'Fast line' displayed on HUD Forza style, but real?

I have this fantasy of building up the Little Lamb-orghini to more nearly simulate the experience of playing a video game (thus closing the 10-15% gap between my Forza lap times and reality). I've given up on getting the Forza 4 'reverse time' button to work, but I am semi-seriously looking into getting a 'fast line' to display on the HUD, which I think would be most useful for night/rain racing when visibility makes hitting those apexes just that much harder.

Playing with the boss's IR thermal imaging camera, I noticed that even (especially) when no cars on track, you can clearly see the 'fast line' on the track, as that is where the majority of the cars travel, leaving that part of the track slightly hotter than the rest of the asphalt. I got to thinking that if I could identify the specific temperature range of the 'hot' asphalt, I could see the fast line, or at least, the popular line. I already have installed in this car a LCD monitor in the "dash" that reflects off of the inside of the windshield, creating a HUD illusion. If I could match up the output of a thermal imaging camera with the drivers perspective through the HUD, I could display a "hot" line that gives the illusion of being on the track. Of course, competitors, wildlife, corner workers, and the occasional piece of torn off exhaust on the track would also be illuminated by the thermal display, but I'd consider this a feature, not a bug.

The only part that I see preventing me from hacking up and beta testing such a system is the access to cheapskate priced thermal imaging equipment. I don't need something particularly accurate or sophisticated - could a regular old night vision camera be modified to do this job? Thoughts? I don't really know much about how Thermal IR cameras actually work. If it were as easy to do as it is in my mind, it seems like it would already exist commonly on street cars, as it could be super useful for seeing wildlife, pedestrians, or any other warm blooded thing at night.

I think you've pretty much got it figured out. Take hot areas ahead, isolate from the rest of the image, adjust size & perspective and project onto HUD and you'll see the "popular line." And I don't think you're going to find a way to get cheap thermal imaging equipment, it's all 4 digits and up

A true "racing line indicator" could also be possible but it would take precise high-frequency GPS, some proximity sensors or maybe something like a Kinect sensor to read the incline of the road ahead, and even then you'll probably still suffer with a bit of Wandering AR Object Syndrome.

BTW, even in sims I don't find the racing line indicator to actually augment my driving much. What it is good for is making up for the inherently bad visibility of not having a ginormous screen to play sims on. But the indicated fastest line is only really fastest if you're driving flat out, don't have any other cars in the way and haven't made any mistakes recently.

My Forza hud would be easy to simulate. I turn it off.

Where's there's spendy stuff, there's always a cheapskate

oldtin wrote: Where's there's spendy stuff, there's always a cheapskate

Pretty cool and could be useful for some jobs, but the resolution is nowhere near good enough for this. It's a tenth of the price with a twentieth of the pixels.

In reply to GameboyRMH:

Looking into the camera on the 2000 Caddy Seville grill. The IR sensitivity is really good from what I see on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l96g7yeT-XM

hmmm that might be old enough to be in the junkyard...

Hmm that's not terrible...you'd see an 80s-tastic heavily pixelated line but you should see the line clearly.

The tricky part would be that the temperature of the "popular line" would change with weather and how long the track's been in use, you'll want a way of changing the target temperature range while driving.

Edit: Another idea: Aim an infrared thermometer ($10-$20, here's one I'm planning to use in a wheel-mounted tire pyrometer array) at the ground in front of one of your front wheels and have a button you can hit to set the target temperature to match that temperature. Hit it while on the popular line and you'll see it.

I am hoping that by adjusting the gain I can filter the output to the temperature range I am interested in with a knob. For version 2.0 maybe have a ambient temp sensor attached to a PIC do this job for me.

http://www.generationhighoutput.com/2000-cadillac-deville-dts-thermal-night-vision-system/

Found one in a junkyard for $200. It is now mine. If it doesn't do what I want, I'll sell it to a hunter or militia dude or something. They love this sort of stuff.

GameboyRMH wrote:

oldtin wrote: Where's there's spendy stuff, there's always a cheapskate

Pretty cool and could be useful for some jobs, but the resolution is nowhere near good enough for this. It's a tenth of the price with a twentieth of the pixels.

But, do all those pixels work?

What's going to happen when you see a car which is going to be much hotter?

If you are running Data acq, seems like you could easily setup some markers to be displayed specifically via the hud at certain times. Maybe not the full red/green line but something even more useful. Braking points, or overlay of your last lap with its time, or best lap and time. Info on each segment like live being able to respond to your data via input while on the track and not in review later?

Haha, curses of being a game designer I am already thinking about how I would structure it/present the data and the modeling you could do.

The range for the "popular line" should filter out the hotter cars. But even if you did see them, you'd just see a glow over the car.

Yeah something like the Race Capture Pro could be set up to display a countdown to the end of the braking zone, or section timing but the idea here was to give better visibility.

In reply to Jaynen:

All that would be cool, but requires smarts and software and stuff. Thermal camera just requires the idiot mechanical to build a mount for a camera and a mount for a display and point it all the right way. I'll use a PC for the display so I can make real-time keystone adjustments and whatnot, and mirror the display so it looks right reflecting off the inside of the windshield.

In reply to sporqster:

In my MIND, the braking zone (that the other cars are using) will be wide and bright because the asphalt will be that much hotter. Dunno if it'll be visible at all or not. It may totally depend on the ambient temp of the track.

I think you're going to require smarts and software in any case, you'll need to set up some video processing to isolate the temperature ranges you want and probably to position the video correctly.

Picture if you will something as simple as the live telemetry data that comes off something like Race Capture. Let's say we just "leave" the last 2 laps and the fastest laps data being "drawn" or the last/fastest/fastest theoretical in different colors? anyway not too much information to overwhelm but a bit. now just shift the camera from the overhead view to the point the car is at currently on the track. display this on your hud and get sort of floating "lines" showing the last couple laps?

I currently have in my possession a thermal imaging night vision camera from an '01 Caddy Seville. I have not even hooked it up yet, but it looks like the coolest effing thing ever. TIA.

Jaynen wrote: Picture if you will something as simple as the live telemetry data that comes off something like Race Capture. Let's say we just "leave" the last 2 laps and the fastest laps data being "drawn" or the last/fastest/fastest theoretical in different colors? anyway not too much information to overwhelm but a bit. now just shift the camera from the overhead view to the point the car is at currently on the track. display this on your hud and get sort of floating "lines" showing the last couple laps?

That's the same kind of setup I was describing in my first post here. You'd need another computer like a RasPi to display the AR line based on the Race Capture output and it would take A LOT of programming work.

First test of junkyard thermal imaging:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynpvmDertZw&feature=youtu.be