Idea for a video game, let me know what you think

I was driving the other day on a kind of fun stretch of road. I started thinking about a route through town including this particular stretch that would make an awesome road racing cicuit. High speed sweepers, tight corners, elevation changes, the whole deal. Of course this will never happen. Too populated, houses too close to the road, if you mess up on a turn there is nothing but buildings to slow you down.

But then I got to thinking about the pokemon go thing and I thought, what if someone who makes a high end racing sim like gran turismo teamed up with google to use google maps to let you make your video game street circuits using real world roads. Street view would give you real world scenery. Better user created courses could be made available for everyone to use. What do you guys think of this??

As a game concept it's not bad, but there are big problems if you look at the big picture.

The existence of street view data would save you very little work and make your company dependent on Google's good graces...unless you want the scenery to move like a slideshow (like some of those virtual exercise bike rigs, for example), you can't just use Street View scenery directly.

Next, even if you get past the technical and IP issues, your company would become a lawsuit magnet for fairly obvious reasons.

there was that (java?) app that would allow you to choose an address and it would make an F1 track around your house using google images street view, then it would drive it at F1 speeds.

Around my house it was funny because the F1 car followed an old crappy ford van at over 200 MPH down the back straight.

I think the basis already exists with Gran Turismo's track creator, it just won't put real images in the background, and relies on standard Gran Turismo scenery instead.

In reply to GameboyRMH: Yeah, I really have no idea on the logistics of making it work. Thats why I never thought of trying to produce it, just maybe with enough positive feedback pitch the idea to an actual video game company. I also figured that there is a solid chance that someone would come on here and say it already exists. But I would like to hear other peoples thoughts on the concept.

The other issue is that high end sims take very detailed laser scans of the road surface and elevation changes of the tracks and even take into consideration the coefficient of friction for the particular paving used on the track. This all creates an realistic atmosphere and gameplay. Without it you have OutRun or pole position with better graphics set on roads found in real life.

I've honestly had that same thought for years,, never was able to figure it out. I thought it had promise when Google maps started being used on exercise machines, but it hasn't come about yet. There are some great roads out my way that some idiots built housing plans around, and they don't appreciate late night hooning like enthusiasts would.

There is a track creator in GT6 that you can create tracks over satellite images. The BIG issue with it is that you cannot do elevation changes. Not having elevation changes just kills the character of most every track. Google's elevation data is rather basic I believe.

When the creator came out, that was a prime idea, doing streets around your area. One of the other issues was the inability to create sharp 90 corners, which of course will be a requirement for most any street track.

Having the street view backgrounds would be nice, but likely very difficult to make 3D and as a simple background will likely look a bit strange since all those images are shot from the same part of the road (track). Doing a continuous stream of those images will also likely come out very choppy since they are shot every 20 ft (?) or something.

Interesting idea though.

This is not what you are talking about, but a similar idea:

https://framesynthesis.com/drivingsimulator/maps/

There used to be a more perspective one like you are talking about, but Google changed the API and it doesn't work anymore:

https://www.tomscott.com/realworldracer/

I had the same idea for the park loop road around Acaidia National Park and use the drive up MT Cadillac as a hill climb.

I think coordinating this idea with a cell phone app would work best. You open the app, and drive the route that you want to be the "track". The app uses the phone's GPS, accelerometer, etc to plot the course. Then, you edit things like width of the roads, etc to add realism.

Wouldn't be much help with adding realistic backgrounds, but it could atleast come pretty close to replicating actual roads.

STM317 wrote: I think coordinating this idea with a cell phone app would work best. You open the app, and drive the route that you want to be the "track". The app uses the phone's GPS, accelerometer, etc to plot the course. Then, you edit things like width of the roads, etc to add realism. Wouldn't be much help with adding realistic backgrounds, but it could atleast come pretty close to replicating actual roads.

This is how a friend of mine replicated a local track for rFactor & Assetto Corsa. It came out pretty damn good but he put A LOT of work into it.