Anyone who’s played racing videogames like Gran Turismo or even Mario Kart knows the ghost car—the hologram that rides the track with you, recreating exactly the fastest lap you've driven. Following that car through the apexes is the best way to learn to drive consistently fast and beat your competition come race day.

Justin Hayes wanted to take that videogame feature and offer it to actual drivers. So he created GhostDash, a head-up display that projects a virtual car onto the road, right in front of the driver. Mounted on the dashboard, a Lexan surface, coated with a specialty material called HoloFilm, sits in front of your face while the LED projector shows the car you need to follow at 1080P resolution. If you’re trailing, the ghost car will appear ahead, and if you pass it, an arrow will show that it’s behind you.

“Imagine you’re driving, and you do something different than normal—brake earlier, go smoother off the pedal,” says Hayes, who spends his working hours as a racing instructor. “Something real small that makes you a little bit faster. But the next lap you come around, you have to remember exactly what that was and how to do it even faster. That’s a hard thing to do.” Rather than overloading your brain and trying to remember how you took a curve on that one great lap you ran, a quick glance at the ghost car ahead will let you know where you need to be. That's a lot easier than having to visualize and memorize your whole lap.

“I grew up on racing games, that’s what got me into cars,” Hayes says. He learned on World Driver Championship for Nintendo 64. “It was impossible! That was the first game where technique actually mattered."

Justin Hayes

The idea came from, naturally, a forum discussion among videogame racers on trackjunkies.org. In May 2013, in a thread about tips for practicing, Hayes wrote, “Ghost mode is so good it is almost like cheating! I wish there was such a thing in real life.” Another user responded, “I bet it is technically doable with tech available today. Just need to project a display onto the visor and have a computer that can calculate the ghost car.” A Miata owner named MX5#98 said, “If you're looking for investors, sign me up.” So Hayes decided to try it out.

To generate your ghost car, the GhostDash takes positioning from a GPS unit, along with the braking, speed, and other bits of info from your best lap, and sends that data to a Windows device (in this case, a Surface Pro 3 tablet). The software turns the data into a real-time vehicle projected on the 15-inch screen.

If you don't want to follow your ghost car, the device can also project your current speed and other info on the screen, right in your line of sight. That means no looking down from the road to check your lap time.

When GhostDash comes out (Hayes is aiming for March), the full kit will cost $3,699 and come with a Windows tablet, the projector, screen, and a compatible GPS device. The software will sell for $45, and a starter kit without a GPS or Windows device will sell for $1,999.

GhostDash is seeking $43,500 in funding with a Kickstarter campaign to finalize the user interface and start building infrastructure so drivers can share race data and store their best laps. MX5#98's support notwithstanding, Hayes is far short of his goal. If he can raise the cash, we'd love to try it out real lift ghost mode. If not, we can always settle for learning to race the old-fashioned way—or just fire up the N64 and play some Mario Kart.