DOES IT WORK?
As BMW develops next-gen head-up displays, we experience its mixed-reality headset.
Ever played a video game so realistic you felt you were genuinely there? Modern screenplay is so fast and accurate that the gap between reality and the virtual world can seem very narrow. Never more so than when I sampled BMW’s M Mixed Reality, a project focused on developing virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality for future BMW head-up displays.
I drove a real BMW M4 around a virtual racetrack. In the real world, I was driving on an empty tarmac apron with a co-driver next to me for safety reasons, but the headset I wore meant I could see barriers, bridges and gaming-style bonus tokens as I drove along, with nobody in the passenger seat.
The headset is a 12-megapixel Varjo XR-3. Before setting off, there’s an installation process that’s like an eye test at the optician’s, staring at dots and symbols while the mixed-reality goggles learn to track my eye and head movement. It’s so they can accurately project the gameplay into a photorealistic line of sight.
Once that process was completed I could start driving and immerse myself in a digital world that could be taken from an arcade machine. The car has become a gaming controller, and the virtual world has entered the vehicle. It’s all very odd. I quickly learn to trust the high-fidelity imagery, yet I’m driving a real M4, its turbocharged straight-six snarling and thrusting us around the empty apron. It’s great fun and – when my live stream crashes (‘You turned your head too far to look at the door mirrors’) – rather disturbing. This glitch dents my confidence and I don’t drive quite as briskly after that.
BMW says the data is helping it design future in-car augmented-and virtual-reality systems.
