That's cool. I am the author :) . Actually I submitted a direct link to the search a month ago, but didn't get any upvotes. So I'm happy that I got some now with the write-up :)
Yes I haven't optimized a lot for older hardware, but I think it could definitely be done, just have to ditch the complex stuff I am using to scale to high number of units when there are not many of them.
The models have about 1k triangles each. The code is optimized to scale to many units (racers), but the initial rendering cost of instancing with pre-rendered animation skeleton may be high I suspect, so it may be slow for few units on old hardware. I could try to have different rendering paths for small and big number of units to alleviate the problem.
Okay sorry to disappoint but there are no controls (not yet at least). It's automatic as it says in the title. Maybe I should have called it a "demo" instead of a "game" :) . It started as a model viewer and then I added a bit of physics and motion.
Ah hahaha they are just two types of racing pods :) . There is no car/rider classification.
For my personal version I can use all Starcraft 2 units as racing pods, the dragon and the binocular pod are just a couple of free ones I found on Sketchfab and put in there to be able to publish it :)
Well the transparent blue spheres are checkpoints and the units have to pass through them. There is physics for collisions and the pods turn and accelerate towards the checkpoints. They go from one to the next. The race is infinite though in this case. It's inspired by a 2D bot programming contest at https://www.codingame.com/multiplayer/bot-programming/coders... .
I used the website, downloaded the mp4 and postprocessed to walk in place using a shell script: https://github.com/emnh/mantary-platformer/blob/main/animscr...
The character was generated using stable diffusion.