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Show HN: A stop-motion video of an engine
- ryandetzel 9y agoWait, this course is only $20? This seems like a lot of content for $20... Really great video too
- rwieruch 9y agoI thought the same. I guess you could charge way more for this kind of content. Great work!
- AlexMuir 9y agoIt's not finished yet! Maybe when it's finished I could charge more but at the moment I'm happy if I can just recoup some of the production costs each week.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- perilunar 9y agoNice!
- AlexMuir 9y agoIt took 2,500 photos and 4 days to shoot, followed by about 8 days of photoshopping & grading.
- Stratoscope 9y agoReally nice work! How did you do the shots where the cassette tape and the engine parts are moving around in the air?
- AlexMuir 9y agoString. Coat hangers. Bits of wire. Sticks as fishing rods. We tried various ways and in the end I mainly used some conductive cotton thread that I bought from Adafruit ages ago. It was strong enough to take a lot of weight, but nice and thin too. For the heavy stuff I just had to hold it and then photoshop my legs and arms out.
- Stratoscope 9y agoThat is really great - I never would have guessed how you did it. > photoshop my legs and arms out This reminds me of the first time I saw Forrest Gump. For some reason I didn't know who Gary Sinise was, and all through the movie I thought the actor playing Lt. Dan actually was a double amputee. And in the flashback scene that showed him walking, I marveled at how they were able to fit him with artificial legs that let him walk so naturally! http://articles.latimes.com/1994-07-10/entertainment/ca-14048_1_gary-sinise http://articles.latimes.com/1994-07-10/entertainment/ca-1404...
- tome 9y ago> And in the flashback scene that showed him walking, I marveled at how they were able to fit him with artificial legs that let him walk so naturally! They filmed that scene first then chopped off his legs and filmed the bits that came "before".
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- igravious 9y agoAbsolutely superb. The patience involved, that's what I can't get over about stop-motion animation – the ability to see the big picture while you're inching along frame by frame. Incredible job, it really is. May as well put this here because it popped into my mind while watching your piece. You know, if we do move as a society from the internal combustion engine to the electric drive train something of great beauty, mechanical logic, and engineering prowess will have been lost. Sort of humbling to think that these may only exist in the museums and enthusiast workshops of tomorrow. Kind of like steam engines today, see here: http://www.isvrally.com/ http://www.isvrally.com/ for a local example – “Innishannon Steam & Vintage Rally”
- jacquesm 9y agoBeautiful! Are you planning on rebuilding it? Another shoot? Is there a reason you don't mark the parts original location or is that simply because you intend to replace them?
- AlexMuir 9y agoThe honest truth: This whole car is headed for the scrapyard at the end because it's not worth the extra time ($$$ per hour) while we film to mark parts, directions, alignments etc. I mark things when there's time. We're also modeling the whole thing in 3D and I'm sure the guys doing that will be mixing the bolts and fixings up. I'm kind of interested in how well it runs after this reckless teardown and rebuild.
- rl3 9y ago>We're also modeling the whole thing in 3D ... Can you elaborate on the process for this? I'm curious what software you're using, how many modelers you have, and if you're using 3D scanning equipment. Modeling everything by hand has to be unimaginably laborious. Incredible work by the way, you've already sold me as a customer. :)
- AlexMuir 9y agoWe're making it all by hand because it needs to be relatively low poly for the app and website :) I'll write about the process when we've figured it out completely. I'd say we are about 70% done on the modeling. Rigging and animating is a whole other animal. This was the state of the engine a few days ago - all internals are done. https://twitter.com/howacarworks/status/895417122385481728 https://twitter.com/howacarworks/status/895417122385481728
- rl3 9y agoVery nice. In that case, I suppose the most utility 3D scans would have is as references to enable a faster low-poly modeling workflow. Then again, scanning would likely incur a non-trivial time cost—one that can't outweigh the very benefits the process affords.
- dsfyu404ed 9y agoYou could've cut filming time in half or doubled it if you had chosen a different engine.
- jacquesm 9y agoThat would have required picking a different car to start with.
