Cars and Perspective

Just sitting a little spaced, it being an early June Sunday morning, whilst having a game of Forza Horizon on the PC.

So to the point.

It's great to be able to control our cars in the conventional sense, but i image a 3rd person perspective could be just as desirable as self-driving vehicles and even help with the safety of such under certain circumstances.

I'm just wondering if the 3rd person perspective that's available in the game, and many others, could be transferable to real vehicles?

Seems to me it would not be that hard to accomplish.

Simply programming a small drone to follow the car, at the desired altitude, and angle, behind the vehicle, then transmitting a live video from the drone's perspective, which could be viewed on a screen or projected on to the windshield of the vehicle would seem to achieve the desired effect.

How come Elon Musk and Tesla are not taking this approach?

Or are they and I'm just conveniently Sunday morning discombobulated again? LoL

a reply to: andy06shake

Actually, it is underdevelopment, I can't recall specifics, for automated trucking.

a reply to: FyreByrd

Suppose there are also automated truck transport concerns to consider but i was thinking more along the lines of off-road vehicles and the like due to terrain concerns.

My reasoning being, health & safety, nevermind insurance concerns, are probably never going to allow our automobiles to trail drones behind them down to safety issues on our roads and highways in the short term until they have been proven to work flawlessly in other environments.

But you could essentially implement this perspective right now given the software available and a drone that can keep up with your automobile.

"Simply programming a small drone to follow the car"

You only need implement collision avoidance systems, similar to what they already have on aircraft, to plot the location of all other vehicles within the immediate vicinity to avoid collisions. Traffic lights and road works could also have collision avoidance beacons to alert cars to modify direction and speed when required.

Its not rocket science. The difficulty would be getting all governments to agree on a single standard world wide. Ending road deaths forever after.

a reply to: glend

"Its not rocket science. The difficulty would be getting all governments to agree on a single standard world wide. Ending road deaths forever after."

And therein lies the problem i imagine, it would not end road traffic accidents forever, or at all because of the human element, but it may introduce an aspect of control and/or perspective that we, as of yet, sadly lack.

The tech is there though, maybe not for a Ferrari F40, but for anything doing less than 100Mph, it's quite feasible really.

Considering the ability of increased situational awareness due to the 3rd person view, I think it could be an interesting concept. That being said, and I've played some racing sims in my time, as well as various games with the 3rd person view, I'm not sure I would feel confident driving in that perspective. It could just be force of habit, but when I race in games and in sims in 1st person view I tend to be a better driver with less nonoccurence of accident. When I switch to third person view, which is handy in some rally games, I find that my ability to accurately judge where the car is going is impaired and I find I have more accidents.

So for me, doesn't sound like a good idea. Now if someone were taught this method of driving from the get go, it could work out well. Interesting thread S+F

Driverless cars, and also cars with drivers, already use all-around radar to gain a 360-degree awareness of surrounding obstacles and dangers. I suppose a drone could provide better (farther) information, and not be blocked by line-of-site issues, such as the car ahead of me blocking my radar view of what's in front of it.


Some cars today already have a 360-degree "3rd person" visual view feature that it displays to the driver, showing the driver the immediate surroundings, but it is a bit crude at the moment; for example, I'm not sure if it only displays the 3rd person view when you're driving, or just when parked (or else the person driving would need to be looking at their dashboard display while driving). As you said, a heads-up display like this would be helpful, sowing the driver blindspots, etc. Or even dangers farther ahead.