When CGI rose to prominence in the late 1970s, it changed the way we looked at film forever. Movies like Star Wars, Alien, and TRON led us to ask questions like, “Are the images we’re seeing on screen actually real?” From that moment on, the lines between fiction and reality were blurred.
CGI isn’t always used to depict psychedelic landscapes or space battles, though, as the technology has countless more subtle uses. In advertising, for instance, companies use CGI to render environmental backdrops and even simulate their own products, but pretty soon, they might not even need those.
Visual effects company The Mill has officially debuted The Blackbird, a fully adjustable vehicle rig designed specifically for car commercials and automotive video content. The Blackbird can increase its length by 4 feet and expand widthwise by 10 inches — and, using CGI, it can be re-skinned to look like just about anything. The suspension and wheels can be altered as well, and even the electric motor can be programmed to emulate the driving characteristics of a particular automobile.
The goal, The Mill says, is to streamline and simplify automotive video production, as vehicle availability and constant model year revisions make filming car advertisements very expensive and time-consuming. By using a stand-in, automakers can digitally render their products over the Blackbird’s frame but still benefit from authentic ground shadows and realistic physics.
Mounted atop the car is an array of cameras and laser scanners, which work together to capture high-definition environmental data. That information can prove invaluable when assembling the final video cut, and the same technology integrates perfectly for virtual reality applications.
As the name would suggest, the road-going Blackbird was built in the same hangar as the SR-71 Blackbird spy plane. In total, the project took two years to complete.
BYD has launched the third-generation Qin Plus DM-i in China, and the first thing that caught my eye is its price. According to CarNewsChina, the plug-in hybrid sedan starts at 79,900 yuan, which is about $11,980. That’s an incredibly low price for a brand-new car, especially by US standards.
What’s even more impressive is the range. The Qin Plus DM-i can drive up to 137 miles on electricity alone, which should cover most people’s daily commutes without using a drop of gas. Once the battery runs out, the 1.5-liter engine takes over. Thanks to its 17-gallon tank and roughly 91 mpg with a drained battery, the combined range reaches up to 1,423 miles.
Apple won the PC market’s worst quarter, but that’s not the entire story. It won the race by stumbling less than everyone else.
PC makers shipped just 57 million computers worldwide in Q3, which might look good, but it’s a 21% year-over-year plunge (via Counterpoint Research). And despite Apple’s Mac shipments falling by 11%, to 5.6 million, its market share rose from 8.7% to 9.8%. How did that happen?
Update (October 22 23:54 PT): In response to our query, GM clarified that offline recording support is already available on eligible vehicles. Like Tesla's Sentry Mode, it requires owners to connect a USB drive to save incident recordings, which can be viewed on the vehicle's infotainment screen. The upcoming Connected Cameras feature will build on this by giving owners remote access to these recordings via the revamped OnStar app, allowing them to check footage without walking out to their car.
General Motors has announced plans to add a new Connected Cameras feature to its OnStar service starting next year, giving drivers a way to monitor parked vehicles remotely and capture footage of certain incidents.