make a car racing game whose territory is the entire us
use map data from the entire us for layout and auto-generate graphic details
could also use elevation data for roads
compress the elevation data lossly
for areas outside of roads, randomize elevation based on general tendencies of that area

as the car enters an area
there must be ways of making the details not too uniform
- sets of different kinds of certain things, like
light posts
mail boxes
house types
road styles
tree types, heights
bush types
car types (either poor, middle class, or rich, though you cant usually see the rich ones)
police car types

some would be randomized per house, like mail boxes
some would be more per area
tehre also has to be mixtures of the two
like house types -- different houses per area, but all following the same basic motif for
an area

setting parameters per area must be done by hand, neighborhood by neighborhood or
at laest city by city, with a city section, suburban section, etc. probably using satellite data for reference. or it could perhaps be automatically generated from the satellite data (once, during game creation).

other ideas
-make heavy use of a physics engine to make things -- mostly crashes -- as realistic as possible, simulating as many independent parts and their properties as possible, also crunching the body, breaking glass, etc. this means anything is possible. *and also simulate how the car would run after those crashes*, if it's still working, simulate the difficulty of steering etc. even if it's missing a wheel or so or has a flat tire. (the user must press a button to get a new car when driving is too impractical, but this comes at a penalty) can we use the physics engine to realistically know what sounds to produce during a crash also? there needs to be some sort of fall-back for people who don't have physics engines. either a cruder simulation of the parts (adjusted for how much cpu speed they have), or pre-made crunch scenarios, maybe with some randomization.

-two styles o fdriving available
1. totally realistic car control
2. "fun" mode, where driving physics works much like in Burnout.

police that chase you if you're speeding, running lights, etc.
they also try road barriers, spikes, and shooting out your tires
have an option to buy solid-rubber tires ;P

unlike burnout cars don't beep at you exactly when you're passing them at 100 mph but a little bit later because people have reaction times
also they need to beep somitemes when you're coming at them head-on

ability to buy ufo-power, where when you press a button, for a certain amount af o time a ufo charges your car with extra power to go faster and faster. it never stops going faster, but it only increases slowly for as long as you don't crash. but when it gets too fast the car could obliterate.
on second thought, this should probably be either a jet-equipped car or a car with some amazing engine, with just enough horsepower to make it go fast enough to obliterate. this car/engine/jet attachment is insanely expensive.

demolition derby mode.
have rally races on interesting dirt roads
have races on mountain roads with or without rails, and you can actually fall down the mountain
really really hilly/bumpy dirt road that a monster truck can race on
cross-country races

cars available:

drag racer
school bus
greyhound
hot rod
beach buggy
dune buggy
swamp buggy
air boat
"amazing jeep suspension" jeep
sand rail
1967 voltzwagen dune buggy
go-cart
golf cart
golf cart modified to go 103 mph
one of those old car planes which was actually a car connected to airplane wings
a boat car
tesla roadster
dodge stealth
dodge viper
ferrari
porsche
lamberghini
stretch limo
hummer
army jeep
regular jeep
monster truck
ford f-150
punch buggy - older style, even older style, and new style
tractor with transmission modified to go as fast as possible
crane
thing with the elevated seat for fixing power/phone wires
semi-truck
semi-truck with two sections
garbage truck, with garbage in it that can possibly get dumped out
gasoline truck, which can blow up.
a truck transporting orange soda
amphibious tank (that can shoot)
Terex Titan and/or Terex MT 6300
ambulance
police car
fire truck
motorcycle
dirt bike
cooper
Model T (supe it up and make it raelly fast?)
--lots of other cars, just various models, new and old, including race cars, sports cars, sedans, luxury sedans, family cars, etc.
BMW's
benz's
at least one model of car where the headlights point in the direction you're turning in
Dymaxion
formula-1 racecar
mail truck
UPS truck (brown or white)
taxi
hearse
tow-truck
tow-truck towing a car
R.V.
double-decker bus
the double-decker bus from Harry Potter (able to squeeze in between things, stop on a dime, and turn invisible.)
Harry Potter's friend's dad's flying car
hovercraft
hovercraft from F-Zero X or F-Zero GX
the Back To The Future Car.
perhaps we can make it possible to actually go into the past or future. just create more worlds in the same manner as we do the present. although we could only support a couple of different years, and we might want to limit where we can go to a certain area (how do we do this gracefully?)
Dodge Tomahawk

most of the really special cars have to be bought, or won. (but not both)

have a few unrealistic features of the driving path here and there that could only exist
in a game. like an enclosed bridge that when you come out of it you come out the side you went into. or an elevated road made of ice. and heaven, with the pearly gates and roads made of gold, and so on. have a section randomly in some freeway exchanges somewhere where the road just does a complete vertical loop de loop. you must be going at least somewhere between 93 and 117 MPH to make it around

