Re: The racing auditory display (RAD)
And....no, no to the claim it's the first accessible 'real' racing game (whatever that means). Going back to 1995 at least, fully 3D raing games have had assists that let people use them.
I'll illustrate:
1997: CART's ill fated officially licensed game had two levels of steering help. One that merely kept you between the track lines. Another that kept you on a pre programmed racing line. The same the AI ran on. It had a major flaw however that if you deviated from the line at all, say to pass a car....it'd snap you back to the line and spin the car out or actually go off the track trying to snap you back to the racing line.
1998: Geoff Crammand'Crammond's Grand Prix series from the first game up until GP4 had steering help for keyboard racers, auto brake, auto gears and so forth. It had (slight) auto steering on keyboard as well as auto brake. Yes it was slower and lost you positions BUT.....
1998-201X: NASCAR's various games have all had varying levels of driver assists from simple auto shifting all the way up to steering and braking help for road coursses and ovals
Lastly: EVERY single drag racing game has been accessible. Mostly because drag racing works on a set tree time, no turning, no braking, just you, your opponent and a quarter mile. It's perfectly possible to play a drag racing game without any help once you get a feel for the process of lining up the car. That's the hard bit.
Oh and all the ISI gMotor engined games have had assists built in all the way up to fully automati steering/braking, all you have to do is hold the gas down and hthe car goes around the track.
Lastly....no, a fully 3D racing game will not catch on for blind people simply because of hte fact it's fully 3D. Add that to how 3D racing games aren't anywhere close to a real carr in terms of physics and the attitudes of the sim racing community....I wouldn't honestly be shocked if Brian Smith (generic name by the way), showed this off at a raing game convention and, I am not joking, got attacked for it. The racing game genre does not, and I am not making this up, want any disabled gamers. Companies make millions selling full wheel and pedal sets. Sim racing communities have an attitude of 'you don't have X wheel and pedal set get the hell out', again, I wish I was joking about that, but no.
Or my personal favorite one: Oh you play X game? You aren't a real racing gamer! I can say from my time at SMS those ideas are ingrained in the racing sim genre. You aren't going to get blind or disabled racers accepted in any sim of note, and if one's developed the big guns o the scene, your iRacings, your rFactors (okay maybe not that one), your Asetto Corsas are going to bury it and the hardcore racing game players are going to pretend blind gamers don't exist. I can say with 99.9% certainty iRacing's ommunity will never, EVER accept somebody using this system, and they will without fail run a blind gamer off that service for 'not being good enough' or some bullshit reason.
TL:DR Blind people need to stay the hell away from racing sims and this, it'll just lead to more fighting in racing games and sims.
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