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Connected cars have become reliable enough not only for their safety features, but also for shooting characters on the screen. At CES this week, Nvidia announced it will bring its GeForce Now cloud-based gaming service to vehicles from Hyundai Motor Group, Polestar and BYD.
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Gaming on your car’s screen while charging is a use case, and passengers can also play games on the go if you have a strong enough 4G or 5G connection.
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In a separate announcement, Nvidia said it will work with Foxconn to produce new electronic control units for its upcoming automated electric vehicle platforms.
Video games in cars are nothing new, but Nvidia’s GeForce Now cloud-based gaming service hasn’t made its way to vehicles yet. That’s about to change after Nvidia announced at CES that three automakers have agreed to release GeForce Now games on “select vehicle models.”
Nvidia describes GeForce Now as a low-latency streaming service that “instantly turns virtually any laptop, desktop, Mac, SHIELD TV, Android device, iPhone or iPad into the PC gaming hardware you’ve always dreamed of”. defines it. The tech company can now add select Polestar, BYD and Hyundai/Kia/Genesis vehicles to its list of supposedly dreamy PC gaming setups.
GeForce users can play over 1,000 paid and free-to-play games, including popular favorites Fortnite and Destiny 2, from online stores like Steam and the Epic Games Store. GeForce Now is available in North America and Europe, and from Nvidia and GeForce Now Alliance partners in other parts of the world.
“We’ve made a lot of optimizations to make it work on all different devices, be it laptops, phones or tablets, smart TVs and now cars,” said Danny Shapiro, Nvidia’s vice president of automotive. briefing with journalists “The adjustment that needs to be made is to enable what we call the shortest time from click to photon.”
“Click for photon” describes the time between when a player presses a button, sends a signal to the cloud, and returns to cause a reaction on the screen, Shapiro said. He said that in an electric vehicle standing in one place while charging, a strong Wi-Fi signal should be enough for the service to work well, but cars are notorious for not staying in one place all the time.
“You need a reliable 4G or 5G connection on the road,” he said. “So it really depends on the strength of your network. We’re making a lot of tweaks and optimizations with our automotive partners to ensure a basically seamless experience with the tool that integrates GeForce Now into the infotainment system.”
Other automakers have brought video games to their vehicles with varying degrees of success. A year ago, both Tesla and Mercedes had to rethink how their screens worked for passengers who wanted to play games on the go. Last month, Tesla updated its in-car gaming service to include Steam, while BMW announced it would bring casual games to its cars in 2023 via the AirConsole. BMW’s service requires a smartphone to serve as a game controller.
Nvidia has partnerships with many automakers, so it’s no surprise that the three OEMs that will be bringing GeForce Now to their vehicles for the first time already have Nvidia components in some of their cars. While Hyundai Motor Group and Polestar use Nvidia Drive technology in their vehicles, BYD is developing new EVs on the Nvidia Drive platform.
Nvidia also announced a new strategic partnership with supplier and automotive manufacturer Foxconn at CES. The two companies said they will build automated electric vehicle platforms as Foxconn produces new electronic control units based on the latest Nvidia Drive Orin technology.
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