Skip to main content

Nearly Better Than the Real Thing: Porsche Taps Video Game Tech to Break New Ground in Automotive Design

Porsche has grown rather chummy with the video game community of late. In 2017, the automaker used North America’s largest gaming expo as a platform for the debut of the 911 GT2 RS. You can attribute that to a relatively recent marketing push that resulted in its vehicles appearing in interactive media after a long-standing absence. Porsche, for whatever reason, spent years being exceptionally choosy about which developers can license its vehicles for their games. This usually results in blockbuster titles using “RUF” as a placeholder or simply abandoning Porsche vehicles entirely.

The last five or six years have been different, however. Automakers want to broaden their marketing approach and get away from the big industry trade shows. For Porsche, that means video games, and the relationship is only getting stronger.

This week, Porsche Epic Games and the graphical processing wizards at NVIDIA gathered to showcase what they claim is a major breakthrough in computer design rendering. While we can’t say with any authority that this will forever change automotive design, what they’ve managed to accomplish certainly looks impressive. 

The new software, unveiled at the SIGGRAPH (ACM’s “Special Interest Group on Computer GRAPHics”) conference in Vancouver, uses real-time ray-tracing software to more accurately represent the way light hits a three-dimensional object. For the purposes of the demonstration, the team used the Porsche 911 Speedster Concept — which looked as photorealistic as it gets.

According to NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, the technology, dubbed “The Speed of Light” for the demo, combines a real-time cinematic experience utilizing NVIDIA’s Turing architecture, RTX technology, and new Unreal Engine rendering advancements. But it basically all amounts to “better graphics,” so why should the automotive sector care?

Well, instead of digitally shaping a vehicle and adding a virtual light source afterwards, the new software does it on the fly. It also interacts with the object in real time, meaning a designer can mold a computerized panel and rotate it endlessly (to see how light effects it from every angle) before deciding whether or not to scrap it. The end result is a simplified interface that allows the design team to have a more accurate idea of what a finished car would look like.

“Porsche’s collaboration with Epic and NVIDIA has exceeded all expectations from both a creative and technological perspective,” said Christian Braun, Manager of Virtual Design at Porsche. “The achieved results are proof that real-time technology is revolutionizing how we design and market our vehicles.”

The German automaker said the Porsche 911 Speedster Concept will be made available to consumers while NVIDIA and Epic Games intend to open the software up for the entire development community.

a version of this article first appeared on thetruthaboutcars.com

The post Nearly Better Than the Real Thing: Porsche Taps Video Game Tech to Break New Ground in Automotive Design appeared first on VWVortex.



from VWVortex https://ift.tt/2nGSYCL
via IFTTT

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Review: Saying Goodbye to the CC V6

For all its size and its global reach, Volkswagen is still, in many ways, a deeply human company. There was, for instance, the Bugatti Veyron an ego project if ever there was one. Then the purchase of Ducati, a move most called folly. And then there was the Phaeton, the Volkswagen that most folks can’t afford. Not only were these moves all strange, I’m sure that they made VW’s accountants furious. None of them made good business sense, but they were all deeply interesting and they all are evidence of the heart that beats at the center of VW. Among these follies is the CC, a car that everyone agrees is rakishly handsome, but that no one really wanted to buy. The car couldn’t last, but the world is brighter for its having been in it. With the approach debut of the Arteon, it seems like a good time to look back on its sadly departing predecessor. The version I drove, because I live in Canada, is a V6 Wolfsburg Edition, which apparently isn’t available in the States. Nor is the V6, not as...

T-Prime Makes World Premiere at Beijing

[ See image gallery at www.vwvortex.com ] The SUV segment is one of the fastest growing segments in the world and Volkswagen is showing the world how to do it. With the new T-Prime Concept GTE that was revealed today, the company is showing off all of the technology you can look for in its coming models. The T-Prime is a full-size hybrid SUV that can go up to 31 miles on a charge and gets 87 mpg. The hybrid power station is good for 375 hp and 516 lb/ft of torque and puts the power down with 4MOTION all wheel drive. It’ll get you up to 60 in six seconds. The concept’s real party piece, though, is its interior, which features exclusively touch, gesture, and voice controls. Everything from the infotainment, to the display, and even the gears are controlled by touch-screen. The T-Prime Concept GTE is bigger than the Touareg, and design elements are likely to find their way into all of their SUVs, of which there will be many. Volkswagen is also announcing that they expect to make an S...

Watch: The Transport Does a Whole Hell of a lot More than Transport

Petrolicious doesn’t only feature million-dollar classics, it also features the more generally neat, like this 1996 T4 Transporter that became Instagram famous and started and is starting an empire. Callum Creaser’s T4 started life as a panel van, but over the years it has become a homebrew camper van that has gone on adventures around the world. After posting about his adventures to Instagram, the diesel van gained a following and launched The Rolling Home, a series about other people’s small spaces and homey cars. Based on a 1.4-liter diesel with no ECU, Callum says his T4 is easy as pie to work on since information is widely available from sources like ours. The post Watch: The Transport Does a Whole Hell of a lot More than Transport appeared first on VWVortex . from VWVortex https://ift.tt/2KR01Sv via IFTTT