Red Bull reveal interactive 360-degree video of their F1 car in action

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Red Bull and Norwegian company Making View have produced a remarkable new interactive onboard video of an F1 car in action.

The video above features an interactive camera which can be moved in real-time while it is playing.

It shows Sebastien Buemi lapping Norway’s Rudskogen Motorsenter in their show car in August.

Note that due to the large amount of data in the video it may take a while to load depending on the speed of your internet connection.

Thanks to Making View for granting permission for F1 Fanatic to reproduce their video.

Pictures: Sebastien Buemi at Rudskogen Motorsenter

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Images © Red Bull/Daniel Tengs

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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45 comments on “Red Bull reveal interactive 360-degree video of their F1 car in action”

  1. That’s amaaaaaaaaaaaaaizing !

  2. That is brilliant!!
    For proper F1 races, they need those Indycar style revolving cameras for the live feed etc…

    1. Exactly – felt just like Indycar. Although I couldn’t resist spinning like a top for most of the lap and now I feel a bit sick.

      1. LOL, I had the same really. But it was enormous fun doing it :-)

    2. I really dislike those cameras. I think the current F1 setup of a front-facing camera and a rear-facing one works better.

      1. @aseixas I think they work in IndyCar because sometimes two (or more) cars go alongside each other for a long time. In F1, maybe it’d not be that useful.

        Though if they manage to record the onboards with a 360º camera, the replays could be AWESOME ! (but that’s probably not gonna happen in the near future…)

        1. It might also help with stewarding decisions as well

        2. As they can’t even show live footage/replays from all the onboard cameras at the moment, I can’t see this happening any time soon… but it would be pretty cool.

          and @xjr15jaaag Mika Salo commented after his stewarding gig earlier this year that they already have more data available to them than is basically necessary (tons of camera angles, telemetry and so on), i.e. they “can’t” make the wrong decision.

          1. Well they can’t make the wrong decision but it’s about us, the viewers, when someone is passing, turn the camera to the side, cars go side by side, damn awsome :-d

          2. I guess in the end you can view it from a hundred angles, look at telephone books of telemetry and have hours of interviews with drivers, team members and who knows else, but in the end it still comes down to the best judgement of the stewards.
            What keeps baffling me, is how little of said information is published to make it absolutely clear how/why the stewards decided as they did, just like judges/courts publish the full decision in detail.

    3. Agreed, this is awesome.

    4. Bob (@bobthevulcan)
      31st October 2012, 14:07

      An utterly fascinating concept. Who knows, when the technology matures and becomes more cost-effective, we could very well see this interactive camera angle available on race weekends. (By interactive, I mean home-viewer controlled. Following all the on-track battles, hopping from driver to driver, spinning the view around… A man can dream)

    5. You won’t see the sort of rotating cameras seen in Indycar in F1 anytime soon as its felt they don’t really work as well on road/street circuits as they do ovals. If you watch Indycar you will notice that on road/street circuits the cameras spend most time either looking forward or backwards, Its only on the ovals they spend a lot of time rotating.

      FOM have moveable cameras, We had them as far back as 2002, We’ve even tested them on some of the support category cars yet found we rarely needed to rotate them. They were also a bit larger & F1 teams were reluctant to run them.

      Something people don’t always understand when comparing things like in-car cameras in F1 & other categories is that in F1 were a lot more limited in what sort of cameras we can use & where we can place them because the final say is down to the teams & drivers. If we have a new camera angle we want to run yet no team or driver will agree to let us use it on there cars then we can’t use it.

      Because indycar & other categories run spec parts, its easier to work with dallara & the teams to build cameras into specific parts of the car & ensure everyone runs either a dummy camera housing or some lead weight in that area of the car to make sure nobody has an aerodynamic or weight advantage over cars running cameras.

      1. @GT_Racer

        Any idea of there’s any chance of us seeing helmet cameras any time soon ?

        I remember watching (I think it was an Indy race) where a couple of the drivers had them inside their helmets and I thought it was amazing as the camera followed the movement of the driver’s head so you could see them turning to focus on braking points, the apex of corners and the cars around them and I’d love to see them in F1.

