Augmented reality could help with ordering your Ferrari’s wheels

nvidia-1A German researcher from RTT wowed the audience at Nvidia’s GPU Technology conference by staging a visual illusion. In a demonstration of “augmented reality,” the researchers showed how they could point a video camera at a car wheel and then show that wheel in a video.

In the video, the wheel can be enhanced with computer graphics. You could, for instance, show in the video what different types of car wheels would look like on your Ferrari. The experiment is enabled by using powerful graphics chips that can process the data for the visuals in real time. The at right shows the real tire being filmed, while the image below depicts what shows up on the video screen with the augmented graphics.
nvidia-2And the image at bottom is a picture of an accurately rendered Ferrari sports car. You will see this kind of simulation of real cars available in Ferrari dealerships in the future. One such simulator is already available for shoppers at a dealership in Germany. Nvidia demoed the technology at its GPU Technology conference today in San Jose, Calif.

nvidia-3

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.