DRIVR Part 3: A throne of lies

Did you know that the carbohydrate-to-sugar ratio contained in a large Little Caesar's pepperoni pizza and a two-liter of Mountain Dew is perfect for overclocking your brain to over 32 PFLOPS? Of course you didn't, because I just made that up. But you might have believed it because the human brain in an incredible machine. With DRIVR we intend to exploit every bit of that processing power by blurring the lines between virtual and reality. It's a shame that the term "Augmented Reality" is already taken, because that's exactly what we're doing. Except rather than adding a few virtual objects here and there, we're replacing the entirety of what you're seeing. It's 100% real and 100% virtual, which is probably why it's 100% better. We're essentially creating "A Different Type of Special Augmented Reality", or ADiToSAuR for short.

The Aditosaur in its natural habitat

One way that we can leverage that sensational cerebellum of yours is by adjusting the scale of the virtual world compared to the real world. The standard scale would be 1:1, meaning your physical movement would be matched identically in the game. If we bumped that up to 2:1, the virtual world would be twice the size, and thus, to your eyes it would seem that you were moving twice as quickly. Assuming we don't stretch this scale too far, your brain should be able to keep up, allowing us to make you feel like you're going much faster than you are.

Another way that we can trick your brain is through clever uses of procedurally generated track. For those of you that didn't also check Wikipedia before coming here, "procedural generation...is a method of creating data algorithmically as opposed to manually". It essentially allows the computer to create the track for us. A cool example of this is https://slowroads.io/, which I highly recommend you try for yourself (it feels like a modern day Fly Guy). By generating track that conforms to the space requirements of our driving area, you could "go for a drive" in the countryside without ever travelling more than a couple hundred meters from where you started. It's like LSD but without the secret government mind control part.

Hopefully by now you're starting to realize how many possibilities open up when you step into a video game. Throw in some surround sound and a couple of practical effects, and baby you got a stew going. Don't forget, I'm looking for more folks to develop with! If you're stressed out about all the free time you have and think you could help make DRIVR better, I'm only a DM away.

-Greg

The story continues with Part 4: Go backwards forwards quickly