Well, this is pretty unusual marketing! PlayStation has teamed up with the Lincolnshire Police to showcase how Gran Turismo Sport can be used to improve real-life driving skills.
Racing on the real and virtual editions of the Silverstone race track in Northants, four police officers set out to beat their lap times. Spoilers: They all succeeded!
In addition to using a race wheel and pedals, a PlayStation VR headset was also thrown into the mix.
If the video is to be believed, as this is PlayStation marketing material, it seems that the digital experience allowed the police to learn the track and apply that to the real-world experience. All four officers succeeded in improving on their time, with one shaving off a full five seconds.
As you can imagine, the Gran Turismo Sport staff were happy with the results. Laurence Wiltshire, managing director of GT Academy, gave the following comment:
GT Academy has proven that the skills learned via Gran Turismo directly transfer from the virtual track on to the real one. This is thanks to the incredibly accurate simulation of the tracks but more importantly the simulation of the cars, their physics and how they handle. It’s one thing to train racing drivers but the idea that a game could help officers respond to emergencies more efficiently is mind-blowing.
Lincolnshire Police assistant chief constable Shaun West had this to say:
There will never be a replacement for traditional training methods but we are always looking for innovative ways to supplement the learning of our officers and staff. If Gran Turismo can help to train world-class racing drivers, then we were keen to explore whether it could offer anything to our officers and help expand the way we think about evolving and refreshing our training methods.
GT Sport is out today (October 17), exclusively on PlayStation 4.
