Various "bucks" are mounted to the motion platform, each designed to recreate the interior of various cars as faithfully as possible, whether it's a Ford GT endurance racer or a NASCAR Sprint Cup car. I watch as NASCAR professional David Ragan turns virtual laps at the new Charlotte Track.The simulator has six degrees of freedom to pitch, twist and jostle drivers. "We'll run three or four tracks in a few-hour session.With NASCAR limiting the amount of on-track testing teams can perform, this type of virtual experience is invaluable."This Ford GT simulator "buck" is designed to give drivers as realistic an experience as gloves making machine Suppliers possible. Surrounded by a 26-foot wraparound screen and powered by 25 computers, the simulator consists of a lifelike racing car cockpit "buck" that sits on a platform with six degrees of freedom to rock, tilt and jolt drivers.
Those setup tweaks will, eventually, be relayed to engineers for prepping Ragan's real-life car for the upcoming race weekend."The model is exactly every measurement of a specific car," says Dan Tiley, Ford's performance vehicle dynamics simulation engineer. The team was tasked with evaluating car-simulator technology from around the world and setting one up for use by racing teams. He sets a couple of laps on the simulator, then stops and relays feedback to engineers, who in turn tweak some variables in their car-setup model for a few minutes, before sending him back onto the virtual track.
The simulator is an impressive machine. "It gives drivers the chance to get on tracks they've never been on before," Tiley says. "To be as exact as possible is what makes this as good a tool as it is. The aim? Let both racing drivers and car engineers evaluate cars and technical changes without the expense of building and tweaking physical prototypes. . Engineers feed in data from engine dynamometers, "kinematics and compliance" machines that measurement suspension motion and a variety of other sources.You may think your Forza Horizon setup is pretty slick, but it's got nothing on the 3D simulator housed at the Ford Performance technical center in Concord, North Carolina."And, of course, all that is done without the expense of shipping cars and parts around the country -- or of rebuilding a car if the driver taps the wall.