Video game animation has come a long way from Atari and Pac Man. In fact, the same game engines that bring computer games to life are now being used by automotive companies like Porsche in the development of driver assistance systems.
Did you know, the same game engine and graphics card that generate the images in Fortnite, are everyday tools in Porsche engineering? Game engines create the necessary environment for simulating driver assistance systems as a standard feature. Advanced Driver Assistance Systems must learn how to detect every traffic situation using various sensors and react appropriately at lightning speed. This would require many real test drives but with virtual reality every scenario can be repeated as often as required and controlled down to the smallest detail. What takes hours in reality can be reduced to seconds in these simulated drives as the only limiting factor is the computing power of the hardware used.
Another way in which vehicle production utilizes gaming software to save time and money is in the design process. During the development of the Cayenne CoupeĢ, Porsche engineers virtually reconstructed the vehicle to test out different design ideas and ensure everything was correctly dimensioned.
Porsche is currently in the test phase for a Virtual Reality Car Configurator, which will present the customer on site with a three-dimensional simulation of their future vehicle. This system consists of a gaming PC with connected VR glasses that calculates a different perspective image for the left and right eye, 60 times per second. Customers can walk around inventory, look at the rims up close, take a virtual seat, and inspect the interior right down to the seams of the leather seats.
Driver assistance systems are an essential part of modern vehicle developments and the array of options available to Porsche drivers is largely thanks to advances in video game technology. Be it adaptive cruise control, or parking assistance systems, game engines bring computer games to life and help develop new driving functions to keep our drivers safe, more comfortable and more efficient.