s Virtual Reality The Future of Racing? #Helpful Post

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 and everything like December and January we'll film and we're like, they were like October.

Like "Oh."

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

that are gonna be set up. If this was a normal track, and it was like normal drivers,

I mean obviously these guys are very talented, this would be no problem, but considering that they're 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.

And I was on the straight, and I was blasted you there.

It just feels, it's not quite, yeah, what you brain expects.

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.

Uh, oh. Here we go! ''nah dude.''

Oh, it's good, man. There's a bunch of rocks there. Nope, nope, were good.

Oh Yeah! hahaha!

After trying it, I'm convinced 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 for inviting 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.