- A few months ago I got an email from a company called Sparkmate.
They build prototypes.
If you, or your company, has an idea for a thing and the money to make it,
they will build that thing for you.
They said to me, "Tom, we've got a bit of spare time and want some publicity,
"do you have anything weird that you want built?"
So I looked through the long list of impractical projects
that are on my ideas board, and I realized that I could answer a question
that I've had since I was very young.
When I was a kid I watched a show called Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons.
It was a tale of good versus evil, the heroic agents of Spectrum
fighting against the Mysterons from Mars.
It was made with puppets, the hero character was indestructible,
which say brave narrative choice,
and most people remember one thing about it:
the weird decision to do big scene transitions like this.
[loud drumbeats, timed with video cuts]
Captain Scarlet was made in the '60s, rerun in the '90s,
and kids like the young version of me loved it.
It turns out decades old shows are still interesting
when you only have four TV channels and no internet.
Rewatching it as an adult for this video?
First, it's now in HD, so you can see the puppet strings,
and it is brutally violent for a kid's show.
In the first episode there's blood, death by gunshot,
and an alien replicant blowing himself up,
and the production didn't shy away from that
by cutting to a reaction shot of other characters.
The special effects team literally put explosives inside a puppet and blew it up.
Wholesome family kids' entertainment there.
And the plots often make no sense.
I try to summarize the alien plan from that first episode for this script,
and I just gave up. It makes no sense and it keeps changing.
No one in the entire episode, human or alien, acts in any rational way.
It's all just an excuse for cool action scenes and explosions.
And as a kid, I didn't notice any of the plot holes,
because there were cool action scenes and explosions.
Plus the futuristic vehicles.
The most famous of which was the Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle,
the SPV.
According to the lore of the show it weighs eight tons,
but also somehow floats.
Its top speed is 200 miles an hour, and it comes equipped with
rocket cannons, ejector seats, and a jet pack.
Almost every episode,
a Spectrum agent would arrive at some apparently normal location,
and an SPV would be revealed in an overdramatic way.
The team at Sparkmate have not made me an SPV.
I'd love to have one, but unfortunately this is reality,
but there's one other bizarre feature of this thing
that always stuck with me as a kid.
And it's introduced in that first episode by a couple of lines of dialogue
that show just how far voice acting in kid shows has improved since the '60s.
- I see you have expert ratings on SPVs.
[monotone] It must be tricky facing backwards and driving by TV monitor.
- Ah, you get used to it.
- You drive the SPV facing backwards using a screen.
In the show, the explanation for that is that it's safer.
If you're in a crash you stand a better chance of survival if you're facing backwards.
That's true.
There are real world studies that show that,
but from a production perspective, why would you do that?
It's not required for the plot.
It just looks confusing to have the background going the wrong way
and surely the characters would get motion sick
and confused by how everything's turning.
It's such a weird design choice. It even shows up on the toy versions.
If you open the doors here,
the little action figures are facing backwards.
Even as a kid, I thought, surely, that's not a good idea.
So Sparkmate have made me a go-kart that's driven backwards using a screen,
and that's literally all I know.
I gave them that brief, showed them Captain Scarlet episodes.
They said, "That sounds fun," and now I'm sitting in their office
in an industrial park on the outskirts of Paris
about to see the results for the first time,
so I can answer the question I've had since I was a kid.
You can't actually drive facing backwards. Right?
[loud drumbeats matching cuts]
Oh, wow.
- Hope you like it!
- This is the SPV, man!
- That's amazing.
So you have a whole television monitor there for all the details.
Is that a... is that a game controller? -Yes, it is.
- Actually the first test that we did was with this steering wheel and pedal,
and we decided to switch from a steering wheel to an Xbox game pad.
Why?
Because the challenge for us was to create a gamified experience
of driving a vehicle, just like in a video game somehow.
- And this camera... - Is what you're seeing in the front.
We even implemented some-- [honks horn]
- That is annoyingly loud and I love it.
I've got to remember the cart is facing this way.
Yes, let's take it out and see...
This feels way more dangerous all of a sudden!
I also appreciate that this has full harness seat belts.
I thought we were going to make a tiny little thing
that I'd sit on and it would go at low speed.
What's the top speed on this?
- In this area, we reached a 40km/h, but with a higher distance, wider field,
we could reach 50-something, for sure. - Wait. What's this for?
- This is a handbrake, emergency brake, because sometimes things can happen!
For example, if we lose control, or we just lose the controller.
Brake, and that would be fine. - So, low-speed test in the car park?
