A Virtual Reality Concept Car
When does the virtual world supplant reality? While computing technology is improving by the minute, recreating carbon life forms isn't likely to occur in our lifetimes, by may happen some time in the distant future.
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| From video game to concept, the MTRC is truly an impressive piece of work from Toyota. (Photo: Toyota Canada) |
What is taking place all around us day in and day out however, are virtual reality gamers, living, eating and breathing life on an alternative dimension. There they are heroes, villains and innocent victims, living out a fantasy life much more enticing than their own 9 to 5 existence.
Toyota, seeing an opportunity in the making, chose to bring virtual reality to life by producing a life size car from a game. The futuristic, high-tech MTRC concept, previously merely the figment of a Sony PS2 graphic artist's imagination, was recently shown at the Geneva motor show.
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| The MTRC seats two in tandem, and looks like a cross between an F1 car and a rocket ship. (Photo: Toyota Canada) |
The concept, that gets its name from the acronym for Motor Triathlon Race Car, is the product of Toyota and the creators of Sony's upcoming Gran Turismo 4 racing simulator. It's the sort of machine that goes well beyond the means of any normal road-going car, stretching the bounds of the automotive imagination by crossing "what if" dreams with more concrete ideas of what the future might be.
The two-seat, open-wheeled road racer was designed by Toyota's European ED2 design studio. In order to gain access to the cockpit, the entire front end swings up and out of the way, an unorthodox process but one that works nonetheless.