- dsfyu404ed 9y agoFord v10 would have about the same amount of stuff per cylinder but 2.5x as many cylinders. SOHC I4 from a "manual everything" economy car with 1st gen EFI would probably be about the lowest part count without getting into flathead territory.
- jacquesm 9y ago2 stroke Wartburg or Trabant.
- edpichler 9y agoYou owns the course or you just did the stop-motion?
- rosbrith 9y agoI love the style, which to me was reminiscent of a demoscene production. It put me in mind of this one from a few years back: http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=50105 http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=50105
- userbinator 9y agoGood to see I'm not the only one who thought it was very demoscene-ish. In fact if you were to say the first 30 seconds or so were CGI, I'd probably be convinced.
- jonahx 9y agoAlex, beautiful work. What kind equipment does one need to do stop-motion pictures? How did you learn about the process?
- AlexMuir 9y agoJust a DSLR really - the camera guy for this used a Panasonic GH5. It's more photography than video. But a couple of lights that you can position for a subject like this make a huge difference.
- Spacemolte 9y agoWow, that was really awesome, great work! A small piece of critique, the last part of the video was really garbled/messy? and i kept trying to focus on the car parts, but was unable to due to it jumping around etc. So that part messed a bit with my eyes.
- wintersFright 9y agoagree - couldn't watch the pitch part as it was just too much noise stop motion part was impressive though
- AlexMuir 9y agoSorry. The last part is too strong. I take full blame for it - I made it myself on Friday night because I wanted to get this out before it burned up more of my time and limited budget. I couldn't face another week of delays while the end was put together so I just bunged a few videohive templates together and went for it. I will redo it on Vimeo because I can replace the video there, but sadly it's now permanent on Youtube and Facebook I think. (This is one reason why I'm running Youtube through my own site - I can upload a new version and anyone hitting this link in the future hopefully won't be forced into a seizure.)
- Gabriel_Martin 9y agoyeah I was going to comment on the accessibility piece. Never thought I'd be one to say this, but since my job has changed recently, I'm empathizing with people who could be affected by this much more.
- bhudman 9y agoWow. I imagined it took tons of patients (well - 4 days worth). Amazing.
- sharpercoder 9y agoGreat video! Really enjoyed watching it. Great lighting. Towards the end, the images get flashy (don't do this please filmmakers, it makes my head hurt).
- mschuster91 9y agoThat's just awesome. Back when I had a VW bus, I disassembled it and did most maintenance myself - but never down to THAT level of detail. Especially, I had to spend around 40 bucks on new screws because I misplaced the old ones (or they broke off due to old age)
- Dowwie 9y agoThis is beautiful. Love the synthwave soundtrack :) Where is the Reddit post of this? You're going to front page, for sure.
- AlexMuir 9y agoI'd never even heard of synthwave before I did spent 5 hours on Audio Jungle trying to find good music for this video. Now it's all I listen to while I'm coding.
- Dowwie 9y agocheck these out :) 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px9-TEHjUbA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px9-TEHjUbA 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kF7u3tWlns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kF7u3tWlns
- ddorian43 9y agoMirror for Backbone of the night: https://dadmusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-construct https://dadmusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-construct
- ddorian43 9y agoYou have subreddits, youtube channels and facebook groups where you can find new music.
- AceJohnny2 9y agoI was confused initially, thought I had left my usual synthwave radios on. :) May I add to the recommendations below: 1) Makeup and Vanity Set (MaVS) https://makeupandvanityset.bandcamp.com https://makeupandvanityset.bandcamp.com Still my favorite composer, a couple years after discovering the genre, thanks to his richness and variety. Where other composers start to blend into the same 80s synth mush, MaVS manages to keep it interesting for me. Hard to recommend just one title, but maybe Stalker from the album Wavehymnal 2) Bourgeoisie - Space Tapes and Vice album https://bourgeoisie.bandcamp.com/album/space-tapes-and-vice-2 https://bourgeoisie.bandcamp.com/album/space-tapes-and-vice-... 3) Ogre Sound - 195 album https://ogresound.bandcamp.com/album/195 https://ogresound.bandcamp.com/album/195 Features a track titled "Revengeance Overcharge" for that 110% 80s satire. 4) Le Matos - Join Us album https://lematos.bandcamp.com/album/join-us https://lematos.bandcamp.com/album/join-us 5) There'd be tons more, but really Google Music's "Makeup and Vanity Set" auto-radio is gold.
