For a rather obscure brand advertisement, Nissan decided to turn one of their cars into a giant Playstation 4 controller to play a game of football (soccer).
The first question to pop into our heads was why? And that’s because Nissan is a major sponsor of UEFA Champions League. From there, it became why not? We love the companies that get their hands dirty on a hacking level, and actually do something instead of just funneling money into your standard billboard advertising — it’s just more fun this way.
The second question you should be asking yourself is how do you play soccer using a car? Well, it’s pretty simple. Steering is your left and right controls, the indicator switch is forward and backward, the windshield wipers kick the ball, a steering wheel button lets you run faster, the brake pedal passes the ball, and the gas pedal shoots. Simple right? As one of the prototype testers describes:
It’s kinda like tapping your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time, it really messes your head up — but it’s really enjoyable when you get it right.
The way it works is pretty cool. Using the OBD port on the car, they’re able to extract all the signals they need from the car’s controls to send to a mini-PC. From there the control data is sent to a microcontroller which interfaces with a real Playstation 4 controller.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4n-QV1XTugs
Speaking of Nissan, ever wonder how to remove the batteries from a wrecked Nissan Leaf?
Just don’t play with the engine running…. B^)
Would have made a lot more sense to use it to run a car racing game (or perhaps some sort of spaceflight game)
rocket league??
https://youtu.be/d26xFlccjcM?t=9m56s
I’d much rather see an article about someone putting a set of electronic racing controllers into their car and doing drive-by-wire.
Me and a friend once tried playing a JRPG (Tales of the Abyss I think it was) using a steering wheel. It was quick and dirty, and we did no calibatring whats-o-ever. But it was fun!
Given how cheap scrap cars are, it would be cool to chop the front off one to make a racing controller – find one with electric power steering and you’ve got a mega powerful force-feedback steering wheel.