Coulthard's camera is cool, but we see nothing more than a wheel turning right and left

They should put the camera inside the helmet, like in the CART:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7H8G27-jEk

This footage it's from 2002, ¿not enough time for F1 to copy that?

the camera certainly need to be a bit higher up,even brundle seemed to say that,as while you cant see much from the cockpit if ur the driver,you can see more than what the camera was showing

This one is better.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6hGGlmie6U

It's amazing that it took F1 years to catch up with what CART did so long ago......and F1 still gets it wrong.

No matter what the helm cam is a great idea and should be in the top of every helmet

I wonder how much weight it adds to a helmet. Even if it would be just 250 grams, it would be a kilogram under 4G high speed corners or heavy braking. A human head weighs around 4.5 kilograms, so that isn't something I'd want to have in my helmet if I were a driver, especially not in Brazil.

Perhaps it is just a remote lens/sensor with wire running to external recording/transmitting device?

I have a wireless camera that, minus battery is <10g - I can't imagine that, with cables, to be more than 20g at the very most.

But, despite the fact that CART got it right years ago, they managed to screw this up and not give us a realistic view - such a pity.

Doug

Yes, but that Alonso cam is quite poor quality though.

I just think we should all be glad FOM is at least starting to experiment with decent camera angles. God knows we've waited long enough and the technology has clearly existed for many years.

This isn't the first time it's been used in Formula One race coverage though.

This is Mark Blundell at Spa in 1994.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul_UAdTgiYI

That one is perfect. So much better than the one that DC has this weekend.

http://pl.youtube.com/watch?v=wpLjvkh4hQE

Great find

God I miss John & Ben - and good old F1

Just put it in the middle at the fore head.

That one is really good mate.

I think the problem with the Coulthard shot is clear from these shots.





It is mounted on the top of the chin bar which is a little too low.

The old CART helmet cameras were mounted inside the helmet on the padding beside the driver's right eye, so the camera sees from exactly the same level as the driver.

I presume that's where the Blundell one was also mounted. Being a bit higher up the helmet the view is better. Also it gives a better impression of the driver tilting his head.

Still, we shouldn't bite the hand feeding us these pictures. At least FOM is trying something new.

Funny, the commentator seems to be Allard Kalff a Dutch racing veteran.
Didn't know he did commentating for Eurosport in English back then.

I quite liked Eurosport. All seemed very chilled out and informal.

I think that's what we'll see next year from the BBC.

is nice they have it, shame its in a bad spot :/

Nifty, but I see why F1 hasn't really adopted it.

Too much movement associated with it. So, for me, it's just a curiosity than anything else.

Back to the cameras in the usual spots.

I think the movement is what makes it so good! The normal onboard cameras are so stables it makes it seem like the driver is playing Playstation and that he is having a fairly easy ride physically.

The helmet camera shows us that he is being, as James Hunt once said, 'cement mixed' in the cockpit. Sometimes it is so bumpy he can't even see the readout on the dash.

I like the impression of violence it gives.

Sure, and this is why I say it's nifty and we get the point it gives.... very quickly.

A time comes when we're more interested in where he's going, how he's taking the corners and a better view of the car or cars he's chasing, all without feeling like we're getting seasick.

That's true mate. I think the Kubica shot above is quite a bit better. It gives an amazing impression of speed.

It's a great idea, the movement does not bother me, you get tilting when you watch the onboard shots of the Bikes racing and it just adds to the effect, as long as they keep the traditional airbox mounted cam it'll be a good addition to the set of pics we get.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNMyj2ftuZA is pretty nifty

I'm not at all impressed with this DC helmet-cam. You can hardly see anything. It's completely useless.

the BBC's presenters of Ski Sunday do those shots while holding the camera in their hand

You can by a pencil camera which records onto a SD memory card at an electronics shop near my work for 80 quid. Would be good to record my absolutely rubbish skiing...

Hey it's a good thing it was raining. It kept the Yamaha engine cool enough where it didn't blow up....like usual.

To be fair I think the Yamaha was pretty reliable by 1994, enabling Blundell to take that podium in Barcelona and a number of other strong results for he and Katayama.