-if you're driving a semi-truck and you hit another semi-truck, have it slow down and show them crinkling from above, and then as it zooms out more you see Morpheus and what's his face on the top of the truck, while Neo comes flying along just in time to pick morpheus up, this is all totally unexpected. oh and only do it once, and possibly not the first time. maybe even make it rare enough that nobody's ever really sure that it actually happens.

-since the roads are always open -ended, if there's a race to be won then it needs to show somehow where you're supposed to go, though it should let you go anywhere.
certain kinds of shortcuts need to disqualify you but aren't blocked from happening.

should the cars have people in them? this isn't necessarily good, because with the physics, people could be ejected from cars and whatnot

not only cars should be realistic but also external items, like railing and buildings.
so if you run into a railing you'll actually go through it or deform it, if you ran into the right kind of building fast enough you would crash into it, etc.

that means we must populate the interiors of houses and buildings, too, but we should probably only do that once a car penetrates a wall. although some stores can be easily seen into. maybe those can be pre-populated.

for the game's dynamic generation of scenery, the same random seeds must be used so that the scenery doesn't look different every time you come to it. how do we do that exactly, given that a person may leave a scene and come back to it in the same game? we could populate areas in blocks, and whenever a block is started to be populated it resets the seed. maybe parts of the block that don't need to be generated at the moment can be skipped while the RNG polls that would have needed tobe done are still done.
to speed up RNG, don't actually use an algorithm, just use an array in memory of sufficient size.
instead of resetting seeds to zero, we can reset them based on current GPS location.

modern cars with mpg, gps, etc. in an lcd display will have it working in the game for dashboard view.

can play multiple players on separate systems, or up to 4 on the same system
also can use two or more monitors on the same system

should we put into effect some kind of motion blurring, so that when things are going really fast it looks more like tv than a succession of disparate frames?

to make it easier to integrate large numbers of car models into the game, get manufacturers' blueprints for the car.
also if needed, laser-scan the surface to generate polygon data. maybe laser-scan lots of individual car parts, too (for when they fly out from a crash)

can't just pick any old color for a car, although some cars come in more than one color. but you can buy a paint job (and then your car stays that color). you can even buy a DuPont chameleon paint job if that's feasible with graphics cards. also have some paint jobs with custom paintings and so forth. some old cars should have different colors for the doors, hood, etc. have a mirror paint job possible, but it's exceedingly expensive, or you need to come by it by luck, or you need to race it and it's incredibly fast, and when you drive it the police will want to pull you over because it's illegal.
also can get a gold paint job, but it has to be 24-caret gold plating, so it's expensive.
generally, don't make cars unrealistically shiny. especially when it's been through a lot of scuffles.
have some old cars available for driving, including wear and tear on the paint job so it's not shiny, missing hub caps, and so on.
other possible paint job: clear. either the entire car is made out of clear parts (not including the driver, if there is one), or only the body is.
also can get car art, camouflage, and other patterns.
some junk cars could have multiple colors for doors, hood, etc, matteed painting, missing hubcabs, scratches, etc.

can buy insanely bright headlights, but they're illegal. can also buy colored (also illegal) headlights.
can buy a police scanner.
can buy a radar detector.
sun pass?
can buy different kinds of tires, for off-road, asphault, etc.
can put chains around tires for snow
special tire type: made entirely of metal spikes, to tear up the road and give maximum traction. this is for ridiculously powerful engines. this kindof tire is hard to acquire. (it actually shows the roads being torn up. in cache, just save it as line paths.)

have tolls where there really are tolls, and you can break through the gates. actually you have to because we provide no mechanism for giving them money.:D

cars shoud realistically stear/break in reaction to you like actual drivers would

should we make this a flying simulation game too? some cars can fly? some planes can land on the street? as a last priority, if it turns out to be possible. actually i see no reason why not; same logic, just display things from a different angle, and use different physics for flying. if the physics engine is powerful enough the air-resistance physics can be employed for normal cars in normal use or while they're doing air time too.
how can we generate realistic air flow noises? either acoustic simulation, or pre-fab noises associated with specific cars and specific speeds.

