Gadgetory

hey guys austin and today in here in southern california to find out how real is vr Castrol Edge motor oil invited me out to the set of their latest project at disclosed military base a real driver will be racing a real car and a completely virtual world he's going to be using an oculus rift headset which will make him totally blind to the real world so the cool thing is this is a project it's not a commercial all this tech the Castrol Edge is design is actually real it's all about Castrol Edge taking technology and driving to the limit to get an idea of what riding in the car is going to be like I first got a chance to check out the tech behind it all so here is the helmet with the oculus rift dk2 built in so it's good to try the helmet itself looks straight out of Daft Punk but inside it's all about the oculus I couldn't drive the car with the helmet on which I can't say with a huge letdown but I could still try the experience seated being able to see a virtual version of the interior of the car while actually being in the car was surprisingly cool putting the tech side of this together our Adam and Glen these guys went all out they built a solution to read the inputs from the car like steering and throttle got the RTK positioning to track the car and even put together a monster i 750 960 X and GTX 980 rig that fits in the backseat so when did you actually find out that it was your good you have to like tear the whole thing up like hey guys actually this doesn't work like when you finally get it working day before yesterday that's the right answer so we kind of go into like a tandem battle in the mask with another one and then I tripped right and then all of a sudden the ground is like there's a huge clip and so I stopped it and in front of you the clips falling away so I go in reverse and I do like reverse 180 into a right-hand turn so thing and that feels really cool because you're like this just like just spin around so it's the very end of the day and I finally get to drive inside the car with the oculus helmet on so pretty excited just just a little bit Oh so I just did the ride-along and that is completely insane being able to like sit in the passenger seat first of all like I wasn't driving so like I didn't have any control over where I was going but then just being able to like just fly down and spin and stuff it's it's unbelievable how like I I don't even know what to say right now that is one of the coolest experiences I've ever had Wow this video started with a question about how real is VR think about this for a minute you've got an oculus rift connected to a monster computer inside a 600 plus horsepower Roush Mustang that is tracked with millimeter precision and all of the data is being fed into a game engine that's running in real time it would have been the easiest thing ever to just fake it to make a commercial Binstead Castrol made the coolest virtual reality setup I've ever experienced if a pro driver can drift completely blind to the real world using VR I say the future is looking pretty bright definitely be sure to check out the full video on their channel to see how this all came together