Innovation is our regular column highlighting emerging technologies and predicting where they may lead

Hammering down the straight in a Grand Prix racing game, you're keeping challengers at bay with some deft manoeuvres. But just as you take a perfect racing line into a bend, disaster: your flatmate plonks a steaming mug of coffee in front of you, denting your concentration; before you know it you've slipped back and the chances of a podium finish look slim.

It's a harsh lesson but that goes with the territory when you're competing against professionals. For while you've been sitting in your front room, your opposition have been battling it out in a live Formula 1 race.

Two European companies are racing to perfect real-time race gaming technologies that let you do this. Both aim to use live streams of GPS data collected from race cars to populate a detailed digital doppelgänger of a racetrack on a PC or games console.

The two firms – IOpener Media of Aachen, Germany, and Real Time Race of Daresbury, UK – share the same basic idea: to let people race against professional drivers while those drivers are actually racing.

Need for speed

To do this, the firms place a 500-gram box of electronics about the size of two packs of playing cards in real-world race cars. GPS receivers and accelerometers in the box stream a live readout of the vehicle's position and acceleration wirelessly to trackside receivers. "The inertial unit measures the g-forces on the cars so we can capture their true motion for the game," says Christophe Dujarric of IOpener Media.

The cars' positions are then injected onto a virtual track for relaying to the gamer over the internet. To build their model tracks, both firms scan the race circuit before the competition using the same tech Google does for its Street View service: a panoramic camera and a laser radar, or lidar, mounted on a conventional car.

Almost two weeks ago, thousands of Real-Time Racing beta testers had the chance to join the stars of the World Touring Car Championship at Zolder.

While the real drivers where battling for championship point on track, sim racers got to race against Tom Coronel and Gabriele Tarquini thanks to their iOpener-equipped Seat Leon TDI race cars. If you missed the event, you can check out a short video below, showing some of the stuff that was going on in the iOpener camp at Zolder.

Last weekend, the brand new FIA GT1 World Championship held its first two races of the season at the Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi. Also on site was a delegation of iOpener Media, following the progress of the two iOpener-enabled cars of DRK Engineering and Marc VDS Racing.

The two iOpener-enabled race cars weren’t the sole reason for the trip to the Middle East though as iOpener president Andy Lürling also met with the prominent Al Badi family. The delegation from the United Arab Emirates was shown how the iOpener-enabled technology works and got to try the iOpener-enabled Real-Time Racing game in a simulator.

Furthermore, Lürling also met with series promoter Stephane Ratel for a meeting that iOpener would later describe as "promising."

I´m not trying to manufacture a news story out of nothing here but these shreds of news and the involved parties lead to some very interesting speculation. Remember, back in September 2009, I posted a first story on a possible FIA GT game made by Simbin and iOpener.

Lots of things have happened since then such as Stephane Ratel announcing that the FIA GT1 Championship would soon sign a video game deal, and Simbin confirming the development of a new GTR title. Chances are, these things aren’t connected but if you combine the involved parties, it paints a very interesting picture. Simbin & iOpener have already established a co-operation and the FIA GT1 Championship provides a matching product to make it work – two one-hour races would be well-suited to the iOpener concept of sim racers racing against real drivers on track.

And as final food for thought, one of the biggest stumbling blocks that has prevented new FIA GT titles in the past is out of the way too. License issues with Ferrari and Porsche would have been a major concern with FIA GT-based titles following GTR2, but both manufacturers are not racing in the new GT1 World Championship. Does all this mean anything? Only time will tell…..

iOpener’s beta test of their Real-Time Racing game continues next Thursday (March 11th) with a new event at Zolder, featuring the Mini Cooper S and the BMW Z4M that was first tested during the ten hours of Zolder.

The beta test will allow thousands of RTR testers to race in real-time against professional drivers on the Belgian track, right from their home.

If you don’t have a Real-Time Racing beta key yet, this is your chance to win one as iOpener is giving away two keys for those who can answer a rather simple question. The winners will get their key in time to join the event next Thursday so click here and enter the competition.

From VirtualR

iOpener have released more information on an exciting development.  We are right behind these guys and have formed a partnership with Andy and the guys.  

North One Sport, global Promoter for the FIA World Rally Championship (WRC), has agreed a technical cooperation to investigate the feasibility of real-time rally gaming. The consortium, including iOpener Media and Black Bean Games, will explore a new interactive gaming concept for the WRC based on real-time positioning data.

iOpener has been developing real-time high-accuracy positioning data in interactive applications since 2007 and, in conjunction with North One Sport, has secured the cooperation of Gulf Horizon Group, chaired by Mr. Saeed Mohammed Saeed Al Badi.  Black Bean Games, publisher of the upcoming official WRC console game, will also support the project with further technical expertise provided by their in-house production studio Milestone.

The partners will work together to collect a continuous stream of positioning and telemetry data from the cars competing on WRC rallies. This data will then be applied and tested in a step-by-step plan aiming to deliver a gaming experience that is consistent, reliable and accurate.

"This study should take us a step closer to our goal of allowing WRC fans anywhere in the world the opportunity to become part of the action," commented Simon Long, CEO of North One Sport Ltd. "Using the internet they would be able to compete in the rally on the same stages against some of the best drivers in the world. If this test is successful then we hope in the future to crown our first virtual rally champion."