Artist plans to turn OutRun machine into real car

Garnet Hertz's design for an OutRun arcade machine combined with an electric scooter into a real, amazingly impractical vehicle is great, even if it is just a concept for now. But what really turns the idea of a driving game on wheels into something magical (that also plays "Magical Sound Shower") is the software.

Instead of simply running OutRun as you drive blindly into traffic, Hertz is working on an iPhone 3GS app that uses the iPhone's camera and GPS to detect your position and the shape of the road, and translate that information into a live OutRun track. See the software at work after the break.

The artist's goals are the "Un-Simulation of Driving" (instead of using a game to simulate driving closely with high-end graphics like Gran Turismo, this will fuse video game-like graphics with real driving), and "GPS Navigation Parallax & Mixed Reality" (using only GPS information to drive). And not "Making Something That Is Going To Get Someone Killed", which is why, when this does become a reality, it'll be limited to "controlled environments."

[Via Engadget, GameSetWatch]