If Andy Lurling had it his way, you'd soon be racing Lewis Hamilton, Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen in official Formula One Races.
Andy Lurling is the founder of iOpener Media, an upstart company from Netherlands. iOpener has already patented a system that tracks racing events in real time through GPS and transmits it to games consoles and PCs. This way, gamers will be able to compete against professional racers on official tracks in real time.
iOpener has impressed the European Space Agency (Esa) with their proposal and managed to secure a grant to develop a proof of concept. A German venture capitalist has stumped up cash to develop it further.
The new system has been successfully deployed in an F1. The first game utilizing it is scheduled for release by September this year and iOpener is currently in talks with six developers about using the technology. "At this point we have lots of interest and we are looking for the right partner to launch", said Andy Lurling.
"This sort of feature would probably appeal to the hardcore gamer or F1 fan more than a mass market gamer", said Gareth Wilson, design manager at Bizarre Creations, makers of the Project Gotham Racing series. "Having said that, the hardcore would totally love it."
Bizarre Creations is not currently one of the firms evaluating the system.
iOpener doesn't plan to develop its own games. Instead, they'll provide and license the system to game developers. iOpener will also create an Artificial Intelligence (AI) and physics systems to help integrate real life events with the players' in-game actions.
"If Hamilton is driving behind you he can't see you [in the game], so he would drive right through you," explained Mr Lurling. "So the AI takes over at that point and you see a very realistic overtaking."
The physics system will handle collisions between the player's car and real life cars too. In this case, the real car always drives away. The gamer's fate is less certain.
