A lot of gamers – myself included – prefer to use the third-person point of view when driving vehicles in video games. I just find it easier to steer if I can see how far my vehicle is from a turn; in first-person I always end up steering too late. But what if we used the third person view to drive an actual vehicle? Will it offer that same benefit? Will it have any benefits? That’s what the folks at Rooster Teeth tested.
In order to achieve the third-person effect, they attached a Canon 5D Mark II DSLR camera to a bar behind their test vehicle. The feed from the camera was routed to a 15″ monitor in front of the steering wheel. All of the pickup’s windows were blacked out to prevent cheating. Also, fake Yakuza were there to beat up the drivers en route to the pickup. Why? Why the hell not?
So that was quite the fail, but I think the main problem was that the view made the drivers incorrectly delay their steering, plus the fact that steering an actual car takes more time than steering a virtual vehicle. Maybe they should try the top-down view next time, a la the first GTA.
[via Kotaku]