- laurencei 9y agoIMO what is really clever about this is that it is a "sales" video - except you dont realise you are being sold to until the end, by which time you've enjoyed the video so much, the pitch at the end is reasonable. And you've shown what the value is long before I asked myself the question "how much" - which I usually ask early in the process - but not here. At least that is how I found it... great work. Would be interesting to see conversion figures for something like this.
- AlexMuir 9y agoI can't really share conversion stuff yet. But one interesting observation off the top of my head is that my customers MASSIVELY prefer paying with Paypal to Stripe, even though I deliberately steer them towards Stripe. It was a massive pain to implement Paypal and I hated every moment of it but it produced an uptick in payments.
- sleavey 9y agoNote the typo on your sales page at https://www.howacarworks.com/video-course#intro https://www.howacarworks.com/video-course#intro: "We're taaking a Mazda MX5 Miata to pieces"
- AlexMuir 9y agoThanks, fixed ready for next deploy :)
- tome 9y ago> customers MASSIVELY prefer paying with Paypal to Stripe That's interesting. Do you have a theory about why that is?
- necula 9y agoI just paid for this using Paypal. I prefer paying straight from my bank account rather than using a credit card. My debit card (Dutch pin card) cannot be used for online payments, but Paypal is connected to my bank account. Is Stripe able to do something similar?
- awongh 9y agoVery cool. The motorcycle equivalent is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkHJuU01-Wk&index=43&list=PL8SLiVEQM9KNBccNx4p2W9W5ggKPFy30w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkHJuU01-Wk&index=43&list=PL... I watched about 3/4 of these ^^ videos, really learned a lot about how a combustion engine works.
- monorepoman 9y agoI always kinda liked this one of a motorcycle engine with one end cut off. You can see how the valves work, and how they are designed to rotate under load, to even out the valve seat wear. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8hqoE1_7bA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8hqoE1_7bA
- radiorental 9y agoInspired by this viral video from a few years back perhaps? https://youtu.be/daVDrGsaDME https://youtu.be/daVDrGsaDME
- AlexMuir 9y agoAbsolutely :) There's a great porsche one too, and the most crazy of all is this one where they literally used an angle-grinder to erase a bike engine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CqeOXqtNxk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CqeOXqtNxk I can only imagine the amount of dust that created.
- burntwater 9y agoAs a hearing-impaired person, I just wanted to thank you for clearly mentioning that it's subtitled. That shows it's more than just an afterthought, and seals the deal for me!
- AlexMuir 9y agoI don't understand why everyone wouldn't subtitle their content. I used rev.com and it costs $1 per minute and the results are great. So to subtitle three hours cost $240. With many non-native English speakers as customers it is a no-brainer. It's good to hear this too, because the text in that box originally said 'Filmed in 4K' and I only changed it to 'Fully subtitled' at the last moment.
- bitJericho 9y agoThey probably should. It seems to be required by law (in the US) in a lot of situations.
- cpr 9y agoGreat to know about them. But their web site says $7.50/minute for subtitling, $1 for transcriptions. Still may be quite reasonable to extend video reach that much.
- sametmax 9y agoBecause it's lot of work. Like everything, it depends of the investment vs reward, unless you are driven by virtue.
- nxc18 9y agoI came from a school with a large Hard of Hearing population... I've really come to appreciate captioning on all videos. Mainly I just don't like listening to people say things very much, most videos have super annoying soundtracks and effects or other distortion, and really reading is just as effective. Have captions on your video for everyone, not just the deaf people in your audience (unless you just really love the sound of your own voice so much that you want to force other people to suffer through it).
- d-roo 9y agoReally cool idea but my eyes actually hurt watching the end though and had to stop the video.
