F1’s POV camera currently being developed promises exciting perspective
The amazing POV footage of Torro Rosso’s Pierre Gasly during practice at Monaco made other on-board footages rather lame. For the first time, we can see exactly what and how the driver sees, especially with this season’s cars and its halo safety device.
While it was first the footage came off a helmet cam, it has been clarified by Haas’ Romain Grosjean that it is in fact an eye glass frame with built-in camera. The Frenchman had tried it himself during the Canadian GP’s installation lap on Friday, and described it as uncomfortable.
Autosport quoted the Haas team driver, “Very painful! It doesn't quite fit well in the helmet.”
"But when you see the footage, you actually see the speed of the car, you see the work on the steering wheel, you see the vibrations, so people can actually feel what we are living,” he adds.
But it is a piece of tech that’s still under development (the pic below shows the actual unit Gasly used in Monaco). Glasses with cameras are not new, but being able to record and transmit high definition video is not. What needs to be worked on, however, is the focusing performance of the camera.
Grosjean believes there are options and the glass is not a practical solution – they move around and is still a bit oversized.
