If you were born in the eighties, you might remember playing an arcade driving game called the OutRun. Now, imaging playing the same game, but instead of being in an arcade, you are in a real moving vehicle.
Garnet Hertz, an informatics researcher from the University of California at Irvine came up with a mod that lets him live out his childhood dreams of playing a driving game using a real car.
This concept car is actually constructed using the OutRun arcade machine. It was modified with golf cart components so that it has the capability to move. It can only reach a maximum speed of 13 miles per hour, though, so don’t keep your hopes up. The console is fitted with a camera that feeds directly to the software that will augment the environment into OutRun’s 8-bit style.
The game emulates the surrounding environment, so as the road curves, so too does the game display’s rendering. One of the main reasons for this project was to make a real driving simulation, as most driving games become more realistic through better graphics. This concept car becomes more realistic as it uses real world driving tracks.
The OutRun concept was not built just for fun, though. Hertz claim that the OutRun project will help develop systems that will assist people with disabilities. Hertz and his fellow researchers said that they hope that their technology can be used to create augmented reality-based wheelchairs to help the disabled, or develop some video game based remedies for disabled gamers.
via: Gizmag
