pointless, it's not realistic, and it makes the game much, much harder to play. The in-car or on-hood views are by far the easiest camera views to use, and both are a huge improvement on the helicopter-chasing-my-car idea.
It comes down to how you experience the world. In your own life, you don't see yourself in the 3rd-person - you see out of your eyes - 1st-person point of view. This means that when a game presents you with a 3rd-person point of view, it's unnatural and awkward. I said above I don't understand why the game designers do this - I suppose I do really - it's to let you see the car you're driving in all it's detail. Looks nice, but it's counterintuitive.
There's another videogame series that suffers the same problem - Metal Gear Solid. It's a shooting game (like) but the camera is above and behind the player (not like) which makes aiming the gun and hitting anything with any accuracy completely impossible.
If you enjoy driving/racing games, surely the point is to have fun and try to hone your skills? If you have a camera that presents an unrealistic fish-eye view of the world from behind you, you can't place the car properly on the road and you spend most of the time fighting the awkward camera view.
Apparently though I know nothing about this because it seems the best competition and career racing gamers all use the above-and-behind camera views, which makes me wonder how much faster they'd be if they used the 1st-person view instead? Personally, on a circuit race somewhere like Catalunya, my lap times are a good 1.5 to 2 seconds quicker when using the correct camera view.
The game itself is great - like the original Forza Horizon but with most of the annoyances taken out. But it reminded me of something that I've never quite understood : the above-and-behind camera view. I'm not sure why the game designers continue to put this view into the games. It's pointless, it's not realistic, and it makes the game much, much harder to play. The in-car or on-hood views are by far the easiest camera views to use, and both are a huge improvement on the helicopter-chasing-my-car idea.
It comes down to how you experience the world. In your own life, you don't see yourself in the 3rd-person - you see out of your eyes - 1st-person point of view. This means that when a game presents you with a 3rd-person point of view, it's unnatural and awkward. I said above I don't understand why the game designers do this - I suppose I do really - it's to let you see the car you're driving in all it's detail. Looks nice, but it's counterintuitive.
There's another videogame series that suffers the same problem - Metal Gear Solid. It's a shooting game (like) but the camera is above and behind the player (not like) which makes aiming the gun and hitting anything with any accuracy completely impossible.
If you enjoy driving/racing games, surely the point is to have fun and try to hone your skills? If you have a camera that presents an unrealistic fish-eye view of the world from behind you, you can't place the car properly on the road and you spend most of the time fighting the awkward camera view.
Apparently though I know nothing about this because it seems the best competition and career racing gamers all use the above-and-behind camera views, which makes me wonder how much faster they'd be if they used the 1st-person view instead? Personally, on a circuit race somewhere like Catalunya, my lap times are a good 1.5 to 2 seconds quicker when using the correct camera view.
Monday, January 19, 2015
Wash the unseen parts of your car
If you're in the northern hemisphere, it's winter up here and in a lot of places, winter means ice, snow and salt on the roads. This is also the time of year when you'll see people jet-washing their cars and cleaning up all the glass and paintwork without ever bending over to jetwash under the wheel arches or underneath. At this time of year, the paintwork and glass isn't the important part - it's all the stuff underneath that is caked with road salt and the other cocktail of chemicals used to keep the roads clear. You really don't want that stuck to all the metal parts underneath so if you're jetwashing, bend over and spray the underside of your car and under the wheel arches. Or go to an automatic car wash that has underbody jets. Your car will thank you for it.
Monday, January 12, 2015
Warming your car up on a winter's morning.
I watched a report on my local news channel a couple of weeks ago where they had an 'expert' tell everyone that the advice to warm your engine up before driving was out of date and that for any vehicle made since 1996 it was a fruitless exercise. He explained that the various sensors and other parts of older engines that benefited from being warm to work properly had been superceded by OBD-II and its ability to finely monitor and adjust all the functions of your engine under pretty much any condition.
That's true, but what he spectacularly failed to mention was that if you drive it like you stole it right after turning the key, your engine oil is still cold and thick and even with a decent 5W40 oil, you won't be getting the benefits of really good lubrication right off the bat. Ok sure you might not need to let the engine run for 10 minutes before driving it in the winter, but don't just start it up and blast on to the motorway. Have some mechanical sympathy and give your engine a chance to get some temperature in it before you start. After all - it's why people in northern climates have sump heaters and core heaters to pre-heat their oil and coolant before driving.
That's true, but what he spectacularly failed to mention was that if you drive it like you stole it right after turning the key, your engine oil is still cold and thick and even with a decent 5W40 oil, you won't be getting the benefits of really good lubrication right off the bat. Ok sure you might not need to let the engine run for 10 minutes before driving it in the winter, but don't just start it up and blast on to the motorway. Have some mechanical sympathy and give your engine a chance to get some temperature in it before you start. After all - it's why people in northern climates have sump heaters and core heaters to pre-heat their oil and coolant before driving.
