F1 Simulators Revealed

An anonymous reader writes "Racecar Engineering has posted an exclusive look inside the simulator of a leading grand prix team. Particularly interesting is that the Formula 1 team uses software based on the free simulator Racer (with source code available) albeit with a custom vehicle model and hardware interface via CAN-bus. The article highlights the importance that mainstream racing sims (rFactor, iRacing) have in simulation at the pinnacle of the worlds most advanced sport." Along similar lines, reader PatPending writes "Engineers at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Germany (surely the greatest of all institutes) have turned a massive robot arm into a Ferrari F1 simulator, discovering a new strain of awesome in the process. The contraption, known as the CyberMotion Simulator, consists of an industrial robotic arm fitted with a racing seat, a force feedback steering wheel and a 3D simulation of the Monza Formula 1 track beamed from a projector on to a curved display."

It's the data that's crucial, not the software

[Frescard]

What brings a package like Racer to a level usable by F1 teams is not so much the software itself (even though the openness of it helps), but the data that it is being fed by the team and their suppliers (e.g. performance and feedback data from the car, professional track scans, etc.).

Since the casual user does NOT have access to these data set, all they're left with is the "empty sheet of paper", on which they can paint their own fantasies, but, just because they're using the same "paper" as a race team, this does not mean that the outcome (the simulation feel) will be the same as that of an F1 team.

So - unless you have some realistic data to plug into it (and to test in real-life feedback loops), don't be under any illusion that it's any better than any other racing sim.