What is virtual-steering-wheel?

This project lets you control car racing games using hand gestures captured through your webcam. Instead of pressing keyboard arrow keys, you hold your hands up to the camera and move them like you are turning a steering wheel. The program translates your hand positions into the same arrow key presses that racing games already understand. The system recognizes a few basic gestures. When you make fists with both hands and hold them level, the program sends the up arrow key to accelerate. When you tilt both fists left or right, it adds the corresponding left or right arrow key to steer while accelerating. If you open both hands flat, it sends the down arrow to brake. You can also brake and steer at the same time by tilting your open hands. If one hand is a fist and the other is open, or if no hands are visible, the program releases all keys. Setting it up requires Python 3.9 or newer and a webcam. You install four dependencies: MediaPipe (which does the hand tracking), OpenCV (which handles the camera feed), pynput (which simulates keyboard input), and numpy. After that, you run a single script. The project was built and tested on macOS, specifically on an Apple M2 machine, but it also works on Windows. The script automatically detects your operating system and picks the right camera backend. On macOS, you need to grant Terminal permission to use the camera in System Settings. The script includes several configuration options at the top of the file. You can change which camera to use, adjust how many degrees of tilt the system ignores to prevent jittery steering, flip the camera view if steering feels reversed, and tune how many fingers must be extended to count as an open hand for braking. There is also a grace period of eight frames where the program waits before releasing keys after your hands leave the frame, which prevents accidental key releases during brief moments when tracking is lost. The project works with any game that uses arrow keys for input, including browser-based games and PC racing titles.