Ideas about better F1 overlay/HUD

[Kiril Varbanov]

I think the key word here is: SIMPLICITY.
...

While I admire Simplicity as a genre and as a whole, I can't really agree on the comparison with football, for example, being ex-football player myself. Or other sport, like basketball.

In the latter, what the NBA guys are showing, apart from the commercials at the bottom of the screen (running lane), there's the result. The same goes for football - this is what really matters. However, sporadically, when the people wall is being constructed under foul conditions, we do get a bit of stats, right?
But it's about the nature of the sport - while a player is dribbling with the ball, this is all you look at and you don't care about the stats. In F1, however, there are some really boring moments where drivers just cruise around. Perhaps this is the time where we can get a much more meaningful information than now. Besides, we still get decent loads of info, but it doesn't tell you much and sometimes it's hard to read - I can tell that even from the commentator perspective.

So, either those little changes on the screen, perhaps not constantly, or very good online source of such info and clean TV screens. I would put my vote to enrich the TV screens for two reasons: today's TVs are large enough to hold more info, and not every time you have Internet available.

Perhaps a compromise exists - and I'm sure more and more ideas could be generated, but it's a matter of whether FOM will listen. I hope yes, because we are customers.

[machin]

Yep, Awesome. I'd go with "V2" layout, but show all 20 drivers at the same time permanently.

I agree: send it to the producers. What harm can it do?

[Straggler]

Guys, thank you for the advices to write to FOM but the main reason for making this thread was just to see if there are even better ideas than mine, then to choose the best of them and to offer them to FOM. I'm still hoping that someone will show even better variation than mine.

@flattyre I totally agree that the key word is SIMPLICITY. But you are contradicting your thesis, because if you can see the current FOM overlay is way more COMPLICATED than my v.2.0 overlay (I compared them in page 1 of the thread).

On top of that I don't want every important stat to be shown on the screen. But there is difference between important and essential. I think there are 3 essential stats for a F1 race. 1. Gap between all drivers 2. Number of pit stops 3. Which set (prime on option) is currently on the car. That's why I think your comparison with football is somehow not fair. If we are going to compare F1 to football it will go like this: not showing the 3 essential stats in F1 race all of the time is JUST LIKE not showing the essential stats for a football game all of the time. In soccer they are 1. Teams and result 2. The time remaining and which half it is. But soccer is not a good comparison, because it has just 2 essential stats. In NBA, NFL or MLB there are way more essential stats and all of them are displayed on the screen all of the time. In NFL they are even 7 !!! But I never ever heard of anyone watching all these sports resenting or complaining about showing too much information.



In this thread I already understood 2 very important things that I have never even thought about before and I want to share them with you hoping to see how you think about them.

The first thing is that there is just no logic in showing the gaps to the thousandths of a second (0.000) in a F1 race. In a qualifying it is essential, but in the race there's just no need at all for hundredths and thousandths of a second. When showing the gap between all the drivers (not only for two of them) a gap to the tenth of a second (0.0) is just perfectly enough.

The second thing is that I surprisingly found out that showing stats, for example: the gaps between all the drivers in a column layout is a much easier to be comprehended by the viewers way, instead of showing them in a row. Maybe that's why all the accountants, statisticians ... etc. are keeping and showing all the numbers in columns, not in rows. Somehow showing the stats in columns instead of rows is just more natural and easier way for the info to be comprehended by the viewer.

[flattyre]

I stand corrected! I can tell you what happened - I was trying to picture what the hoards of casual F1 fans would say about this. I didn't exactly do it in the best way. But, at the end of the day, casual fans are not the best target to set when designing a new TV display!

After looking at a picture of the current FOM display, I think that I'd forgotten just how messy it could be. Your ones, especially the second, do look much cleaner and more informative. And, of course, it solves the age-old problem of "how many pit stops has he done?!" I'd never even thought about how gaps are shown to 1/1000th of a second. They could still keep showing gaps in this fashion on the pop-up displays at the bottom, to keep an impression of accurate timing, but for the permanent displays 1/10th would be ideal.

[mariano]

For me, the bests graphics were 2008 and Australia 2014. Those were a masterclass about what information show and in what moment it had to be done.

As many people have said, "the key word here is simplicity".

Remember that a good graphic can turn a boring race into a good one.

[mariano]

I hate transparency and I love opaque texts. As said in F1 Technical forum, the rule to be followed here is “simplicity”. 2004-2008 version was my favourite one, and also Australia 2014 (they put all the differencies to the leader -gap- in an 8 group list).

2009 was a bit odd and unreadable, with a bit of transparency. Don’t like it very much.

2010 was fine in Bahrein and Australia, but could have been better if the low side bar was continuously moving sidewards to the left.

It is not nice, for me, to show a driver and then show it again in the next page (low side bar); that problem could be solved if the bar was dynamic as in 2008 and 2009.

Suggestion: pass only one “lap” of the low side bar each time it is showed (like in the 2008 Italian GP) and show varied data (as in the 2008 Australian GP).



My favourite graphic’s order is:

Australia 2014
2008
2006
2007
2005
2004
F1 Digital + (1999-2002)
1992-2003
2010
2009
2012
2013
2014
2011
2015