Land Rover's new wheels-eye-view feature | Hacker News Reader

Land Rover's new wheels-eye-view feature

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45 pointstpc357 comments

Cool tech. A natural extension of the 360 view many luxury cars offer. I must however protest that I miss low hoodlines and narrow a-pillars that seem to rob half the view of the road in newer cars. I am convinced the huge wheel trend is just to visually offset the highwater beltlines endemic on modern cars. The back-up camera, blind-spot camera, and offroad cameras seem like nothing more than band-aids slapped over bad design. Its all down to (some) asinine regulations forcing cars to be the same. Which is why so few cars are made today. All sales are trucks, suv's, or 'crossovers' today, simply to dodge the regulations. Which helps nobody but fords f150 plant and oil companies.

Meanwhile in the actual consumer world; How easy are the lenses to access and clean? How cheap to replace when offroading? Seems like a good feature to check out on a leased british car. Even LR's biggest fans still bemoan parts prices, and availability after a few years. British electronics have come a long way but still suffer under the cursed memory of Lucas made wiring in wet climates.

Yes, modern cars suck from a visibility perspective but that's what you get after a 30yr (and counting) of manufacturers competing in safety arms race. The belt-line got higher and the pillars got bigger so you could barrel roll down the median in comfort. People want to be safer in a highly unlikely event serious crash at the expense of greatly increasing the likelihood of a less severe crash from lack of visibility (e.g. cornering over a cyclist). Everything has trade-offs and the consumers (and the regulatory agencies) have signaled which trade-offs they prefer.

I'm wondering how long it will be until we see a car that omits windows entirely and relies 100% on cameras and screens for external visibility.

Some manufacturers have already started inching in that direction by replacing the traditional rear-view mirror with a rear-facing camera, which lets them stop worrying about sight lines being obstructed by headrests, small back windshields, etc. I wonder how much safer you could make a car if you could take all the glass out altogether.

The worst part of this arms race is how much its caused by regulations, especially when those regulations end up completely working against environmental/mpg regulations that end up forcing automakers to pick some crap median that ends up pissing both sides off. You're not going to get good gas mileage with 2 extra tons of airbags, superfluous pillar reinforcements, and an massive SUV hood needed to satisfy pedestrian requirements

Who cars about MPGs? I would much rather drive a safe car than an efficient car. It’s the same reason all that crap is removed for race cars. Extra weight and lower MPGs are a small price to pay for safety.

ICEs will hopefully lose their dominance in the next 15-20 years. Fully electric cars could have some crazy looking designs but I doubt they will.

https://tanks-alot.co.uk have a few tanks for sale right now. Take your pick.

Great, now I’m debating quitting my day job and starting a tank rental business in the US.

Edit: There’s a Tank Town USA amusement park someone not even 1.5 hours away from me. I can even pay extra to shoot a machine gun from one.

Most of the visibility issues I encounter don't seem to be because of safety, more so design / style choices.

I've driven a few where the rear windows for no good reason turn into sideways pseudo teardrop shapes. There's not an airbag or anything else that explains it other than design. Plenty of vehicles manage to do without such designs. Others simply choose it.

It's roof strength.

You're lucky the windows are better than the side windows on passenger planes. For strength, picture a truss made of triangles. That is where we are headed, with little "sideways pseudo teardrop shapes" between the triangles.

People demanded rollover protection, not that rollovers happen much or couldn't be reduced with a lower center of gravity. We got rollover protection. Now we can't see out well enough to avoid crashing into things. Yea, progress!

Also: Airbags. I intensely dislike driving with an armed, explosive boxing glove in front of my face. Drive with attention, foresight, and good sense - and the risk of serious crashing approaches zero.

It is very cool tech and will be very useful in parking the new range rover in the supermarket car park.

I was under the impression that land rover was purely a luxury car - I live in Colorado and I've never seen one on a trail. Does anyone actually use these for off-roading?

I'm curious because this feature may fit that idea. Excellent marketing for people who want a land rover but will never use the feature.

In much of rural Spain, the Land Rover has been the car of choice for farmers and goat herders, for decades. Not the fancy version you usually see in the US, but the "Santana Cazorla" which was a much more bare bones one produced in Linares, at the heart of olive oil country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santana_Motor

Those cars look 30 years old or more! No one is commenting on the absolute off road tanks Land Rover used to build. The new cars are purely luxury cars for rich people, as evident of Land Rover killing off the real off road LR models.

The original Land Rover was launched in the 40s

Yes I know. Same as Jeep. Those are refereed to as the Land Rover "Series" models.