But it was a total liability in 1988 apparently. Legend has it the mechanics used to time the engine's life from start up to self destruction. This would often happen before it left the garage...

It helped that they slowed a load of the tracks down, the Yamaha didn't have as much time to expire

CART had helmet cams since 7 years, and NASCAR is in HD since 4 years. When will F1 catch up with technology?

It is possible that the team engineers would veto a higher mount of camera on the helmet considering the effects on aerodynamics.

gave a good shot today (singular)

Read the thread: Mark Blundell had a helmet cam at Spa in 1994...

That is good. More representitive of the driver's actual view than the Blundell one posted further down this thread.

If we had camera views like this in F1 then you'd get less know-it-all fans on here claiming that drivers should be able to see the exact edge of the kerbs and exactly where to drive to avoid the stupid lumps and other hazards. Or maybe not.

The problem with this CART camera as I remember it is that it was a 'lipstick camera' embedded in the foam to the left/right of the eyes inside the helmet. As such it reduced the protection to the driver's head in the event of a side-impact.

They used to say - "unless it snows, the Yamaha blows". Not saying Yamaha hasn't made great engines, just not that one.

Which was a one-off lustigson. Not so with Champ Car and NASCAR.

I think I would rather the cam was mounted low on the airbox or the bolster just outside of the cockpit. Someplace where there narrow (relative to the eyes) field of vision of the camera would be made up for just a bit.

are the raised cockpit sides hard or soft?
could stick a camera in that...

Oh! I'm not crazy. For many years I told people that in 94 we had a in helmet camera. Nobody remembered so nobody believed. Now I can prove it!
I'm a bit puzzled how they managed to do so well in 94 and so poorly in 08...

Could it be some kind of concernment of the teams with the info displayed in the steering wheel? There's a lot of information going on there nowadays...

They have standardardized displays with the SECU nowadays.

Little off topic, the colors from Indy/CART video feed seems so much better.

Yes, but wath about the information displayed? Could be some precious data from the car.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=playe...p;v=m3DY7HIjXMc

Lucas Di Grassi helmet cam, Pirelli installation lap Barcelona.
Why can't we have this?
It's been 2 years since DC did a short demo(300meters or so..) the previous cam in Brazil and still no helmets cams to this day...

Seconded. I thought we would be seeing more of that helmet cam. Now we aren't even getting the ones pointing at the driver like the one behind the steering wheel or the one on one of the mirrors that we used to get quite a lot of. They weren't much use all the time but we did get to see the driver at work.

its amazing that F1 doesnt use this at all. I remember seeing the helmet cam in Brazil 08 in DC's lid and whilst it was positioned a bit low gave a great view of what the driver sees. Id also like to see, especially in qualifying them show a 'ghost' image of say the pole position car when it shows a lap of another driver. Can swear ive seen this done in a practice session before and would give viewers a great indication of where cars are relevant to each other on a lap.

embedded helmet cams mess with the integrity of the helmet structure. I 'd rather not have helmet cams than have a driver die cause he tapped his head on something and the cam killed him

Extrernal helmet cams mess with helmet aero, which isn't just a performance issue, it can be a major comfort issue when you 're cornering at 3G on when you're traveling at 220mph in an open cockpit

2 years ago or so there was a bunch of articles on how FOTA is going to make F1 more accessible to the fans by providing new TV options and utilize the internet more. Looks like it ended on drivers position being displayed on the FOM feed, which is good, but hardly close to what was promised. There was also talk of making radio transmission available since they're not encrypted any more.

So they can't be killed by their visors...
Let me tell you something about the integrity of the helmet. A long time ago there was a series of aviation crashes pertaining to a single plane breaking mid-air, that was a Comet. Why did they broke? Because of metal fatigue using square windows.
What was the solution? Using rounded windows and that's why you have rounded windows on planes till this day...
Helmet manufacturers can design helmets that would be structural sound even with a cam in there, it only takes a simple FIA rule for that to happen... But that's another story
If they want to implement it they can do it safely, as you know...