This news is a proof that video games are not a complete waste of time. Especially when you are using the video game to serve as a platform for your autonomous driving technology tests.
Also Read: What GTA looks like in real life
According to a recent report published by Bloomberg, giant companies like Ford and Google have decided to use the immensely popular ‘crime life simulator,’ Grand Theft Auto V by Rockstar Games, to test their autonomous driving algorithms. Apart from murder, crime, and thievery, Grand Theft Auto V has a very superb and real driving and traffic mechanism. This may be the reason why companies chose Grand Theft Auto V instead of a dedicated game from the car racing genre. Hence, one of the biggest blockbusters in the gaming industry is also serving as a platform for car manufacturers for designing prototypes and trusted with the ultimate task of driving a car autonomously.
A number of analysts recently agreed that real-world tests were not enough to cover all of the events and their reactions by the autonomous driving software. It was said that the researchers will need a wider area of simulations which may include traffic scenarios that you cannot simulate in the real world, and that they also need to learn about the responses generated in a human’s brain during each scenario.
What did the analysts mean by “traffic scenarios that you cannot simulate in real world”? A very simple explanation is the weather. Changing the weather can increase or decrease visibility, a little rain can make the roads slippery, and much more. These are scenarios that you cannot manipulate in real life, but you can easily tweak in a video game.
Self-driving technologies are enhanced to a new level every few months, but we can still assume that it hasn’t arrived yet, nor is it going to arrive very soon. People who are responsible for designing the architect of these systems still need a lot of time to test for different scenarios, may it be behind the controller, or in a real car.