- jweather 9y agoAgreed, the glitch effects were a bit overdone on the second half. Looks like incredibly high-quality content, though. I'm seriously tempted even though I'm not a petrol-head and have trouble changing turn signal lamps without breaking anything.
- pmarreck 9y agoThe raw complexity here is astounding. Something something electric motors are far simpler. ;)
- AlexMuir 9y agoYou know what I discovered doing this! It looks more complex but there's not much chemistry or invisible magic here. It's all pieces of shaped metal that fit together and move when a piston is pushed down. In an electric car you've got chemistry that you can't see or feel, magnetic fields that are invisible and electron flow that is hidden.
- jordache 9y agobut energy waves is also within the law of physics.. they just work. My $5 coke can RC car works on the same idea as a tesla.
- pmarreck 9y agoYou're right! And that's why it's cool. It's tactile. Always loved mechanical things (and now am a programmer). The first mechanical thing I loved was the differential gear! More people should understand mechanical cleverness.
- Fifer82 9y agoIt stresses me out, I imagine being left with a few dozen spare pieces at the end.
- vincnetas 9y agoId say electric car is subset of internal combustion, as you also have battery and generator to run that conbustion engine ;)
- westmeal 9y agoThe sound design was excellent! Well done.
- catshirt 9y agodang. this is so awesome. really makes the machine feel so much more accessible. and your ad is one of the best i've seen since MasterClass ads in my Facebook feed. i felt like the ad was basically free content. i was learning!
- alkz 9y agoshut up and take my money! :)
- inthewoods 9y agoWhat I found surprising about the video was that it made an engine seem, somehow, less complex and daunting. I'm sure that's a bit of an illusion created by the way the engine is taken apart (and the fact that it's not in a car and therefore you can rotate it as you need it, etc), but amazing work.
- InitialLastName 9y agoFor me it confirmed that the basic things I'd learned from Car Mechanic Simulator were relatively valid... I've never even changed the oil on a real car, but I could name most of the parts in that video.
- TheOtherHobbes 9y agoWow. That was superb.
- peoplee 9y agoFor someone like me who spent hours watching engine videos on youtube, this was an instant buy. Well done!
- bitL 9y agoWonderful! How did you make those flying parts? Photoshopping out the holders?
- AlexMuir 9y agoexactly. A lot of masking :)
- edpichler 9y agoWhat a beautiful work, very satisfying to watch this introduction, as people commented, just at the end you realize it's a promotional video of the course, and not just a piece of art.
- j-me 9y agoVery cool video! Purchased. I'm really interested in seeing where you go with the 3D modeling. As a coder/DIY mechanic (one of many I'm sure), I'm pretty psyched by how this tech could be used. I also want to say that I appreciate your price point. I think it's at a good point where it might be less than the potential value of the product, but attracts those who would otherwise dropout of purchase or seek other means to obtain the media.
- gr3yh47 9y agothis is cool but i had to leave part way through the main video. it gives me anxiety thinking about getting all those parts back together without loosing a screw or messing something up.
- Practicality 9y agoRight. As someone who has torn apart an engine before I was constantly thinking "where are those parts going?" "Are they just throwing them on the floor?"
- mod 9y agoHe bags & tags them, calm your anxiety guys.
- mrspeaker 9y agoI've been meaning to play the hilarious-looking "My Summer Car" (http://www.amistech.com/msc/ http://www.amistech.com/msc/) recently as I have been hankering to learn about engines... perhaps it's wise to do the video course first!
- AlexMuir 9y agoHow have I never seen this before!!
- noonespecial 9y agoTop notch! It looks so easy! But you forgot the part where you spend an hour banging, cursing, and blasting that one bolt with a torch because it. just. will. not. budge, only to have it snap off and realize you're going to spend tomorrow drilling it out and tapping that hole...
- jacquesm 9y agoWD40 and an overnight soak... Force will always get you broken bolts. Corollary: No amount of force or increase in cutting speed will substitute for bad planning. (from my metal working guru friend)
- damnfine 9y agoEven better than WD40 (which sucks as everything equally) is a mix of ATF and Acetone for stuck bolts. From the store, pb blaster is the best. Wd40 stands for Water Displacer, it is not the formula our fathers knew. They would have used wax and a torch or wintergreen oil anyway.
