from Hacker News

Car hacked to play MarioKart 64

by morninj on 3/24/17, 6:13 PM with 16 comments

  • by colanderman on 3/24/17, 7:39 PM

    > The hardest control to change from the phyiscal car to the emulator was the steering wheel. The emulator only supported two button presses, one to go right and the other to go left.

    The N64, and every N64 emulator I've seen, all support analog input, which Mario Kart 64 uses for steering. I don't get this.

  • by bananabill on 3/24/17, 6:36 PM

    You can also hack your Porsche 911 to play doom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRMpNA86e8Q

  • by smdz on 3/24/17, 7:55 PM

    A bit of a warning - if you do this, and play for long - you could have muscle-memory leak into your real-world driving. Take breaks and drive safe!

  • by hectorhector on 3/24/17, 7:22 PM

    Here's the blog post from the hack's author: https://www.avidhacker.com/2016/02/29/catchMeIfYouCan/

  • by dogma1138 on 3/24/17, 10:59 PM

    The car wasn't "hacked" they are reading the canbus and using that data as an input for the controls of a game that runs on a separate computer.

    This isn't different than using a USB steering wheel and pedals setup.

    It also requires no "hacking" just access to the canbus which can be accessed in most cars through an interface under the steering wheel or in the glovebox.

    As long as your car is fairly new all the driver inputs will be transmitted over the canbus.

  • by gfo on 3/24/17, 7:23 PM

    > We ended up solving the problem by not continously pushing the button down when turning. The further the wheel is turned to the left or right, the greater amount of time the button stays down and the further the car turns.

    I'm a little confused at this statement. Does this mean they just had it tapping 'left' or 'right' instead of holding the button down initially?

  • by isoprophlex on 3/24/17, 6:30 PM

    Really cool idea. Only, there's no way I could sensibly use my car's steering wheel to control a game without having the engine running for the power steering... I couldn't make it out in the video, but wouldn't this also wear out the tires in less than no time (due to friction with the ground)?