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December 2, 2005
ECU tuning enters console racing
I am an avid fan of console racing games. I've loved and played every release of Gran Turismo for years, as well as virtually every other racing game ever made. I prefer realism over arcade-style action, and I'm in awe of what the game developers have been able to do. In Gran Turismo 4 I can take hi-res pictures of my favorite cars that look so real that they fool most casual onlookers. Some other games let me modify and tune my cars with real brand name components, and when I am done I can even get on the dyno to check the results.
Now Swedish game developer SimBin Development Team AB is taking the genre to the next level by licensing real life racing technology from Australian MoTeC, perhaps the leading developer of specialized aftermarket ECUs. SimBin states, "SimBin and MoTeC will together integrate more of real racing telemetry functions into the next generation consoles. The general idea is to let people swap and exchange files on their consoles, where all data can be compared and recreated in the game, and that people will use this to analyse their driving techniques and help their friends improve by swapping these files."
Where will it all lead? Will games of the future allow you to plug in your favorite third party ECU and then use its actual software to tune your on-screen vehicle which will then react and behave like the real thing? Will racing teams use advanced gaming simulation to test settings of actual race cars? And, more commercially, will auto manufacturers more and more look towards near perfect simulations to actaully let prospective customers try out and test-drive cars? The latter is not too far-fetched: When I bought my Acura RSX Type-S, I not only had fallen in love with the car because I had driven it in the Project Gotham 2 video game, I also flummoxed the sales man when I told him I did not need a test drive because I had already driven the car in a game and knew how it sounded and how it handled. I was right.
Posted by conradb212 at December 2, 2005 2:06 PM