Virtual Morgan in Action (2D & 3D)

A couple of years ago a group of Jaguar owners invited the MSCCC to do a country drive with them.  In their first news brief about it they said we would have a chance to drive the North American Jaguar Club Slalom.  See www.jcna.com/library/slalom/index.php for details about the slalom.  Since you go through the set of pylons three times following three slightly different paths; an hour glass, a figure eight, then an oval, I figured I would need some visualization practice beforehand to avoid going off course.  It turned out that they did not include the slalom in the event but by that time I had already build a computer model of it.

I turned to POVray (http://www.povray.org/) to model the course, and then generate pictures at several spots around the course. I learned you can produce animations with POVray by using its clock function.  The clock's 'ticks' can be used to step through a list of coordinates of a path through the course.  Then I needed a car to drive the course, that took a couple of months of measuring something on my '59 +4 and then working out how to model it in POVray.  The result was two Youtube videos.  The car's speed is calculated using acceleration and panic stop figures from the December 1967 Car & Driver road test of a TR4A powered Morgan +4.  The maximum g's in cornering was set to 0.8g by an edjumacated WAG. The resultant course time of under 47 seconds is not a winner but it is respectable.

Here is a track marshal's view from between the start line and the finish.


http://youtu.be/zCyoyRImfXU

 The next one is the one for training to drive the course, a driver eye view in 3D using the Blue/Amber anaglyph coloring.  The driver is looking ahead to where the car will be in 2 seconds.  The gauges on the dash show a green one when accelerating and a red one when braking.




http://youtu.be/34YiFh9jmrs

Morgans in 3D!!!

A little automotive eye candy for Christmas.

When I was photographing the Mogs at the Britsh Car Day in Bronte Park last September the auto focus flashed a warning when I took a picture of one of the yellow Morgans in the row, so I shifted position a little and took a second.  Both turned out well and I wondered if they would make a good stereoscopic pair.  They do.  Cross your eyes slightly and you will see.  The people in the background moved a little so looking at them is a little discordant.

 If you have trouble getting the effect in the above picture, get two cards or envelopes. Hold a card in each hand.  Hold the right hand card so it blocks your right eye's view of the right hand image but you can see the left image OK.  Hold up the left card beside the right so it blocks the left eye's view of the left image.  Now adjust the cards so each eye can still see the opposite side image.  Now look at the middle of the gap between the cards, this will cause the screen images to merge.  Pick a spot in the image, like the windscreen pillar or a head light, and try to get the two images of that spot to overlap exactly. You may need to tilt you head at little to one side or the other to get the images to line up. Your eyes should come into focus on the screen image in a few seconds.

Otherwise:
If you have a pair of the common red/blue 3D glasses:

Or a pair of the blue/amber 3D glasses the CBC was giving away a couple of years ago for their 3D show about Queen Elizabeth II.

I know that this isn't a Morgan but its owner Al Sands is a Morgan owner, so here is his Cadillac powered Allard in 3D:

Red/Blue anaglyph

Blue/Amber anaglyph

Drive for Life

Our friends from the 'Jagged Edge' extended an invitation to the MSCCC to join them last Tuesday evening for an introduction to the 'Drive for Life' programme at the organization's centre in Mississauga. This organization focuses on training drivers 'from the head to the feet' following a programme with the acronym SPOT, to teach; Scanning, Predicting, Options, and Take Action.

Steve and Martin Beer, and I showed the Morgan colours among nine or ten Jagged Edgers, who could be described as a splinter group of Jaguar owners. There was a mix of class room sessions expanding on the points in the SPOT programme and sessions in simulators. These simulators put you in a typical driver's seat with a typical dashboard and controls for an automatic transmission car. There are three wide screen monitors to fill your peripheral vision as you sit at the wheel. The first run you take is a 20kph cruise just to make sure you can adjust to not feeling anything as you accelerate and brake. A small percentage of people have trouble when the feeling of motion is cut off while still seeing the motion. Then the action starts, you drive along a typical looking mixed use urban/suburban road and deal with road construction, pedestrians that step out on the road from behind visual obstructions and drivers that do not follow the rules of the road. 'Teaching then a lesson' is not the answer.

Later they put us in some 'fun' scenarios; I tried to drive a top armoured Humvee through a battle in an Iraqi town. Crashed into a pick-up truck that pulled out in front of me just at the edge of town. Steve, Martin, and Rob, all drivers in the Chump Car Challenge, went head to head to head in a race track scenario. The sophistication of the simulators was shown off here. Since we had not driven in hills before they were asked to just accelerate to 80kph and hold it through the first two turns of the track, to verify they would not get any vertigo from the vertically moving scene while not feeling the motion. After they competed that he asked them to do it one more time before starting the race. This time all three spun out, he had changed the car from a front wheel drive car, a Ford Taurus, to a rear wheel drive car, a Ford Crown Victoria. The different dynamics of the cars calls for a different driving technique even in the simulator. Martin won the race by several car lengths.

Considering how I was consistently NOT steering to where the vehicle I crashed into was coming from, I'd better take the 'top up' course they offered us. Check out their web site for more details about their programmes. They do a lot of work training people who drive as part of their job; taxi, truckers, emergency crews, even the military. The testimonials show they get results.
http://www.driveforlife.ca/