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Porsche Might Help Revolutionize Simracing by Cooperating With Swiss Start-Up

Porsche has teamed up with Way Ahead Technologies, a Swiss start-up, with the goal of accelerating the development of a solution that will help anyone turn a real road into one in virtual reality. All that will be required for the conversion will be a smartphone with a dedicated app, and the result will then be compatible with certain racing simulators.
Porsche Virtual Roads 10 photos
Photo: Porsche
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In other words, Porsche has chosen to help develop what some of us dreamt of as kids. Imagine the possibility of filming a road section in your hometown with a smartphone and then importing that data into a popular racing simulator, such as Assetto Corsa. For the moment, the app only works with Porsche's in-house simulator, but this is set to change once the app is improved.

The best part about the new app is that it will only take one percent of the time required by a conventional digitalization process to transform a real road into a virtual track. That means that you can make a track out of anything, and it might help amateur racers improve their skills if they want to perfect their racing lines on a specific route in the simulator.

Since these tracks will be digital, the possibility of sharing them allows users to enjoy any track on the globe once it is digitalized in the app.

Because Porsche is involved in the development, the start-up company will get the chance to place numerous models from this brand into their app, which is something that many simulators have not managed because of licensing issues.

What is even more impressive is that the app has been designed to only “see” the road, and not other road users or pedestrians when integrating the real area into a virtual track.

So, if someone happens to stand on the side of the road or have their car parked somewhere it should not be, it will not be forever present in a virtual environment.

It took Way Ahead Technologies several years to develop the software required to digitalize routes for virtual roads. Depending on the complexity of a road, the app can digitalize an eight-kilometer-long section in less than an hour.

While that may seem like a lot, we underline the fact that the process takes one percent of the normal development time for something like this, which makes it groundbreaking for sim racing.
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About the author: Sebastian Toma
Sebastian Toma profile photo

Sebastian's love for cars began at a young age. Little did he know that a career would emerge from this passion (and that it would not, sadly, involve being a professional racecar driver). In over fourteen years, he got behind the wheel of several hundred vehicles and in the offices of the most important car publications in his homeland.
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