Racing a Real Car While Wearing an Oculus VR Headset (wsj.com)

pbahra writes: In a race that fuses video-game technology and real world driving skill, two professional drivers, on two separate but identical tracks, have raced against each other — effectively blind — while wearing virtual reality headsets attached to their crash helmets. The drivers hurtled around the circuit in two identical 2015 V8 Ford Mustangs, trusting that what they were seeing on their Oculus Rift DK2 VR headsets was a true, real-time representation of how their cars were performing on the actual track. One of the main challenges: tracking the cars' exact positions as they sped around the track without the need for re-calibration. This was necessary so that an exact match could be achieved between what was happening on the physical track and its representation on the VR screens.

Comments

Re:A positive step

[gstoddart]

I would call real-time, high speed driving relying entirely on the VR is fairly impressive in terms of the quality of the system.

If they can navigate a real car around the track, networking people into a simulation is probably much easier.

It's fairly cool, and involved a lot of technology. It may end up just being a PR stunt, but such technology has a way of having someone say "hey, wait a minute, if I had one of those, I could ..."

I should think being able to do this and have it work means you are tracking the real car and the VR car exceedingly well ... which suddenly means there's probably lots of places where remote operation becomes possible.