Comparison of all 2011 cars

[Richard]

marcus - the front wing end plate and wheel nut are in the same plane, so that avoid parallax problems. I think we'd struggle to identify the centreline between the overlap of black tyres

[marcush.]

You still don´t know if the car is moving at right angles to your camera position...let´s assume you got 3300 mm wb and the car is travelling only 4 degrees out of right angle and your mistake is already 10mm...
add to this the steering lock ...not to mention faults caused by the camera lense itself..and we are adding up the mistakes in the same ways as in judging on laptimes with variables.
clearly those 6% variance we got in our picture calculations is rendering the whole exercise as pretty useless especially as some cors that seemed to differ in the first claculations now match in length...so the fault is burried somewhere and it is potentially quite substantial..but fun it is anyways so please don´t stop..

[HampusA]

You still don´t know if the car is moving at right angles to your camera position...let´s assume you got 3300 mm wb and the car is travelling only 4 degrees out of right angle and your mistake is already 10mm...
add to this the steering lock ...not to mention faults caused by the camera lense itself..and we are adding up the mistakes in the same ways as in judging on laptimes with variables.
clearly those 6% variance we got in our picture calculations is rendering the whole exercise as pretty useless especially as some cors that seemed to differ in the first claculations now match in length...so the fault is burried somewhere and it is potentially quite substantial..but fun it is anyways so please don´t stop..

Nobody wanted to figure out the wheelbase down to the atoms. We just want come as close as possible with the tools we have at hand.

And i think we are doing a pretty good job of getting pretty close imo.

[adrianjordan]

Anyone had a look to see if there are any better photos after the more recent tests?

(Also to get rid of the light blue lines in Photoshop - Ctrl + H should do it, if not it's one of the options under View, Extra I think).

[King Six]

This is a great thread, keep up the good work. Surprised at just how small the wheelbase of the Mercedes and Force India are. Especially compared to the other team in the "family" - McLaren who have a Limo once again. Just that the absence of the shark fin doesn't make it seem near as long as the MP4-25.

I've said it that the FIA should mandate that all cars have proper launch photo's at designated angles and with a standard FIA-mandated white background for media purposes, or would that be FOM or FOTA's job...well one of these ubiquitous organisations.

[tommylommykins]

You still don´t know if the car is moving at right angles to your camera position...let´s assume you got 3300 mm wb and the car is travelling only 4 degrees out of right angle and your mistake is already 10mm...
add to this the steering lock ...not to mention faults caused by the camera lense itself..and we are adding up the mistakes in the same ways as in judging on laptimes with variables.
clearly those 6% variance we got in our picture calculations is rendering the whole exercise as pretty useless especially as some cors that seemed to differ in the first claculations now match in length...so the fault is burried somewhere and it is potentially quite substantial..but fun it is anyways so please don´t stop..

Nobody wanted to figure out the wheelbase down to the atoms. We just want come as close as possible with the tools we have at hand.

And i think we are doing a pretty good job of getting pretty close imo.

I'm with Marcush here. I've had a little amateur experience with trying to use photographs as an accurate basis for creating 3d models of trains. Photos that look symmetrical or appear to have been taken directly head on can get frustratingly hard to work with, just because they often tend not to be actually anything symmetrical or straight once you actually get a good ruler to work with or some real numbers for lengths.

[marekk]

why not use those tires in the background as a ruler ?

[HampusA]

I'm with Marcush here. I've had a little amateur experience with trying to use photographs as an accurate basis for creating 3d models of trains. Photos that look symmetrical or appear to have been taken directly head on can get frustratingly hard to work with, just because they often tend not to be actually anything symmetrical or straight once you actually get a good ruler to work with or some real numbers for lengths.

But this your saying is what we have been knowing all the time since we started doing these measurements etc.

We know this, but for the fun of it we decided to do these anyways even though you cannot get the exact wheelbase numbers.

Like i said before. You cannot take a picture of a ruler and then expect the picture to work as a ruler. You can take a photo of something that´s next to the ruler but you can´t use the picture itself and use as a ruler.

[HampusA]

why not use those tires in the background as a ruler ?

First of all you need to know the width of the tyres.
Then you need to make sure all cars have the same distance to the tyres etc.

[marcush.]

200mm is a bit more than your average atom...but forget my words I´m all for it ..please go on .

[marekk]

why not use those tires in the background as a ruler ?

First of all you need to know the width of the tyres.
Then you need to make sure all cars have the same distance to the tyres etc.

I think the distance to the tires in background is almost the same for all the cars.
And, even more important, distance from camera lens to those tires is almost the same on all pictures.
So you can use it to scale pictures more or less precisely - just be sure to scale a known group of tires in the center of the picture to the same length (pixel count) on all pictures.
Then you can use known vertical hight of the cars to properly measure horizontal numbers.
Paralax error's for given lens sholud be the same both vertical and horizontal.
It won't be perfect in any way, but it's the best we can achive with those pictures without some calculations which use, unknown to us, lense geometry and cars angle relative to camera.

[HampusA]

200mm is a bit more than your average atom...but forget my words I´m all for it ..please go on .

You mean 39.6mm ? Because that´s the latest number we have got.

And go on with what? Nobody has done anything for days on this meaning nobody really cares anymore. This was just a fun thing to do but people like you failed to realise that and told us stuff we already know.

Do you see where i´m coming from here?

[King Six]

Badger GP (lol) - They posted some good shots of all the diffusers of the cars, except McLaren because it's always broken

http://badgergp.com/2011/02/barcelona-t ... -delirium/

Force India's diffuser, most different from all the teams. Seems ultra simple, hardly any strakes (or whatever they're called)

All the teams seemed to have stopped using the trick of running the endplate all the way down into the diffuser, was this banned? Seems like the only reason why Red Bull would stop doing it

[LegendaryM]

Teams dont really give out accuarate wheelbase dimensions now. It might be a good idea to compare these cars to something like the F2007, which has a wheelbase of 3135mm exactly

[Shaddock]

Teams dont really give out accuarate wheelbase dimensions now. It might be a good idea to compare these cars to something like the F2007, which has a wheelbase of 3135mm exactly

The secret is the quality of the photo if you are measuring wheelbase. The car needs to be at 90 degrees from the camera, not turning towards or away, with the steering straight ahead. Best opportunity when the cars are parked up