One man’s quest to turn a video game into a real drive.
Toe in to a new car’s throttle, and you’re asking a computer to send air and fuel into the engine. Computers mediate braking and steering and almost always decide when the transmission should shift gears. Cars are evolving into video games.
So, why not make a video game into a car? Specifically, give a vintage-1986 Sega OutRun arcade game some wheels and a motor and let the gamer drive the concoction through physical space. Think of OutRun as Gran Turismo’s great-grandfather, fulfilling the preteen dream of ripping through various landscapes in an exotic car. Today, its roofless, eight-bit Ferrari Testarossa looks stone-ax primitive; in 1986, it was high-tech rad.
Sega eventually ported OutRun to home gaming systems, but it first appeared as an arcade game. Canadian-born academic Dr. Garnet Hertz, 38, saw one of the old arcade versions in 2006. “That’s crazy, how large the cabinet is,” he recalls thinking. “It’s like a fake car.” Two years later, he bought an OutRun arcade unit via an internet group for $300, then paid $800 to ship its 800 pounds to Irvine, California, where he started tinkering.
The electronics and the software required the most exhaustive development. Two high-def digital cameras mounted atop the cart feed images to a flat-screen display (it replaces OutRuns original monitor) and to an Apple MacBook Pro, which uses its video feed to detect real-world topographical features. The computer then determines where to place the horizon (in the games primitive 3-D perspective, players constantly chase the roads vanishing point in the distance) and how to depict the road. The gamer/driver sees the road ahead of him on-screen, rendered in OutRun graphics with the real world above the games horizon. Original game music pumps through speakers located in the headrest.
View Photo Gallery