NVIDIA's efforts at developing self-driving cars has been aided by PlayStation series Gran Turismo - fittingly subtitled 'the Real Driving Simulator'.
Speaking at a panel called 'Automobiles, the Next Mobile Platform', Sahin Kirtavit, senior director of automotive solutions at NVIDIA, revealed that the company had been using Gran Turismo's videogame simulation to aid its real world simulations for self-driving cars.
Basically, while other simulations were available, Gran Turismo offered the accuracy NVIDIA needed to carry out its research while also offering the sort of graphical fidelity that makes everything that bit better to use.
"We actually used the game engine two years ago to start our simulation effort and we figured out we needed more high fidelity graphics," he said, "The game engines have a lot that the simulator needs. I think game engines are extremely close to perfect simulators."
Kirtavit also predicted the rise of self-driving cars will be faster than many might expect - thanks in no small part to Gran Turismo's help. And what does hands-off driving mean? More time for hands-on gaming, obviously.
"I think you're going to see truly self-driving cars - I'm not talking about cars that drive only thirty seconds and then gives control back to you - truly self-driving cars in the next few years on the road," he said, "And we are super excited that once the car drives itself, what you're going to do is play games."