Monday, January 5, 2015
Do you want an insurance company 'spy' in your car? Maybe so...
More and more insurance companies are experimenting with data-capture devices for their customers. In some markets, certain drivers can now not get insurance if they don't have such a device installed. But what are they, and should you use one?
There's a couple of different variations on how the insurance companies collect your driving data but the most common one is a dongle that plugs into the OBD-II port on your car (under the dash). The dongle has a 3G or 4G cellphone radio in it (for getting the time and reporting back to the mothership), a set of accelerometers, and an onboard computer capable of storing certain data that comes from the car itself via the OBD-II port.
For the most part, the data that is collected is number of miles driven, times of day, g-forces when cornering and accelerating, and g-forces when stopping. The insurance companies have a weighting system that generates a profile of your driving habits based on these factors. That profile is what is then used to determine if you are due for a discount or not. Right now, it's mostly used for discounts, but you can bet the time will come when this system will also be used to determine if you need to pay more than the basic premium.
There's also a subtle different between the various companies and the way the profile is created too - some want you to have the device in your car for a month or two, and they generate a one-time profile from there. Others want you do have it in the car all the time.
In the US at least, the companies offer "up to" 30% discount in most cases. If they don't detect harsh braking, not too many miles driven and you're not out in the wee dark hours of the morning, you can expect to see discounts. (My wife received about 12% discount on her policy).
The problem is that the metrics they use to determine if you're "safe" are somewhat flawed. By far the most flawed is the insurance company definition of "harsh" braking - they generally consider that to be a decelleration rate of 3.13m/s/s or more. Most people can't visualise that, so try this: if you're driving at 30mph (about 50kmh), you come to a stop in 4.5 seconds. For a modern car in city traffic, that's actually pretty gradual but most of these devices sample data once per second, meaning that if you're stopping at that threshold, it actually records 4 "harsh braking" events.
A much better metric would be 'did the ABS come on'? As most insurance companies won't insure you if you don't have ABS now, it seems like a safe bet that a data monitoring device should collect ABS data from the OBD-II port. The same could be true for cornering. Hard cornering isn't dangerous, but if the traction control comes on, that event could be stored for your profile.
Ultimately it's down to you as a driver. You won't get the full advertised discount, just like you can't ever get the advertised gas-mileage of a vehicle, but as long as you're not a total lunatic, you should see some savings.
There's a couple of different variations on how the insurance companies collect your driving data but the most common one is a dongle that plugs into the OBD-II port on your car (under the dash). The dongle has a 3G or 4G cellphone radio in it (for getting the time and reporting back to the mothership), a set of accelerometers, and an onboard computer capable of storing certain data that comes from the car itself via the OBD-II port.
For the most part, the data that is collected is number of miles driven, times of day, g-forces when cornering and accelerating, and g-forces when stopping. The insurance companies have a weighting system that generates a profile of your driving habits based on these factors. That profile is what is then used to determine if you are due for a discount or not. Right now, it's mostly used for discounts, but you can bet the time will come when this system will also be used to determine if you need to pay more than the basic premium.
There's also a subtle different between the various companies and the way the profile is created too - some want you to have the device in your car for a month or two, and they generate a one-time profile from there. Others want you do have it in the car all the time.
In the US at least, the companies offer "up to" 30% discount in most cases. If they don't detect harsh braking, not too many miles driven and you're not out in the wee dark hours of the morning, you can expect to see discounts. (My wife received about 12% discount on her policy).
The problem is that the metrics they use to determine if you're "safe" are somewhat flawed. By far the most flawed is the insurance company definition of "harsh" braking - they generally consider that to be a decelleration rate of 3.13m/s/s or more. Most people can't visualise that, so try this: if you're driving at 30mph (about 50kmh), you come to a stop in 4.5 seconds. For a modern car in city traffic, that's actually pretty gradual but most of these devices sample data once per second, meaning that if you're stopping at that threshold, it actually records 4 "harsh braking" events.
A much better metric would be 'did the ABS come on'? As most insurance companies won't insure you if you don't have ABS now, it seems like a safe bet that a data monitoring device should collect ABS data from the OBD-II port. The same could be true for cornering. Hard cornering isn't dangerous, but if the traction control comes on, that event could be stored for your profile.
Ultimately it's down to you as a driver. You won't get the full advertised discount, just like you can't ever get the advertised gas-mileage of a vehicle, but as long as you're not a total lunatic, you should see some savings.
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