        1. Any idea of there’s any chance of us seeing helmet cameras any time soon ?

          FOM have helmet cameras & have been using them over the past year.

          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z8qNt6in9w
          http://youtu.be/BZrmgeNXTR4
          http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xmlz5x_onboard-barrichello-helmet-camera-brazil-2011_auto
          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohAeA0_ixz8
          http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xr16cs_sebastian-vettel-helmet-cam-onboard-2012-monaco-gp-free-practice-2

          No chance you seeing them use the old indycar style visor camera as new helmet safety regulations prevent anything been placed inside the helmet, thats why you dont see that shot used in indycar anymore.

          1. Here is all the Helmet-Cam footage that showed up on Sky’s OnBoard channel from Button & Hamilton during FP2 @ Singapore:
            https://vimeo.com/50059167

            I had uploaded a lot of Helmet-Cam footage on my Dailymotion channel but it was recently all removed by FOM :(

          2. BTW you can see the camera mounted on Lewis’ Helmet in this image from Silverstone:
            https://www.racefans.net/2012/07/06/2012-british-grand-prix-practice-pictures/lewis-hamilton-at-british-gp/

          3. Thanks for the info and the links !

    6. +1.

      The day European broadcasters adapt American style sports coverage it will much more fun, just look at now en vogue super slow motion cams.

      On Red Bull, I’m not a fan of the drink but I take my hat off for the spirit of their brand.

      1. Coverage of american sports is way worse than what we get in europe.

        the graphics are over-sized & all over the screen, the pip’s put 2 windows on the screen so small you can’t see them, the commentary/analysis is horrid & there is way too much focus on ‘the stars’ rather than the action.

        ive watched nascar, indycar, alms & grand-am this year & the coverage of each was horrid compared to F1.

  3. Wasn’t this done ages ago by Sauber? :]

    1. I remember they had something like it on their website a few months ago but it didn’t work half as well as this.

    2. http://www.sauberf1team.com/en/home.cfm (find it in the bottom left corner).

      Loved the Sauber one, but with the Red Bull one you can also change the vertical angle too.

  4. Pretty awesome indeed!

  5. Brilliant!

  6. It is cool, although I don’t really like how elongated and far away the front end of the car looks and how you can’t really see the details of the steering wheel/driver’s hands.

  7. Pretty impressive, bravo!

  8. Wait, I just realised wasn’t Buemi fired by Toro Rosso at the end of last season? If so why is he still doing demos with Red Bull or did by getting fired by Toro Rosso promote him as Red Bull test driver?
    Seems a bit odd… =S

    1. RBR test driver

  9. Surely this is much better than the cameras in Indycar? This captures the entire 360 degrees in real time, so, in theory, it could be operated freely by any viewer, rather than just the director, as it is in Indycar.

  10. Looks amazing…

  11. Full screen and high quality. It was fun using the mouse to look to the apex with the driver, rather than a standard oboard that always looks straight. Fantastic!

  12. Cool video, I have driven hundreds of laps on that circuit, stumped I did not know of this event.

    Btw, that first picture with the ski jumping hill is from Holmenkollen in Oslo and not from Rudskogen motorcenter.

  13. I have to know how this happened

  14. I was there both days. I could not go to F1 race this year of various reasons, so this was the next best thing.
    The show was great and the Red Bull people was also nice, even had chance to talk to Buemi, great guy with great sense of humor! Thank you Red Bull F1.

  15. I spent far too long using this! Simply brilliant.

    Also, good to see Buemi actually getting to do things in his role as RBR test driver

  16. I didnt knw the they require a special type of camera! I thought in Indycar, the camera itself was rotated

    1. @malleshmagdum The camera is rotated manually in IndyCar for just one feed, the global feed. This video means that you can set-up an entirely unique viewing point that would never be exactly the same as someone elses.

  17. I found it quite amusing, when he is doing a doughnut, try and focus on one spot by turning the camera around, si the car looks like it is spinning under you, its hilarious!

  18. It’s nice but the field of view sucks!

  19. Pretty impressive that! Everything looks seemlessly stitched together, such a bizarre concept.

  20. Hi!
    Glad you all liked this production! We in the Making View team sure like it too! Stay tuned for more 360° action!

    Best
    CEO/Making View

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