2009 Nissan GT-R: Where Game Design Meets The Road

A lot of cars these days have videogame systems in them, but this month Nissan started rolling out the first car with elements made by a videogame designer. The 2009 Nissan GT-R, which draws influences from Gundam robots, sports a customizable suite of interactive gauges that are the creation of none other than Gran Turismo designer Kazinori Yamauchi.

The 480 horsepower sports car, which has an MSRP of around 70 grand, has the blood of car enthusiasts racing with its mind-numbing ability to hit 60 mph in under 3.5 seconds. But it's the car's interface that should send gamers hearts aflutter. Mounted on the center console is an user-configurable LCD panel capable of displaying up to six different visualizations of the cars performance at once.

There is an acceleration graph that plots the car's acceleration over the past 20 seconds in G units. If a threshold is exceeded, the gauge turns to red to warn the driver. A braking chart displays similar data, but for deceleration, and a steering plot shows the number of G's generated in turns. The steering and acceleration data can also be combined into an 'absolute G' gauge. There's also an Eco panel that displays a histogram of fuel economy plotted over time.

One of the most interesting visualizations is the gear position gauge, which provides a map of each of the GT-R's six gears. Each gear is represented as a column with a bulge in the middle. A vertical speedometer aligns the current speed with the centerline bulges in the gear map, and by reading left to right, the driver can see where her current speed sits in each gear's power band. The relative fuel consumption required to drive each gear at that speed is also shown, allowing the user to optimize their driving style for power or economy.

All of these visualizations were designed by Mr. Yamauchi's team, which translated the gamer's lust for situational awareness to the automobile. While developing the system, the team's mantra was "know the status," "know the environment," "record conditions." Sounds like a pep talk for a Counterstrike team before a big match.

While Mr. Yamauchi spent more than a year developing the interactive gauges for the GT-R, don't think for a moment he wasn't interested in the die-cast aluminum and steel monster whose performance he was visualizing. In tests, the veteran game designer pushed the GT-R past 190 mph.