Your BMW's centre display, turned into a drift telemetry screen.
It runs on the car's own sensors and needs no extra hardware or coding. It scores every chain,
and the best ones go on a worldwide leaderboard.

Install  ·  Scoring  ·  Leaderboard  ·  FAQ

The drift angle comes straight from the car: yaw rate, lateral and longitudinal acceleration, the steering angle and all four wheel speeds. You see it while you hold it, with counter-steer, tyre slip front and rear, and how fast and how steady your transitions are. The chain builds at the top of the screen, and every clean transition pushes the multiplier further.

THE DIAL · 60° redline, peaks both ways

THE CHAIN · bonuses as you earn them

THE CAR · tyre slip, transitions

All time and this week: the top 20 drivers, and your own place among everyone beneath them, whether that is #4 or #12,345. Every ranked drift comes with its replay, so tap ▶ and see how it was done.

_{YOUR PLACE · always there under the top 20, however far down the world you are}

Every drift you bank is kept. Watch it from the chase camera, from above, or go freestyle: drag to orbit round the car and zoom with + and −, while it plays or paused.

Choose the format (16:9, 9:16 for stories, or 1:1), the camera, slow motion at the peak and the overlay. Then scan the code: your phone makes the video and saves it, and the link deletes itself.

EDIT · format, camera, slow motion, overlay

SCAN · made on your phone

Sideways picks the iDrive 7 or iDrive 8 design by itself from your car. Its five bodies (coupe, sedan, cabrio, roadster, SUV) are matched to your car's type. Every screen opens as a popup over the drive.

You need a BMW with an iDrive 7 (MGU) or iDrive 8 head unit, with root access and the MGU Store. For the leaderboard and the videos, the car needs internet: its own, or a phone hotspot.

1. In the Store: Settings → Add source, type jarnesence/mgu-apps, and choose Releases.
2. Install Sideways. Updates arrive by themselves.

Then drive a few normal corners: Sideways learns your car's signals, and once Calibrating is gone from the screen it is live.

By hand, with the idrive7-apps kit

Download sideways-<version>-kit.zip from Releases and unzip it into the kit as apps/sideways. Then python3 kit/tools/build.py sideways, and push it to the car the kit's way.

Drifting	angle ≥ 10° above 20 km/h. Points flow from angle × speed, more when the angle is held steady.
Chain	drifts link through transitions and short moments of grip (1.4 s of grace).
Multiplier	+0.5 every 2.5 s of drifting and on every clean transition, up to ×6.
Bonuses	Transition · Big angle (> 50° for 1 s) · Speed drift (> 80 km/h) · Long drift (each 6 s) · Smooth (3 s steady) · Full lock
Banked	when the grace runs out: points × multiplier. A spin (over 110°) or a stop loses the chain.
Ratings	Nice · Great 800 · Awesome 2,500 · Insane 6,000 · Legendary 12,000 · Godlike 25,000

• One driver per car. The account belongs to the car. Remove the app and install it again, and your name and drifts come back by themselves.
• Your name is yours. It is unique (in any case), and you can change it once a day.
• Only real drives count. Nobody can post drifts as you, and only drifts driven in a car reach the board.
• Nothing is lost. Drifts driven offline wait on the car and are sent later. Cheaters are banned.

Warning

Drift only on closed ground: a track day or a closed course. Sideways is an unofficial hobby project, not affiliated with or endorsed by BMW AG.

FAQ

Does it change anything in my car?

No. Sideways only reads signals the head unit already has. It codes nothing and writes nothing to any control unit.

What does it send, and to whom?

It sends your driver name and, for each banked drift, its numbers and its replay to the leaderboard. The replay holds the car's motion and the scoring at 15 Hz, in a local frame, with no GPS position. Your car is known only by an anonymous ID. There is no location, no contacts and no other vehicle data. The leaderboard runs on Cloudflare (EU database).

Does it work without internet?

Yes. The drift angle, the scoring, your history and the replays all work offline. The leaderboard and the video export need a connection, and drifts wait on the car until there is one.

Which cars?

Any BMW with an iDrive 7 (MGU) or iDrive 8 head unit that runs the community app platform. The drift angle needs the car's yaw rate, accelerations, steering angle and wheel speeds, which these head units have.

I found a bug / I have an idea

Open an issue. Say which car and head unit it is (for example G82, iDrive 7), and what you did and saw.

Building from source

./tools/make_kit_app.sh        # -> dist/sideways, the app folder for the kit

It needs Node.js and Python 3. The head unit runs Node 8, so the code keeps to what Node 8 has.

Licence

Sideways is free software under GPL-3.0-or-later (see LICENSE). Third-party parts:

• The renderer, mgu-render, is by Robert Nisipeanu and IterioDev (GPL).
• The font is Saira (SIL Open Font License 1.1).
• Third-party licences and credits: CREDITS.md.