Gadgetory

and we're back at the MW again this time it's going to be a little bit different last time we got to see the inside of a tent and we got to see a car from the outside this time we're seeing the outside of a tent and we are going to be playing around in the i8 mirrorless from the inside actually taking her for a drive so this would be my first time ever driving well anything this high performance so I am actually pretty stoked right now let's get going so the test-drive started out with a few surprises number one is that the i8 was really really comfortable for me sometimes it's nice to be small Wow this is a car that I actually feel like right at home and at my size look at that number two is I was actually surprised as many of our viewers know I'm really not that much of a car guy so I was surprised when we started the car and I realized that it has a three cylinder supplementary gasoline motor which contributed along with some simulated sounds to the car not being as quiet as I had initially expected though switching to pure electric mode later was a very different and very silent experience and number three the mirrorless rearview display I guess is what I'm going to call it was a lot better than I expected and the cameras hooked up to it really really impressed as you can see the entirety of behind you that is way better which doesn't mean that I got the hang of it right off the bat in fact the first thing I did when I went to back out of the parking stall was to wrench my back around put my hand on the back of the passenger seat and try to stare out the back of the vehicle though no no that's not what to do you are actually just supposed to stare at the mirror and monitor the live video feed from the cameras that are directly out the back of the car and the ones that are positioned where normally the rear view mirrors would be on the left and right side of the vehicle so from there it was pretty much off to the races I mean it's not to say that it went completely smoothly especially at the beginning of the test-drive I was constantly trying to check my mirrors on the left and right side of the car but what's interesting about even that is that my behavior started to shift very very quickly something that I don't think would have happened if this system wasn't so cool so let's talk a little bit about the cameras they're positioned on the right and left side mirrors facing backwards or where the mirrors would be see I can't even help but call those positions the mirror and then there are two additional ones that are on the body of the car pointed towards the back those are the depth ones so let's talk a little bit more about those cameras there are four 1.3 megapixel cameras and let me tell you this is not the 1.3 megapixel camera that's in that cheap Chromebook that you were looking at as kind of a disposable computer not all pixels are created equally and I have to say these ones looked really really good now I did only get to try the car in broad daylight but BMW is saying that with the extra time that they have between building a concept car and actually bringing this product to market they have a lot more work to do and they're confident that they will be delivering nighttime vision capabilities out of these cameras without relying on infrared light that exceed the capabilities of an unassisted human and the other thing that I thought was really cool about them is the way that the whole thing is stitched together so when you're just driving down the road and the most important thing is hey what's behind my car all of a sudden with one glance you've got not just what's outside the rear window but what is outside the rear almost 180 degrees of the vehicle it's great for being able to get a quick and efficient glance at what is important to me as the driver and this is neat to the information actually changes depending on the context of what I'm doing as a driver so for example hitting the turn signal to turn is going to go ahead and widen up the stitching on that side so that I can get a better idea if there's say for example a pedestrian to the side of my car that might have snuck up on me or a cyclist coming up beside me in a bike lane but that's not all they can do so the four rear view cameras can actually work with the other four cameras and sensors that enable BMWs like bird's-eye out-of-body experience thing that we saw the other day with the i3 where that car was able to park itself look at lines on the road to find well the parking spots to park itself and this is cool if someone bumps it send you an alert that gives you this live view of what the car looks like from the outside so you can check for vandals and then they take that mode and they put it to even better use so this is an issue that I have with sporty-er cars and really cars in general it's often very very difficult to shoulder check and see into the blind spot that is created by a traditional mirror setup this takes it one step further not only can you see completely behind you to the left when you're trying to change lanes on the highway for example you can see the entire rear of the car at a glance in a way that is genuinely useful and what do I mean by genuinely useful ah yes very good question if this system had an unacceptable degree of latency I would be crapping all over it because that is totally unacceptable at the speeds that you might be moving never mind on the Autobahn but even on a regular highway here in North America and I have to say BMW has done a pretty bang-up job of not only just having a low latency camera and display but also doing all of the processing that they're doing pretty much in real time check out this demo ok so this would be an interesting test of the latency of the system you guys will be able to see my mouth moving we're not going to mess with this at all and I'm wearing a lavalier microphone on me that will give you guys an exact idea of how much delay there is between something happening and what's on the screen so I guess all that's left to say at this point is what a freakin cool practical application of Technology on this concept car and I wish I could say this concept can point behind me but that's just the regular i8 it's the one with actual mirrors which for now is fine because at the moment at least in the u.s. driving around in a car with no mirrors is not actually street-legal but that doesn't change the fact that I got to drive one it doesn't change the fact that it's really cool and way way better than I expect it to be and it doesn't change the fact that that technology is most assuredly coming so a huge thanks to BMW for hosting us here for allowing me to take their i8 mirrorless concept out for a drive and a huge thanks to you guys for checking out this and all our other content here at CES 2016