Turning RC Cars into a Real-Life Video Game

The concept behind the RACER project, spearheaded by German designer Malte Jehmlich, is straightforward enough, but it’s still an incredible thing to see in action: A player sits in an arcade-style racing rig and plays what is by all appearances a standard racing game, guiding a car along a WipEout-style track from a first-person perspective. But here’s the twist: It’s all real. In another room, there’s a camera-equipped 1:28 model RC car on a sturdy cardboard track, which the ‘gamer’ is actually controlling. Jehmlich says that many of the players he’s asked to test out RACER have taken a while to catch on to what’s actually happening.

Video below:

As the “Racer Demo 0.1” in the corner of the video might seem to indicate, this is just the beginning: Jehmlich and company are currently working on 0.2, with on-screen graphics and high scores, and plan to get to 0.3 in autumn. They’re currently taking donations for their work of mad engineering on their site.

(sputnic.tv via MAKE)