if it's a flight simulation game too, here are some airplanes to include:
Space shuttle (only coming in from space)
glider
sr-71
stealth
b-2 bomber
amphibious ultralight
air balloon (for sight seeing)
airline jet
f-16
fa-18, colored like the blue angels
UFO (goes insanely fast, hovers, and makes razor-sharp turns. perhaps it can also go into space.)
jet wings like that one guy in scientific american
various actual models of flying car - complete with flying difficulties, including that one where the wings would fall off
the tiny 'bumble bee'
pterodactyl?
one of those planes that flies directly over the water using a cushion of air (i imagine it could fly over land, too, until you crash) we could have a road leading directly inland from the water so the plane can continue onto the road. the road will be hilly so the plane has to adjust in time via the cushion of air. have a few turns in the road that are too sharp for the craft, so it must take a shortcut offroad. but if it turns too late a road sign will actually slice its wing off.
jetpack?
john carmack's space launching vehicle?
X-Wing
Tie Fighter

for vehicles that go faster than sound, simulate the sonic boom and the faster-than-sound aerodynamics

include certain landmarks, like monuments, the grand canyon, etc.
--use satellite and elevation data to simulate the grand canyon, if there's a way to get down there and still be able to drive
partially randomly generate it and/or lossly compress it, perhaps, to save memory

every car has a unique license number
use license plates associated with the state you're in,
although diffuse them for being near borders and so on.

-if canada, mexico, etc. aren't supported, then if you try to drive outside those bounds (though you can clearly see ahead past those bounds), you bump up against a
wall and it temporarily shows just like the star trek holodeck when you bump a wall in there.

if you fall into a body of water, you actually sink and it shows it.
if youhave bright enough headlights maybe you can see deep sea fish : P

music works via car radio.
some cars have digital radio
some get better reception than others
for an old analog radio, you can hear the static stations in between when you switch
can buy CD's and mp3 cd's for car cd player, at market price. this is trivial in comparison, to, say, a paint job, which could be $3000.

all surfaces in the game should have some amount of imperfection. dirt, scuffs, etc. we need a database of typical scuff and dirt patterns for different surfaces.

maybe have a cache that remembers crash sites so when you return to them, as long as they're still in the cache, the object are still messed up. same for skid marks.

make cars able to run out of gas? and you stop at a gas station and fill them up
allow a car's gas to leak and explode, but only with the likelihood at which that would actually happen?

allow car problems like fire from the engine, smoke from the engine, smoke from the exhaust, etc.? oh, and fogged windows

don't forget scenerios with snowed over or icy roads
how about an ice road trucking challenge?
other weather conditions:
rain, rainclouds
thunder, lightning
night time
solar eclipse (you can select a day and time in the back to the future car that will let you see a solar eclipse. there's no solar eclipse guide; you must do your research on the internet. the back to the future car will let you travel backward or forward just enough that things don't significantly change, or back or forward to a specific year)
hail (this shit can mess your car up)
snow
fog, smog
strong winds
tornados
note that when it's raining elsewhere you can see the rainfall
occasionally, once in a while, there will be rainbows.

we can't go overseas and visit another continent simply because we'd run out of gas
although a jet airliner might be able to
and you might make it to like cuba or something
in those cases we can do the holodeck side bump thing

when a car (or airplane) falls apart we need an objective place to anchor the point of view to. i suggest the steering wheel. but if cars have inhabitants, our point of view would be wherever our inhabitant goes.

support for TV resolution
this saves computing time and paradoxically can make the game look more realistic
slightly blurred to look like crt tv?
actually, just support any resolution the graphics card / monitor will allow
game should able to support more than one more graphics card with interlacing for faster framerate, more than one physics enignes, and more than one CPU core.
note: some monitors can have up to 120 hertz refresh rate.

should we make the user pay for repairing / replacing cars every time there's damage to them?

find out how MSFS does its cloud simulations

if you can find a high enough truck and a low enough bridge, they will actually collide.

automatic-transmission models should actually be automatic, manual-transmission models should actually be manual.

ridiculous amount of specs listed for each car (everything pertaining to driving physics, and possibly more which only pertains to object composition, but nothing that's not relevant to the game, except year, make, model, etc.), but only available in separate pages upon clicking something.

can participate for free in international speed records. try to make this hard to hack. encrypt, etc. make records available to web users, too. have top records by geographical area, or team. these scores are attained in restricted settings, i.e. you can't buy any supe-ups for your car here, etc.

