949Racing Driving Simulators
11-27-2008, 11:57 PM
#1
949Racing Driving Simulators
Click on the picture for video
Porsche cup car at Singapore Slithering the cup car around this street circuit is super fun!
07 Sauber F1 at Spa
We rent/lease these machines out for corporate events, parties etc.
The screens are 1080i HD running at 75fps but my little camera only shoots 640x480 30fps. So you don't get a sense of the incredible detail from these clips.
These sims are some of the very few simulators designs on the planet that has 100% physics based effects, nothing "canned". Some of the simpler sims use a canned effect for things like rumble strips, engine vibration, flat spotted tires, etc. The two motion actuators in the MPS II have a minimum stroke measured in the thousandths of an inch. Meaning when you rev the engine, you get the actual waveform shape, amplitude and frequency generated by the engine in the physics model for that car. The Panoz's at idle are vibra-massage.
All the tracks in iRacing, most of the best rFactor and to a lesser extent, GTRII and LFS, have laser scanned track surfaces. That means the actual surface detail is fed through the seat and wheel and the vehicles physics model reacts to it. Most home game based sims have no real detrimental effect on handling when you lower to min ride height because there are no real bumps in the track model. Do that with iRacing or rFactor and you have a car that flies off the bumpy tracks.
One of the things I realized when driving our MPS II is how much I use surface detail on the track to locate myself. As you learn a track and start to get a rhythm, you are not only using the visual and aural cues, but also the movement over the cars. One particular straight on Surfers Paradise had ripples in the straight that ended right before the braking zone so without realizing it at first, I was using them to cue my braking point without looking at the braking markers, instead looking at the apex and "feeling" where I was. That blew me away.
iRacing has just given us the telemetry data to create our proprietary motion plugin. Apparently they had to create so stuff for us as the MPS II is the only machine that uses every bit of data the physics models are capable of generating. It'll take us a while to create the plugin.
The machines start at around $26K with full motion and I think a Logitech G25. Our machines are specially built, the only two in the world I know of with the new Intel I7 processor and some other fairly exotic hardware. Our steering mechs are a proprietary CXC design that costs about 15x more than the G25 with pedals. It's so sensitive that you get the track surface when rolling through the pits, yet it will generate enough feedback force to rip the wheel out of your hands if you are crazy enough to turn the feedback to 100%. I did that with the F1 car and Montreal and no one could drive it more than about 6 laps before their arms gave up. There is also no hysteresis in the steering mech, in other words, you can't "beat" it by making a steering input too fast for it to register or overcome the resistance. Those super fast corrections in the cup car have full feedback, caster and the torsional spring rate of the tire sidewall being communicated through the wheel. So sliding the car right up to the wall is a precision input, not a rough guess. Some of the steering inputs seen in the clips are actually bumps in the track kicking the wheel in my hands despite the death grip. Our machine are a little more than double the price of the base machine.
These two machines are, for the time being at least, the ne plus ultra driving sims on the planet. I feel very lucky to have been in the right place at the right time to make this all happen. CXC Simulations, the company that makes them, sells a fair amount of them to pro race drivers and race teams for driver training. They regularly get top Nascar, ALMS, SWC, Champ car, Koni Challenge drivers flying out to spend a day learning a new track or car setup. I hope to get some of that business as well. Only bummer is I can never share the drivers, manufacturers or teams names.
One last tidbit, a week before a certain season ending open wheel race in South America last month, the championship winning driver, who is Anglo African, was in California and happened to be at a location where an MPSII like ours was on display. He drove it and smiled. Can't use his name as we don't quite have that budget for that although I have a few pics saved on my PC...
Porsche cup car at Singapore Slithering the cup car around this street circuit is super fun!
07 Sauber F1 at Spa
We rent/lease these machines out for corporate events, parties etc.
The screens are 1080i HD running at 75fps but my little camera only shoots 640x480 30fps. So you don't get a sense of the incredible detail from these clips.
These sims are some of the very few simulators designs on the planet that has 100% physics based effects, nothing "canned". Some of the simpler sims use a canned effect for things like rumble strips, engine vibration, flat spotted tires, etc. The two motion actuators in the MPS II have a minimum stroke measured in the thousandths of an inch. Meaning when you rev the engine, you get the actual waveform shape, amplitude and frequency generated by the engine in the physics model for that car. The Panoz's at idle are vibra-massage.
All the tracks in iRacing, most of the best rFactor and to a lesser extent, GTRII and LFS, have laser scanned track surfaces. That means the actual surface detail is fed through the seat and wheel and the vehicles physics model reacts to it. Most home game based sims have no real detrimental effect on handling when you lower to min ride height because there are no real bumps in the track model. Do that with iRacing or rFactor and you have a car that flies off the bumpy tracks.
One of the things I realized when driving our MPS II is how much I use surface detail on the track to locate myself. As you learn a track and start to get a rhythm, you are not only using the visual and aural cues, but also the movement over the cars. One particular straight on Surfers Paradise had ripples in the straight that ended right before the braking zone so without realizing it at first, I was using them to cue my braking point without looking at the braking markers, instead looking at the apex and "feeling" where I was. That blew me away.
iRacing has just given us the telemetry data to create our proprietary motion plugin. Apparently they had to create so stuff for us as the MPS II is the only machine that uses every bit of data the physics models are capable of generating. It'll take us a while to create the plugin.
The machines start at around $26K with full motion and I think a Logitech G25. Our machines are specially built, the only two in the world I know of with the new Intel I7 processor and some other fairly exotic hardware. Our steering mechs are a proprietary CXC design that costs about 15x more than the G25 with pedals. It's so sensitive that you get the track surface when rolling through the pits, yet it will generate enough feedback force to rip the wheel out of your hands if you are crazy enough to turn the feedback to 100%. I did that with the F1 car and Montreal and no one could drive it more than about 6 laps before their arms gave up. There is also no hysteresis in the steering mech, in other words, you can't "beat" it by making a steering input too fast for it to register or overcome the resistance. Those super fast corrections in the cup car have full feedback, caster and the torsional spring rate of the tire sidewall being communicated through the wheel. So sliding the car right up to the wall is a precision input, not a rough guess. Some of the steering inputs seen in the clips are actually bumps in the track kicking the wheel in my hands despite the death grip. Our machine are a little more than double the price of the base machine.
These two machines are, for the time being at least, the ne plus ultra driving sims on the planet. I feel very lucky to have been in the right place at the right time to make this all happen. CXC Simulations, the company that makes them, sells a fair amount of them to pro race drivers and race teams for driver training. They regularly get top Nascar, ALMS, SWC, Champ car, Koni Challenge drivers flying out to spend a day learning a new track or car setup. I hope to get some of that business as well. Only bummer is I can never share the drivers, manufacturers or teams names.
One last tidbit, a week before a certain season ending open wheel race in South America last month, the championship winning driver, who is Anglo African, was in California and happened to be at a location where an MPSII like ours was on display. He drove it and smiled. Can't use his name as we don't quite have that budget for that although I have a few pics saved on my PC...
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11-28-2008, 05:56 AM
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I got a chance to try it out at Calspeed. It was pretty damn impressive. No other sim has been able to replicate brake pressure like that one did, especially with the seat movements.
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11-28-2008, 07:18 PM
#12
Not that I know of. We'll have a machine at the CHE Precision booth and I'll roaming around.
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