rec.autos.simulators

This is a bit off topic when it comes to racing, but on topic indeed.

I've tried today a truck simulator we have bought here at work. A familycar
will be added in a month or so.

The simulator is built on a truck cabin, and three large screens in the front
and one in the back. Five projectors supply the picture.

I've never driven a 20 ton truck before, so I really doesn't know how it would
be compared to real life. But I have some interesting thoughts.

I got a bit dizzy and car sick. We call it simulator illness. This is because
the image is so large that the lack of forces on you butt, and the lag between
your control input and the image feedback become a factor. One of my colleagues
can't even play GPL without getting ill :)

The problem was worse when cornering. When driving straight ahead, the
difference between every frame is not so big and therefore it is no problem.
When cornering the difference between every frame made the image a bit blurry
and the result was that after every corner I had to straighten my mind up
and refocus. Better framerates is probably the answer here, but there are
limitations in the projectors. A Silicon Graphics Onyx machine is supplying the
picture, so I guess the problem is not there.

What really freaked me out was when I cut a corner too much and the back wheel
of my trailer jumped the kerb, and the whole truck tipped over. Then I wasn't
only looking at a horizon that turned, but I could feel it, and I was so scared
that I had to look out of the side window down on the concrete floor to get
back to real life. I'm pretty sure that if I hadn't I would fall over inside
the***pit which would look rather stupid from the outside :)

As I said I have never driven a truck in my life, so I have no preferences of
judging the physics model. I will have to wait for the car to arrive to do
judge the realism. And hopefully we will be able to turn of power steering,
and do some rallying :)

Papy, please make multimonitor support for GPL :))))) The I would build myself
an eage-lookalike car, put my MSFF in it, put on a helmet and do some real
racing :)

--
Olav K. Malmin
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If you have three computers with monitors on a LAN you can already get
multi-monitor display: join a multiplayer race with all 3 machines, then
set them all to view the in-car display of the same car and jam the
left- and right-buttons of the two ancillary computers and arrange their
monitors on a large desk.

Pretty expensive but then again having 3 monitors is expensive anyway -
and you'd need far more processor power to generate 3 displays
simultaneously from the same machine.

I guess you could use somewhat less powerful (ie. cheaper) machines for
the side displays, as you wouldn't care quite so much about the frame
rate for them.

--

/M Lindqvist

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Tempted to try all this myself, as I have majority of the hardware, just get
lazy sometimes..... maybe soon

Hehe, nice idea! I have actually thought of it myself, but instead using the
fourth computer with a single 14" monitor above the others, as gearbox cam.

Try this if you have the hardware. It isn't a very practical setup, but it
is very fun to try it out.

I will do more camera files for different cars, as soon as I get time to do
it. It is needed for the side monitors.

--

/M Lindqvist

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