include good anti-hacking technology into the software to protect its integrity. if it's too easy it's no fun.

simulation of mars terrain somewhere in the game. mars terrain is pretty consistent, so it would be easy to generate terrain realistically without too much effort. also simulate mars air if the physics engine is calculating aerodynamics. also, should we allow only vehicles that don't use gas or that carry their own oxygen?
also allow to drive on the moon.
how do we get to mars and the moon in the game, though?
moon rovers are boring, so it won't be via rocket. i'm imagining worm-holes, that only appear in the middle of dark green thunderstorms. (they're clear, and can only be seen by their distortions.) if a car that can't run in a vacuum ends up on mars or the moon, it just won't go (unless it happens to be the moon and it's coasting down a crater wall)! someone with smarts wolud have to think to take an electric car, and then tell everybody else. what about the driver? should we be able to purchase space suits? (don't let it on what they're for in the store) note: one space suit costs 17 million dollars. this should therefore be an important race.
if you take too long on mars you run out of air.
provide races on the mars. they work like this: if you're racing another car, there's a wormhole that will transport either/both of you to mars, whoever goes into it. the race on mars is to another wormhole on mars, which then takes you back to earth to another spot in the race, which puts you ahead faster than if you had forgone the wormhole. so basically it's a shortcut. on mars you can easily see where the second wormhole is from where you started. don't forget there are many boulders to avoid crashing into.
several worm-holes should appear in the same area, one going to mars, one going to the moon, and others going to other points on the race track (but not far enough ahead that it's not worth it to go to mars). you should be able to learn, by the characteristic or the position of the worm-holes, which ones goes where. note that if you go to the moon, there's no shortcut. you just have to turn around and go back through the worm-hole. so if you really want to explore the moon (it's vast, and includes the night sky, craters, and a view of Earth), then you'll just have to give up winning the race.
(the game isn't only just races, but these worm-holes are only available during a special race.)
maybe sometimes we end up on mars at night time, in which case it's pitch black except for our headlights. (but i guess the wormholes had better be glowing)
the two wormholes look exactly the same, and if you lose track of which to which then you'd better try your luck, or tell by distance/apparent size, or by the sun, the stars, or dust being kicked up by the other car.
idea: you can't see the other wormhole from the beginning, but you'll have to know which way to go navigating by the stars/sun? the first time we can figure it out by following the other car - if the other car happens to be there. but if it's a different time of day/night/year the stars/sun will be different. we could make a billion dollars dependent on this race, and people who want to take the shortcut (it's almost necessary) would have to do their research and be able to tell which way to go at any time of day/year. actually it doesn't have to be that hard. if we start the car out pointed in the right direction, they can just atke note of the current position of the stars.
either way, if they move laterally too much they won't find the wormhole if they're going in the right vector. the wormhole should be visible from far enough away that it's possible to find but not so far that it's too easy.

moon data is randomly but consistently generated on the fly.
random scene generation (whether on the moon, on mars, or on earth) is not gauranteed to be identical after game updates.

i'd really like to do Burnout's idea where you get points for 'close calls' to other cars, but i think that would be disrespectful to Burnout.

idea for flight simulation: interface with Google Earth API to get real-time visuals of terrain at any scale as you're flying. (below a certain height normally generated terrait data should apply)
since normally generated terrain data should blur in with google earth terrain at the height boundary, it may be problematic since normally generated terrain data doesn't perfectly correspond with actual terrain. we could just transition really gradually and starting at a high altitude (where generated terrain will be highly averaged out)
idea for flight simulation: allow dogfights (only if the physics is realistic) and include a brief synopsis on how to dogfight effectively. this means we can shoot bullets and missiles, with which we should also be able to destroy cars on the ground (just for fun).

note: available driving terrain is not just streets, but also off-road wherever possible.

