Gadgetory

hey guys this is Austin is virtual reality the future of racing my friends over Castrol Edge invited me to check out their latest project to pull off a race between two drivers wearing virtual reality helmets but driving real cars all right so it is one week until the virtual racers shoot so let's see if the thing is actually gonna work you guys will probably remember Adam and Glen from the original Castrol Edge virtual drift shoot earlier this year these guys are crazy enough to take everything up a notch this time by making an actual race in virtual reality and then around mid-august we got a phone call saying hey do you guys want to do another version we're just like yes yes we did and then we're like cool or anything like December January we'll film and we're like they were like October take a look at the tech they've put together though and you'll see these guys are legit they've built a custom camera rig that uses a pair of high-speed cameras a 3d camera for depth tracking on top of a precision GPS tracker to feed info about where the car is back to the computer and its really powerful man because it's crazy you think about we have all these different sensors like to make that all come together as one without some insanely advanced heavy algorithm is a nightmare it's just an incredible time right now to be working where open-source is so widely available that you can literally turn a bunch of like thrown-together hardware into a tracking solution in less than two weeks not only are they turning a real car into the world's coolest game controller but they've also built a full game world and track for the drivers to see inside the oculus dk2 headsets it all works off a laptop that pulls data straight out of the car like wheel speed and throttle position that all comes together to make what should be one seriously awesome race alright so this is the racetrack that we're going to be using for the shoot today so it's kind of more like an autocross sort of things you can see there's like these different cones they're gonna be set up if this was a normal track it was like normal drivers I mean obviously these guys are very talented this would be no problem but considering is me wearing a VR headset and they're racing against each other this is gonna be tough this is an actual world first to not only have a race in virtual reality but with actual cars on a track both drivers have Ford Mustangs that are powered by Castrol Edge with titanium FST but otherwise their stock with the exception of the camera rig on the hood lidar on top for tracking and a pair of laptops inside to handle all rendering and positioning on the street and I was blasted you - it just feels it's not quite yeah you brain expected it's easy to think the Castrol Edge could just fake all this for a commercial but I've got to give them serious props for making this real and I had to give it a try oh oh here we go oh it's good man there's a bunch of rocks there no not forget oh yeah after trying it unconvinced there are some serious uses for this kind of tech imagine turning any parking lot into a racetrack without worrying about running off the road or into another car it might not replace racing any time soon but they're really onto something with this I've got to give a huge shout out to Castrol Edge from biting me out and sponsoring this video definitely go check out the full virtual racers video over on their channel to see how it all came together