At the Tokyo Autosalon 2010 with NAPAC, held at the Makuhari Messe of the Chiba Prefecture on January 15-18, the Toyota Motor Corporation and "Gran Turismo" announced a collaboration for a new technology that utilizes vehicle data and GPS coordinates.

This technology involves taking real-life CAN (Controller Area Network) data, used to manage car and GPS positioning data, and using it to reproduce a visualization of the recorded driving within Gran Turismo.

Simply put, CAN and GPS data recorded in a real car is exported to a USB memory stick and fed into Gran Turismo's simulation engine, producing a replay or recreation of that data within the game.

That data can even be used as a ghost car, or used to analyze a person's real-life performance on the race track. CAN data includes things like forward/aft and right/left G forces, steering, brake, accelerator operations and engine rpm, as well as the rotational speeds of each wheel. When combined with GPS positional data, a very accurate recreation of the recorded drive is possible.

On the stage at the Toyota Booth, actual driving data taken from a real lap, driven by 2009 Super GT Champion Juichi Wakisaka in a Toyota (Lexus) IS-F on the Fuji Speedway, was reproduced in Gran Turismo. The level of precision of this system was proven by showing both footage taken from an in-car camera during the lap from the actual lap and the recreated lap in Gran Turismo (see above video).

Look forward for more exciting news on this and other collaborations.

Related: Gran Turismo at Tokyo Auto Salon, Joint Event with Toyota