Global automotive supplier Valeo has unveiled a new extended-reality racing video game it will demo during SXSW 2024. Valeo Racer turns your EV into a participant in the video game, utilizing the vehicle’s ADAS to let you race through its surrounding environment in real time. Be sure to check out the teaser footage below.
Valeo is a French automotive supplier that celebrated 100 years of business in 2023, with 186 production facilities scattered all over the globe. The company specializes in automotive parts and systems for OEMs and the aftermarket.
In recent years, Valeo has garnered expertise in Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) from a hardware and software perspective. While much of its R&D and production has gone toward making vehicles safer and more helpful to drivers, Valeo’s latest product adds a bit of fun.
Today, the company unveiled Valeo Racer: an extended-reality video game that passengers can play from an EV, using the world around it as the racetrack.
Valeo Racer to debut as a new video game for your EV
Valeo describes its new video game as an “infinite runner” that utilizes an EV’s cameras, radar, ultrasonic sensors, and AI to allow players to race in a real-world environment with digital elements set within it.
Live video and perception around the EV integrate buildings, roads, and surrounding traffic as part of the video game, creating new challenges as you sit as a passenger princess. Valeo Racer utilizes a gaming engine from Unity – more specifically, its proprietary Runtime component – which renders high-performance graphics, manages user input and interactions, and coordinates game components, all while supporting real-time physics simulation, animation, scripting languages, asset management, and networking.
The result is a new form of video game that enables EV passengers with connected in-vehicle wifi to compete during long and short journeys. Valeo CTO and EVP of Strategy Geoffrey Bouquot spoke about the technology:
Valeo strives to offer car manufacturers new solutions and technologies to meet fast-evolving needs and expectations of drivers and passengers. As vehicles are equipped with more sensors and software to support driving assistance and autonomous driving systems, we see opportunities to reuse sensors and computing power already onboard to support new entertainment experiences. Working with Unity teams and relying on their amazing expertise in gaming to insert digital elements into our live feed of the vehicle environment has been a great journey of partnership and innovation, and we look forward to blazing new trails together.
Valeo points out that as EV and ADAS technology evolves, the user experience becomes more capable of being enhanced, paving the way for more opportunities for new use cases in infotainment. Unity’s Chief Product and Technology Officer Marc Whitten elaborated:
The Valeo Racer experience highlights how Unity can be used in the end-to-end production cycle within the automotive industry by uniting real-time technologies. We hope the unique experience developed with Valeo serves as a template for engineers and creators to think beyond the use of our technology for just safety, to ultimate passenger satisfaction – front seat and back.
The new EV video game will be showcased as a demo at the Valeo exhibit during SXSW 2024 from March 10 to 12. As promised, here’s a teaser video of Valeo Racer in action:
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