North Yorkshire’s Scenery Immortalised in Gran Turismo 7 Video Game

An update to the Gran Turismo 7 video game has brought an unexpected treat for fans of cars, photography, and the landscape of North Yorkshire, with a series of dynamic images that capture the views and allow players to interact with them.

It’s fair to say that one of the north’s greatest assets is its remarkable scenery, with North Yorkshire in particular combining rural landscapes with ancient settlements and hosting two National Parks: the North York Moors and the Yorkshire Dales. Little wonder then it’s a popular location for car manufacturers to stage product launches and driving days!

That reputation appears to have spread further afield, with Japanese video game developer Polyphony Digital sending a specialist “Scapes” team to the county to take some rather interesting photographs.

Using Sony Alpha cameras developed specially for the task, the team takes images of the selected environments but also captures three-dimensional lighting information. When converted into the game, this allows players to position cars — up to three at a time — in the images and take photographs as if the cars were really there.

In total there’s 25 new images which include well-known locations like the Buttertubs Pass, Glaisdale, Goathland, the Ribblehead Viaduct, and Staithes, as well as some smaller villages and rural scenes.

It’s actually the second set of “Scapes” images which take in locations in the north, with a set of ten locations in Whitby and the railway station in Glaisdale appearing when the game launched in March 2022. That all adds up to a combined 92 locations in the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, out of a total of 2,900 such images around the world.

Next time you see an image from a Northern Group member of a car shot in North Yorkshire, you might need to double-check to see if it’s from a game first!

Here’s some of our attempts: