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Nissan and Microsoft Create Videogame Car
pnewhook writes "The Register reports that Microsoft and Nissan have created the first integrated gaming system within a vehicle. Not just in the vehicle, but the vehicle becomes part of the gaming system. From the article: "Conceived by Nissan Design America Inc. (NDA) and equipped with the Xbox 360 next-generation video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, the Nissan URGE concept car allows drivers (while parked) to play 'Project Gotham Racing 3' using the car's own steering wheel, gas pedal and brake pedal while viewing the game on a flip-down seven-inch LCD screen," Nissan and Microsoft said in a statement."
What happens when a child decides to play the car game by themselves ?
Seems like lawsuit heaven in the making.
How long before someone finds a way around that?
This is so dangerous. People who play good racing games and leave to take their car, will so quickly think they are back in their game and speed up. This has happenend to a good friend of mine. Never had a speeding ticket... plays one long session of Gotham racing. Heads home... and get's his driving license suspended due to his speed.
They'd acuse the makers of trying to entice real-world drivers to speed, by supplying them with a "photorealistic" race experience through real world streets, which then entice the driver to perform along the same streets (as in the articles New York example.)
In Australia (home country warning) it's against advertising regulations to sells cars by showing how fast/aggressive they can drive. (Which is common-sense as you can never legally drive them like that on our bodgey streets.)
If this were for sale for real, I'd say it was asking for a lawsuit.
Think Deeply.
This is a cool car to have if you love racing/driving games, because you've got a car that you'd need to have anyway, plus the most awesome driving game controller. I don't know about you, but a wheel clamped to my desk and a block with pedals on it while sitting in a swivel chair doesn't quite do it. Here you totally feel like being in a car because you really are in one. Next thing to do with this would be to have it so the windows could actually go opaque with a 360 display of the game environment. Maybe it could watch your head move too, and adjust the view accordingly, to give the illusion of depth more realism...
I see a major problem with this scenario though. If the game's physics allow a handicap for lesser driving skill, you could get yourself into trouble with muscle memory. Game on. You're in your car, experiencing speeding down a winding mountain road, pulling sharp curves at high speed and everything's going just fine. You used to crash a lot on this course but you've got it down now, good. Turn off the game, all you've done is switched perceptions of realities. You start driving again, but now real physics are involved. You're still at the same set of controls. You've 'learned' what those controls can do, everything still feels the same way to you in most ways. You feel that you 'know' what this vehicle is capable of. This is potentially a huge problem. A shame, because it would be so cool to have a car like that.
The game would have to strive to be as realistic as possible, tied into what that car is really capable of, tire wear and all, anticipating every possible stress and vector and appropriate consequences, with no 'beginner' setting of any kind. Otherwise you'd safely be able to learn some pretty dangerous habits.
It's electrical, and therefore can be modified. I can't imagine a reasonable scenario in which both cannot be controlled at the same time, given the right (fairly simple, seeing as it is electrical) modifications.
On the other hand, I'm not too worried about people modifying it to play while driving. You can modify your car not to beep when your selt belt is off (assuming you have this feature), but not a lot of people do this. Why? Because (a) it takes time, and (b) it is dumb. Most people are going to get caught by these two hindrances when it comes to any sort of modification to play and drive at the same time.
What I am worried about, however, is people playing this game for a couple hours while their kid has soccer practice or whatever, and then driving around on real streets. While we all like to pretend video games don't affect reality, the truth is that our brains take time to switch from one scenario to another. I've experienced it, and I'm sure others have as well. Who left the theater after seeing Gone in 60 Seconds or The Fast and the Furious and didn't drive at least a bit more dangeriously than they normally would have?
This doesn't mean people are suddenly going to be racing down streets as if in a video game, but that urge to drive just a little faster, take that turn just a little sharper, etc. etc. etc. -- that urge is going to be a lot fresher and more tempting if you go driving directly after playing the game, and more importantly, in the the exact same environment in which you just played the game.
The killer app for this is to create a functional DUI test for the car. You pass, you drive, you get lower insurance rates and a higher barrier to conviction if you get pulled over and your BAC is over the legal limit. This will likely get rolled out for truckers too.
Windows CE is actually a fairly reliable true-Real-Time OS. To be honest with you, I don't know what I'd rather drive -- a car with an open source RTOS written by dudes on the internet, or a car with a corporate RTOS written by a billion dollar corporate entity. Tough call when your life is on the line.
This is something that most geeks would think quite cool, but because Microsoft is involved, this thread is filled with negative comments. Oh, it's too dangerous!! Good grief...
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000