- cr0sh 9y agoIf for some reason you don't have some ATF and acetone lying around, Kroil is the next best thing.
- resolaibohp 9y agoI am convinced from my experiences doing DIY auto repair that the jobs themselves are all fairly simple, it is dealing with stuck bolts and bolts that are hard to get to which turn the job into hours of work and frustration.
- cmrdporcupine 9y agoYeah and putting one's body in poses and positions that are painful for someone who is accustomed mainly to sitting down in front of a computer all day. I discovered after buying my little hobby farm that mechanical stuff hurts me. I have injured myself all sorts of ways I didn't expect. Also in meatspace you can't hit 'undo' or 'git reset --hard' .. I hate that :-)
- tambourine_man 9y agoCongratulations, I can imagine the amount of work that went into making it. I like to take things apart, and it made me a bit nervous, as each piece was separated, that I would never be able to put it back together :)
- martin-adams 9y agoVery nice indeed. If you liked this video, you may also like this rebuild of an engine over 11 months. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daVDrGsaDME https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daVDrGsaDME
- nimrody 9y agoBeautiful work! It's nice to see something that was designed with maintainability in mind. Designed to be disassembled, repaired and re-assembled later. Impressive engineering. So different from most consumer products sold today which never use screws and are not designed for repairing. If it breaks down you're expected to buy a new one...
- ajross 9y agoTrue, though this cuts both ways: a similar teardown of the motive system of a Tesla would be like 8 or 9 seconds. Some fixed magnets, wire, a single speed gearbox, that's it. Internal combustion engines may be designed for maintainability, but they have a much harder problem to solve to actually achieve successful maintenance.
- damnfine 9y agoYet, my ICE is cheaper to repair than an out of warrany tesla.
- cr0sh 9y agoEngines are much easier to work on when they aren't in a car. It's when you have to work on them in the car (especially modern cars) that it gets tricky - or sometimes impossible (there are cars where certain parts on the engine are virtually impossible to remove, because the engine was assembled and installed before the body was fitted over things - usually, the only way to fix these is either to remove the body (virtually impossible for the diy'er), or by tearing half the car apart just to get to the part (and praying you can get it all back together afterward - without any extra parts left over!)...
- alexwebb2 9y agoThis is neat, but based on the title, I thought this was going to be a bit more informative about _how_ engines work, and how each subprocess contributes toward the end goal. What I saw instead was a subset of subprocesses in isolation from each other, presented in an admittedly artistic fashion. It's impressive, and maybe the purpose is more to whet one's appetite for more information rather than be informative in itself, but that's not really what I was expecting or hoping for.
- jimbokun 9y agoYeah, it's an ad. A pretty effective one, though, I think.
- anandsuresh 9y agoMade me hit "Subscribe" on YouTube. :) Looking forward to checking out the full series.
- Rodd45 9y agoMade me subscribed either. Funny we will be working with an MX5 Miata soon. Can't wait to watch the tutorial. In the meantime, we need to decide which new tonneau covers on the market are best against water leak (I personally like those retractable ones featured here: http://4wheelonline.com/tonneau-covers.222468 http://4wheelonline.com/tonneau-covers.222468)
- roceasta 9y agoPoint taken that explanations are more important than descriptions but really there are thousands of places that explain the principles of how the internal combustion engine works. This is the first time I've seen an engine physically taken apart so I can see roughly what goes where. I'm reminded of 'Danny The Champion of the World' who, at the age of seven, could take a small engine to pieces, and put it back together again. Pistons, crankshaft and all.
- 9y ago
- kerbalspacepro 9y agoI don't want to sound like a fake commenter, but this somehow sold me on the course concept even though the part of a car I least car(e) about is the ICE.
- aerovistae 9y agoThe foley on that video must have taken some time.
