Porsche Virtual Roads: this is how you can transfer your favourite roads to video games

If you have ever played some of the many driving video games on the market, you have surely wondered what it would be like to drive your favourite car on the roads you know best in real life. Now, transferring those roads into a video game is getting closer, thanks to the Virtual Roads project that Porsche is carrying out together with the Swiss company Way Ahead Technologies.

And the biggest advantage is that, unlike complex video game development, where including a circuit requires a sophisticated scanning and digitisation process, Virtual Roads will allow users to record any route while driving, using their mobile phone and a specific app.

All you need to do is place the phone on a holder so that it can record images of the route, and a specific software will convert the road footage into a 3D environment, a process that takes less than one per cent of the time needed when using laser digitisation.

Drive virtually a Porsche on the route you imagine

The specific software for this project relies on artificial intelligence to record the data of a route and its entire environment, including barriers, trees, signs… All the features of the route are reproduced in digital 3D format, always respecting the privacy of other road users.

Each route generated with this new app creates a single file that would be compatible with current racing video games on different platforms. In addition, the routes can be used in any driving simulator equipped with the appropriate hardware, and even on a smartphone. Drivers will be able to choose to virtually drive Porsche models along these routes, and the video game will take into account not only the characteristics of the route but also those of the chosen model.

A technology that, according to its developers, can digitise routes and create virtual road sections up to 8 km long in less than an hour. The idea is that, in the future, data from the vehicle’s sensors that record lateral acceleration or control chassis dynamics could also be used to deliver increasingly realistic virtual driving sensations.

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