Tuesday, 03 November 2009

• Gamers Compete "For Real," From Home

   

  Gone are the days when virtual reality was actually distinguishable from real reality! In keeping with the current fad of blurring every line in existance, Real Time Race is creating a system that will allow gamers to race with real people. Not that this isn't what they have been doing since the advent of online racing games. No, remember, this is reality meeting virtual reality. The difference in this new system is that you sit at home and use a controller to go through the race track, while the people you are racing against are actually there on the track, in real cars. And the whole thing is televised.

  
  
  This is what the "game" looks like.

  The way the system works is right before a race, a specially equipped car runs through the race, recording and creating an interactive map of the track. This data is sent to your system, allowing you to race through the track yourself when the race actually begins from the cockpit of a virtual but real car. The whole thing is so "real" that it has a distinctly unreal feel to it.
  
  Not that I underestimate the common gamer, and not to downplay the difficulty of a racing video game.. but how is that fair? I mean, there's a bit of a difference between sitting at home and moving around a controller and sitting inside a car and driving through a track. Besides, why are we going through such a huge effort to stimulate this kind of thing? What happened to going out there and DOING it?
   
  Do you think this is a brilliant idea, or not so much?

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