idea: instead of going to a store, cars are attained by spotting them on the streets and then doing something to acquire them. but how to acquire them? bring a flat-bed 18-wheeler and pull the car onto it and take it to your garage. all cars are then hotwired. but flat-bed 18-wheelers won't handle some really huge vehicles. a tow-truck won't work because you can't put the car into neutral without a key. we could just get out and hot-wire it but then we leave our current car behind, and also that requires simulation of events outside of driving which i'd rather not get into. also the driving terrain is national so what if your garage is on the other side of the country? another possibility, the cleanest possibility, would be to proposition the owner on the spot with a monetary amount. this requires that we know where the owner is. actually, have the option to put it on the flatbed too when the car is vacant.
to get a lot of special cars, like the titan for example, you'll have to take a road trip to wherever they're held. i guess you could always take an airplane or ufo or whatever there too, but then you need the owner there because you don't have a flatbed. so for some cars, where the owner can't be found, you need to take a road trip.
actually, maybe you don't even have a garage of cars. you simply must give up one car when you get into another. or maybe you have a garage too, but unless you transport a car back to your garage you won't have it after you get out of it. so for example, you could take the UFO to get to a certain car, but once you get out of the ufo and into the car it'll be gone later on.
we can acquire the ufo by ramming into a certain government installation and then offering money. but the money has to be an astronomical amount. i'd say over a billion dollars, but if we have the possibily to gain that much then we can't be challenged to gain lesser amounts like $3000... unless there are ways you can win lots and lots of money but they're incredibly difficult and require lots of merchandise already. but the problem is still that then once you make a billion dollars virtually everything in the game is unlocked.
we could make the game relatively progressive, so that once oyu've gotten to that point you've basically "won" the game and thenefore deserve all the spoils, but i don't like that idea, i'd rather the game be non-linear. unless its being too non-linear would deprive gamers of the impetus to work at it.
maybe we could compromise by having it not be practical to make over x amount of money, and once you have x, there are things in that price range but you wouldnt be able to afford to buy all of them. so if you want to try out another alternative you'll have to start over from the beginning.
but that won't work if we give players the ability to sell things. also, what the hell else would be in the price range of a ufo? i think it's best that there's no selling.
other possible things worth billions of dollars:
  the totally clear car, but would we be able to render that at a fair speed? i don't think so. actaully maybe we could because if the angle from which we're looking at the car is constant then we can map out ahead-of-time how the field of view behind it will be distorted
  a trip to mars, complete with car (remove the worm-hole idea)
  a not-for-sale government jet like the stealth
  a giant fun racing/obstacle course
  the time travelling car
  an amazing ability to change the weather on command
  the harry potter bus or flying car
  pterodactyl (dna found in ice-cold amber, reconstructed and put into a pelican oogonia, then taken out and grown the rest of the way in artificial environments.) you sit on the pterodactyl and control him with reigns.
  an f-zero hovercraft
  heaven with the pearly gates and golden roads and angels (you paid off Mel Gibson to tell you where heaven is located)
  the pope-mobile (the pope inside looks confused and bewildered, you hired a team of professionals to abduct him)
  air force one
  x-wing/tie fighter
  romulan warbird (complete with cloaking)
  Appa from Avatar
  Falkor from The Neverending Story

one of the challenges to get lots of money could be the elevated road made out of ice. make it really long, curvy, hilly, maybe even loopy and it's also a scenic route. you have to make it across the road in a certain time and without falling. as always if you run out of gas in the middle of it you'll be stuck so better do the calculations and get gas. mayeb even make it long enough that youll have to buy a supplemental gas tank. people would probably pick their computers up and throw them out the window, though, when they fall. also allow the possibility of bad weather, like rain to make it more slippery, but it's completely random.

when purchasing the directions to heaven, it shows you and mel gibson standing in his house (same house that was in that movie that had something to do with mel gibson and a dvd, i think itwas an indie movie, or maybe it was family guy, i dunno) fussing over something gestering a lot, you're trying to offer him a check. somewhere in the background is a ceramic jesus with an extremely long face and a crown of thorns and red blood coming down from it. eventually you see Mel giving directions, at one point he puts his arms in a /\ formation and spreads them apart, showing something that happens
so you drive around a bit until you come to a certain location at which point the whole sky changes and you enter hyperspace in sort of the way he showed with his arms and then you're in heaven.
there's also a video clip showing you giving a check to some universitiy and then showing where they found the sap (some place that had a lot of life millions of years ago but has been frozen over since) and how they developed the pterodactyl.
for the pope, it shows you at a meeting with Aymen Abu Aita, the terrorist from Bruno, and then the next thing you know you're driving the pope-mobile with the pope inside it. or maybe you just pay off the driver. you offer one check, it's not good enough, then oyu offer another, then the next thing you know you're driving it.
for air force one you see obama (or whoever's president) getting off the plane, offer him a check, next thing you know you're flying the plane. the president uses the money to erect a gold statue of himself overshadowing mount rushmore. maybe you don't know that unless you happen to visit mount rushmore after buying the plane.