- LeonM 9y agoReally nice work! I did have a slight giggle when the promo at the end says you explain everything about 'modern cars', while you are working on a car introduced 27 years ago. Of course I understand that disassembling a new car does not make financial sense, I'm not trying to be negative here.
- AlexMuir 9y agoI completely agree. This was basically the best choice of car that I could afford to buy and effectively sacrifice to the course (the steering rack, the wingmirror motors - it's all in pieces being modeled) I'd love to do it again with Harley!
- NIL8 9y agoGreat job! I wish there were sites like this for more... things.
- teh_klev 9y agoThis was originally a "Show HN": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4974055 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4974055 And this was Alex's follow-up a year on: https://www.howacarworks.com/a-year-on https://www.howacarworks.com/a-year-on Very well done Alex!
- AlexMuir 9y agoThanks - that seems an incredibly long time ago. When responsive design was noteworthy!
- AlexMuir 9y agoOT: Youtube hasn't tracked a single view from this being embedded on the site. Does anyone know if Youtube doesn't count embedded views?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- matt_wulfeck 9y agoVery cool. It's amazing how complex the combustion engine seems, especially compared to an electric motor. No wonder cars have a limited lifetime of typically some 150-200k miles. It's going to be really interesting to our purchasing and maintenance patterns for EVs.
- creeble 9y agoJust re-commenting from above: my Mazda Protege (with the same engine shown in the video) has 233k and is still going strong, doesn't burn barely a drop of oil. Pretty amazing for a 20-year old car.
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago>Mazda Protege I think you misspelled Ford Escort. Speaking of which, trying to buy a Ford Escort on CList can result in some very ambiguous text messages. Edit: Thanks for the down-votes. Please read the Wikipedia page on the Escort and Protege. They use the same platform from the 90s onward which was the time when Ford and Mazda collaborated on a lot of stuff. Both flavors of the platform have their pros and cons.
- mod 9y agoMine's at 291,600 as of a 200-mile trip last night. Runs like a top! FYI Chevy trucks sell all the time in my area for good (high) prices with 200k+ miles on them. People don't seem to doubt they'll keep running. I think many modern engine styles can achieve that, but lack of maintenance does a lot of damage, and most people aren't very good at maintenance. (Me included!)
- Pulcinella 9y agoEhh modern engines are pretty reliable. They can easily do over 200k miles. The actual combustion part is basically a solved problem. Modern fuel injection (amongst other things) has done wonders for engine reliability. It's usually other things that cause people to want to ditch cars around 150-200 k. E.g. the automatic transmission failing, timing belt (instead of a chain) failing around 100k, alternator and other electronics, pumps, etc.
- kazinator 9y agoVery nice; and playful. How some of it is done is not obvious, like the pistons "taking off" out of the cylinders without the support mechanism for taking the shots being obvious. Nice tip of the hat to Luxo Jr. at the end there.
- vincnetas 9y agoAnd the first thing i thought when seeing this: and thats why electric motor is the future.
- creeble 9y agoIt's so true, isn't it? But we've got a pretty long way to go. Mazda, whose Z5 engine is being disassembled in the video is introducing a compression ignition gasoline engine in 2019 with claimed 20-30% efficiency benefits! We'll see how that actually holds up in practice.
- cr0sh 9y agoElectric cars will only be the future if the battery technology gets much, much better. Pound for pound, the energy density of the best available lithium battery chemistry comes no where close to that of gasoline. Given how we've seen how lithium-based batteries like to die in catastrophic ways, I am not sure I would like to have a battery with the same energy density as gasoline. So it's a question not just of density, but safety. On top of all that, the batteries need to be able to be charged quickly; 10 minutes to a full charge is probably the upper limit, 5 minutes would be ideal. But that would take a massive upgrade of electrical infrastructure, and I am also not sure you could make such a charger friendly for use by a consumer (not the safety aspect - more the handling aspect, as the conductors for carrying the current will likely have to be somewhat hefty). There's also the fact that chargers would also need to be standardized (that's an industry thing, though - and if things work out for electric motors and batteries, I am sure a standard would come about). But first and foremost is the battery tech, unless we want to say that, to go long distances (4-500 miles per charge), you need to use an IC engine in some manner (even as a hybrid), but shorter "in town" distances (which I agree, most people only do) can be handled by electrics. That said, until a low-cost, real off-road vehicle becomes available as an electric (and I mean it has to be affordable for a regular person, not some $60-100k fantasy vehicle, which is mainly what is on the drawing board right now), I'm not very interested. But I'm not everyone, of course. I'm just not a "car guy" - I like my vehicles to be trucks or jeeps...
