So, this guy gutted an Outrun arcade cabinet, jammed it on a go-kart and, in the name of university research, assembled a contraption that drives 15 mph in the real world while displaying it as an 8-bit virtual one.
āIn terms of getting a video game cabinet to roll down the street, I havenāt seen it before,ā says the researcherās supervisor at the University of California-Irvine.
Yeah, thatās a given.
Meet Garnet Hertzās rolling video game, for lack of a better word, and Iām at a loss for how to describe it. Essentially, as you drive in the game, you also drive in the real world, but what youāre looking at ā if youāre looking at the screen anyway ā is the road course rendered as a driving game. Hertz got the idea after going to an arcade in 2008.
Not exactly practical as a video game, but as a proof-of-concept for other applications, it might have some legs. Hertz also drew inspiration from stories of people so focused on their GPS directions that they ended up driving into a river. So what heās working on ā the camera component anyway ā could function like a HUD overlay, both processing the surroundings while popping up visual information over it.
Thatās fine and dandy, but I just like the idea of a motorized arcade cabinet. You see one of those pull up next to you at the stoplight, no matter how fast it goes, I guarantee it gets a wide berth.
[Orange County Local News Network. Pic also by OCLNN.]
It Will Drive You Out of Your Mind: UCI Develops Rolling Video Game