- Yes, that's fine. - High-speed test on the track later.
- Yes, go for that. - Let's do it.
- We thought about different positions, we even thought of driving
laid at the bottom of the cart, that was obviously a dangerous position,
so we went back to a backward seated position.
I would say it's just after some tests with our team trying
what's the most comfortable...
I would say we tried and we ended up here in this average position.
- There we go. Avoid... no, that's going for some cars.
I'm 100% aiming for some cars. Let's not do that.
I'm aiming for the trucks which are this way, here we go.
- It's a bit confusing at the beginning.
-Oh, it's really confusing, I don't like this!
-Try to be a bit slower at the beginning,
because that's a bit messing with your mind at first.
- Agreed! It really is.
- We actually used a very powerful motor,
a powerful servo motor to control the direction system.
We went through a lot of iterations and trials and error to configure the system.
Also on the mechanical part, how do we install it,
how do we control it so that it's smooth?
That was a tricky part, I would say, but once we had the propulsion system,
the direction system, then we were good to go to have fun.
- All right, let's go down the road. I got-- oh, that's too fast.
That's way too fast. I nearly went the wrong way.
I need to steer away from the van. I nearly steered into the van.
Got to remember the monitor-- - Keep your focus on the monitor.
- Whoa, that was a drain, I went straight over it!
Keep your focus on the monitor, the monitor is all that counts.
The minute I start thinking about the real world outside the monitor,
my brain misfires, I get left and right- oh, that was a speed bump-
I get left from right mixed up. - You're driving pretty well.
I'm very impressed. - Let's bring it to a stop just here.
It's possible, but for someone who hasn't played video games in 15, 20 years,
I can do a lap around here, it's just confusing to get used to it.
It's just confusing that the world is going one way,
but I have to focus everything on the screen.
- The visualization part, we did a lot of iterations,
we did a lot of tests, a lot of coding,
and as you can imagine, the main problem was latency.
We tried different things, but we always had to fight latency.
We thought about drones, VR, we ended up, I think the version that
we have right now is using WebRTC, from a web browser communicating
through sockets to Unreal Engine.
That's the most, I would say, advanced we went on the VR part.
- I asked the team for a steering wheel
and we have a hastily jerry-rigged steering wheel here,
because it's just a different type of controller.
I've spent way more time with one of these than I have with a game controller.
You all ready? All right, let's see how this...
Oh, that's nicer. Here we go. That's it. Yep, okay, focus on screen. Anyone coming?
No one coming.
We turn left out of here. Slowly here, slow. That's good.
You've got the sensitivity right now. That's it. Here we go. A bit of speed.
- Focus on the screen. - Oh!
- What I did there was I turned right when I should've turned left.
You're okay?
-Wow! We're just fine, man. We just avoided this steel thing.
- The good news is that the car works and it goes at speed.
-What happened? You were not focused on the screen, no?
- I was very focused on the screen, and all I needed to do was turn left,
and my brain turned right.
Wow, that's confusing.
Well, I hate to say "let's go to the track" on that,
but we should probably go to the track,
because I don't like the fact that we're doing this around cars now.
I've got lead foot. I was so confident.
- Fortunately, nothing bad happened. - You built a strong kart there.
- We just bumped, we got scared, and that's it.
That's life. - You built a strong kart, we're fine.
Let's go to the track.
[loud drumbeats, matching cuts]
Power on, lights on, little bit of acceleration.
There we go. That is twitchy. We're fine.
Concentrate on the screen, Tom, concentrate on the screen.
Make it around the track. There we go, there we go.
Good.
Little bit of straight here, line it up there.
This is working.
That's a little bit off course. We're okay, we're good.
Now we're on the straight.
Floor it, let's see what this thing can do.
Whoa! Okay. That's fine, that's fine, that's fine.
Brake.
Yes, and right around here.
Brake into the corner.
Wow, that's a strong left turn.
That was a strong left turn, but I went the right way.
The correct way.
I didn't go the right way, I went the correct way.
Nearly.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but it works!
I was expecting to get motion sick. I was expecting to fall over.
I was expecting it to be like "this old puppet show was terrible".
Yes, you can absolutely drive like that.
My problems were sight lines and not being used to the controls,
and this being a quickly jerry-rigged wheel.
- Are you saying that cars should be like this?
- I'm not saying it's an improvement on driving forwards,
but if I'd crashed, I would've been safer!
[laughs] It works. Thank you, folks.
We've answered a question I had for 25 years!
Thank you.