I see why I am confused about Discovery. They were marketed as the LR3/4 since 2004 in North America and called Discovery everywhere else.

These used to be licensed Defenders, not the fancy Range Rovers. Both are distinct types of the same brand (Land Rover).

Your comment reminded me of a Doug DeMuro article where he did just that! "In other words: the Range Rover is a highly capable, brilliant off-roading vehicle with a lot of highly capable, brilliant off-roading components, assuming that you have a comprehensive CarMax warranty to keep these components working properly."

https://jalopnik.com/yes-i-actually-went-off-roading-in-my-r...

I see older discos and a few defenders ocasionally. Usually a more yuppie thing, but they are out there. I can almost hear them bragging about their offset differentials over their moaning about parts breaking. They tend to pick trails that are challenging to stock suvs, but seldom venture where modded jeeps and toyotas go. They seem quite competent on mild to moderate trails. But as I noted in another comment, hard trail use might not be practical, but this feature would make a noob trail diver twice as effective just by placing the wheels where you want them during the 2 times a rover is actually offroad.

The biggest problem with the newer generations is that you can not swap out the bumpers for something that can take even a light hit on a rock. In Colorado that makes most trails a no go as even the best driver is going to hit a rock.

show me a trail where a defender cannot go?

> Furthermore, says Hoyt, “The [new suite of driver assistance] systems will help you get up a steep driveway in winter, or across a muddy soccer pitch without getting stuck.” In other words, even if your posh Rover spends more time in valet lines than the rugged wilderness, these technologies may still come to the rescue.

Mostly a marketing feature? I think something similar is available on new Jeeps too.

Land Rover is a car used by farmers for off road use.

Range Rover is the luxury brand used by people who live in wealthy but rural locations (Cirencester and the surrounding villages) and parts of London.

No it’s not. You’re thinking of the old models that looked like they were ready to go on a Safari. Land Rover killed off the old lines.

Could you send me a link to a new land rover you think a farmer would buy? I just can’t see a farmer cruising around in a posh Discovery.

Maybe the U.K. gets a barebones model?

Land Rover (the brand) do not make anything called a 'Land Rover' anymore, only the Range Rover and [Range Rover] Discovery, so he's sort of not wrong in that the historical (farmers) Land Rover no longer is available at all.

That said, you can probably still buy ex-MOD Defenders, I see a few 2015 and onwards online that are clearly privately owned (repainted, on public roads, etc). And the Defender is the historical Land Rover vehicle kept current.

It should be noted that Land Rover (the vehicle) started off with farmers buying ex-MOD Defenders post WW2, and the company (British Leyland - Rover) deciding to make the defender available as the Land Rover.

That's not the case. Range Rovers come in Range Rover base, Sport, Velar (not sure what this one is), and the Evoque. Land Rover also sells the Discovery and Discovery Sport which took the spot of the LR4.[1]

Here's the link the Land Rover's website. Click on Vehicles and you will see there is clearly a difference between Range Rover and Discovery. They are also coming out with a new Defender in 2020.

Edit: Wikipedia cleared up my confusion. The Discovery was called the LR3 and LR4 in North America for the past 15 years (starting 2004). I hate how companies do this, looking at you Toyota Hilux!

[1]https://www.landroverusa.com/vehicles/lr4-7-passenger-suv/in...

[2]https://www.landroverusa.com

[3]https://www.landroverusa.com/future-vehicles/defender/index....

"Chatham Tractor" is the term isn't it?

Chelsea Tractor

I used to work at Jaguar Land Rover and the answer is: some customers may take their Land Rover off-roading, but usually only once and in a very tame way. They are absolutely status vehicles.

I do a little bit of fishing and trail riding in North Georgia. The only Land Rover I’ve ever seen was a 15-20 year old LR some high school kid had. He was with a couple land cruisers.

Land Rovers around my area look like the only off road they’ve ever seen was the overflow parking lot at the mall. Not to mention the tires they sell are not off road capable in the slightest.

I certainly use my Range Rover for off-roading, but it's a '92 model. It's much harder to imagine their newer luxury models having any utility off-pavement.

My buddy takes his 3rd gen Range on trails in Colorado semi-regularly. Seems to do fine. Granted, his use is less about off-roading than getting to back country camp spots.

Here is a LR doing some off-roaring in Colorado:

https://youtu.be/Qj9vakChCbY

There was the time they used a Land Rover to climb a dam using a winch (Top Gear episode). Perhaps for entertainment, but still, it worked.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TZTa2tgJTs

Fun segment, although the vehicle is pretty irrelevant. The winch could have pulled a Dodge Neon up just as well.

