It’s just a short reference to work being done to build a virtual race course based on laser scanned data of Laguna Se
ca in California, but it shows the detail that people are going to to develop these games. What is not clear to me is where the designer is getting the LiDAR data. Does anyone know more about this process? I have never met anyone that does this virtual racing but it looks like sim racing could be a lot of fun.
I scanned the Rockingham, UK race track a few years ago for a PC racing sim. The realism is what differentiates these games from the more mainstream ‘arcade’ racers like Need for Speed.
We used a static scanner, it took days! I imagine people use mobile systems now and get the job done in an hour.
I spoke to a chap from Red Bull Racing last year who told me that most F1 teams scan every track before a race weekend to update their database for use in the simulator.
Hi Dan,
Here’s some additional info on the scanning at Rockingham race track by APR Services for the PC racing sim Live For Speed.
http://www.lfs.net/?page=rockingham
Video of the scan data:
http://youtu.be/-nxvf_52KNM
We scanned several tracks for the new Forza Motorsport 5 game coming out this week. It was quite eye opening as when on site we were often told that we were the 2nd to 4th group that they had seen scanning any particular track over the past year. The various game titles rarely share data as they want the tracks in their upcoming games to remain secret, racing team scan them in order to run simulations for suspension setups, and some tracks use them for QA/QC of new work and maintenance. So, there are plenty of data sources out there…