- lucaspottersky 9y agonice ad. however, the tech side doesn't seem to have received as much love. #1 PayPal returned me to an invalid URL after finishing the payment #2 I've paid & logged in, nevertheless the website still shows me links to "buy the course".
- AlexMuir 9y agoSorry to hear this - when you say the website shows you links, do you mean the app? There is a bug that I'm aware of that is pending submission for approval to Apple. I will check the Paypal return right now. Feel free to email me - info@howacarworks.com but I'll find your order and get onto you right now.
- AlexMuir 9y agoI can't deduce your order from your HN name so please do email me.
- creeble 9y agoFantastic video, and timely -- just spent a few days cursing at a Mazda Z5 engine (in a 97 Protege) myself! Really, it's a pretty great engine, but with 233k miles a little grumpy.
- subpixel 9y agoKudos for sticking with this project, which has not made you a ton of money overnight, since at least 2012. I don't mean to underplay the work involved in programming and marketing this project, but just not giving up is perhaps the hardest part of things like this.
- jacquesm 9y agoAny success, ever will have had a period of simply not giving up and continuing until it works. Overnight successes more often than not are years of hard work under the radar.
- cdnsteve 9y agoAll the visual effects starting a 2:03 nearly made me sick, literally. The actual content was great.
- rootsudo 9y agoNice! A Mazda Miata Engine!
- chaostheory 9y agoI really like the parallaxed, knolled layout of a car's parts that you did for your ad for your 'Ultimate Video Course' (middle of https://www.howacarworks.com/basics/the-engine https://www.howacarworks.com/basics/the-engine). How long did that take to finish?
- nichochar 9y agoThis is impressive marketing, I purchased the class, am happy about it, AND liked the way it was marketed to me.
- otto_ortega 9y agoCongratulations! This is a really nice project, it seems to have the right combination between real knowledge about the car and audio-visual effects to keep people engaged. I just subscribed to the video course and I can see the preorder offer is a no brainer, skimming through the PDF provided I can see there is enough value on it to easily make it worth the $20 by itself. So as a suggestion: Highlight the PDF and its content on the preorder page, there is only one mention about it but it doesn't specify its contents.
- jcoletti 9y agoVery cool, well-shot video. As others have said, I was more interested in a detailed explanation of the inner-workings. After finishing the video and exploring others, I found my way to the video course preorder page. $20 paid! Great concept, best of luck. Plan to start watching this weekend.
- kikkoman23 9y agoPretty cool. Learning more about cars is something I need to definitely brush up on, especially when it comes to things under the hood.
- lordshiny 9y agoWas sold almost immediately. Beautiful work!
- dave7 9y agoThis looks awesome! How is the course delivered? Downloadable or streaming only? Can I watch it on Linux?
- santix 9y agoI was wondering that too. (I was happy to see that the demo videos are HTML5, though.)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- aembleton 9y agoJust £16! I've pre-ordered, that's a bargain.
- kodeninja 9y agoThis looks AWESOME, @alexmuir! Preordered :)!
- du_bing 9y agoReal cool!
- pg1 9y agoReally awesome stuff. Thanks for you hard work!
- pg1 9y agoBTW: Did the car came from Hungary? I saw you found 2000 HUF. :)
- srikz 9y agoIt reminds of the time I spent with Car Mechanic Simulator. A nice 'fun' game on Steam if you like stuff like this. I have the 2015 version and there seems to be a new one out now (2018 version) but the reviews warn about the many bugs
- dmurthy 9y agoWish something similar is made for an electric car since it is the future.