That ultra clean Land Rover in the surreal photo driving through the green muck makes me question any of the discussion about going off road.

Yes and no. While it's great in movies, barreling into water like that is a great way to hydrolock an ICE. Plus that thing was clearly freshly waxed for the shoot, water be running right off.

Cool tech. I cringe at the sight of a car that expensive being taken off road. Especially with crappy tires meant for the street only.

Really upset the Discovery is taking over the LR4’s spot. To me the LR was the one real off road machine. Something you could take anywhere from African safaris to mountains. I wanted to get an LR but the reliability and running costs were terrible.

I'm still running a 2001 Land Rover Discovery II. The reliability is a minor issue. Every quirk is documented and fixable (except gas milage).

That boxy Land Rover style is so iconic. Kind sad to see it sort of drift away over time.

Does the photograph show the system that is described?

The system has 'forward-facing cameras mounted on the side mirrors and front grille'.

But the second photograph seems to show what is underneath the car, which is not a view that's possible from those cameras at that moment in time. There's no shadow, either. Is it possible to achieve this just by delaying the image feed?

edited

From the article: "Computer controls slightly delay the images from the front camera and stitch them together with side-mirror views to create a seamless real-time feed."

Seems like it just does an affine transformation on the image of the ground ahead as the car moves forward to fill in the missing parts of the image, with a time delay scaled inversely with the speed of the car. I wonder how (or if) it deals with non-static objects the car is driving over, such as moving water.

I'd imagine that if it works as shown in the promo photos it's extrapolating from a time-lagged version of the front view. Seems potentially misleading to users; As a driver I'd rather not be shown extra information if it's a faked guess.

It clearly warns "Drive forward to view underneath bonnet" and shows a black area before the stitching. As soon as it starts stitching, it warns "View underneath bonnet not live". This is clear enough to not be confused with real-time.

Not really possible to do with a simple delay, and if it was that easy it'd have already been done. However, the math you do need is a close relative of the panorama mode you have on your phone, and I feel like it's about the right time for it to have been refined and hardened well enough to show up on a car. Conceptually it's simple: Take the images, stitch them together, center the view on the cameras. Repeat with the next frame, but instead of using only the new images, stitch them into the same panorama you started building last frame. Keep stitching even as older images start to move entirely out of the cameras' field of view. Garbage-collect eventually, but you have a constant target synthetic FoV so you can guarantee bounded consumption. Add a few years of engineering and you have a really limited, single-propose SLAM system cobbled together from OTC algorithms that's just good enough to handle the ground underneath an SUV.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=o7V5COxB48Q here's a demo, from 4:53 onwards. Yeah it's delayed, so if e.g. a cat moves after it is out of sight of the camera, the picture won't display the actual position of said cat.

That's useful, but like other people said, it could be misleading. If the front wheel sinks into soft ground when you're off road, the display can't show you that, then you could high center the vehicle and get stuck

Or you could drive over your cat

I wonder if a pair of cameras under the center of the vehicle would meet the requirement for a rear-view camera. That'd be superior, because seeing right next to the wheels is actually useful. For viewing higher, we have windows and mirrors.

many cars have the same to show the sides of the vehicle using only the front and rear cameras without the need to have cameras also in the side mirrors. It creates a texture with the cameras and use it to render the surroundings when you move around. Pretty cool when I saw for first time.

But yes, if something moves where the cameras are not pointing you are not going to see, my vehicle only moves forward and rear, so it's pretty useful anyway

Now that the Defender has been discontinued I'm looking forward to this: https://projektgrenadier.com/

Plenty of people don't consider anything other than a Defender to be a proper Land Rover, so I thought it might be of interest (not connected with them).

It looks like the Defender is coming back.[1]

[1]https://www.landroverusa.com/future-vehicles/defender/index....

But now you'd need to find a way to look at this screen and what's happening in front of you at the same time!

Anybody know of or have experience with aftermarket systems that can do this sort of image composition?

Between the press article and the Landrover link I have seen 2 images of this system. I feel like something of this nature lends itself to a gallery of images - I'd like to see more!

Having this for a normal car would in many respects give me the one thing I’ve always dreamed of having an Ariel Atom for: the ability to see my tires.

In an all electric car, is there even a need for such a pronounced hood as for an ICE-based car? That's probably the best solution.

Non of it matters if car prices are still high.

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