Why F1 Teams Spend £8m on Simulators (I drove one)

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This is an £2.5M Formula 1 simulator that's so realistic, teams are using it to develop their race cars without ever leaving the factory.

So, to find out more, I spoke with Ash Warne, who spent a decade developing simulators before founding Dynisma. He and his team have created something that has changed how F1 cars are developed.

Today, you'll find out how F1 teams use these simulators to develop their drivers and cars, the engineering behind how they’re so realistic and why teams trust the sims enough to bolt on parts straight from sim testing to race weekends. Plus, I got to drive one.

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#Formula1 #Simulator #Dynisma

[jansz]

My sim consists of a Logitech G923 wheel and pedals, gear lever and simple desk and gaming seat that I have to secure to the wardrobe with a piano stool and a guitar speaker for it not to move (it still does a little when I push the brake). I suppose it could fall a little short of F1 teams' expectations...

[andredornelles]

My room mate blows next to me when there's wind and spits when it's raining. He also kicks me depending on the crash. Much more real phyisics than those "top" simulators.

[jc]

Wait. Is this the british YouTuber/ Racing driver that holds the Lap record at brands hatch???

[mattt]

The other team that he cannot mention is Cadillac. By the way

[ApolloVIIIYouAreGoForTLI]

People seem perplexed that theres so much trust in simulators but NASA used various analog simulators for the Apollo missions in the 60's.

[Bornbegoodu]

I'm a bit confused. For the inner ear breaking and pitching forward feels exactly the same. Can't you just simulate g forces by pitching/rolling? Sure you can only simulate 1g of cornering/braking acceleration, but this could be compensatet for with additional weight the driver wears. Instead of the huge screen you would obviously need vr googles or somthing comparabel to fool the driver into experincing only the g forces without a relation to their surrounding. The only downside would be the constant weight pulling driver down. But this way you could have sustained g forces throughout longer corners/braking sections. This exact same principal is used for flight simulators. Maybe I'm just overseeing something, but this would be a logical way for me simulate sustained g forces. Maybe you can help me see my flaw in logic here?

[alex]

You can't 1-1 simulate the g-forces the inner ear feels in a sustained way, but you can do it to some parts of the body. Eg your skin won't know the difference between being pressed into the side or your seat in a corner vs your seat pressing into your skin in a corner. Some sim rigs use this trick to simulate the sustained Gs with movable panels in the seat. Don't think it's 100%, but it does sound like 1 more level of immersion where you could quite literally be driving by the seat of your pants ;)

[Sonikeloq]

I always think that the best way a simulator could traduce g forces could be that the whole unit would be like a ball, where the pilot gets in, and inside of it, it would have like a cockpit, and with enough distance, rounded screens like the sphere in las vegas, but small size. Then, that ball-like unit would have the ability to rotate in any direction with a mechanic structure in the outside, but when youre sitting in the cockpit, with the seatbelts on, the horizon in the screens would be alingned properly in your field of view, so, when breaking, the ball viewed from the outside would rotate forward in the range of motion between 0 and 90 degrees depending on the strengh of the break, but viewed from the inside the pilot would have the screens with him so he wouldnt notice he is inclined towards the floor but he would only feel the weight of gravity as g forces on the break. And that same idea for the lateral g forces they feel when turning on a corner, or to feel speed G forces when accelerating inclining the ball backwards having the pilot facing the sky (without him noticing cause hes inside the screens sphere).

Instead of having a big screen attached to the floor and even if you have a simulated cockpit that moves and has some forward or lateral inclinations it wouldnt ever be able to incline much, without it loosing realism because the screen is separate from it and it would break the feeling of a real car-view behavior.

I got this idea from a f-16 or f-18 flight simulator I tried once, but it was different than this idea, it would be like 2 cockpits attached in front of the other, then you would have like an axis between them, so youwould get into the cockpit and you would only see like an inside of an airplane cockpit and like a screen where you would see like the airplane view or something like that. And then it would "take off" and you would begin to feel the G force of a real f-16 but viewed from the outside, the 2 cockpits would be spinning like a fan or a blender, and the cockpit would be on each blenders blade looking towards the axis. That way you have the g forces only in one direction, you would only be able to feel "speed" G forces. Not breaking or lateral G forces. Thats why I thought about the other Idea. I dont know much about simulators but it has always been interesting to me that Ive never seen one with the same idea I have in mind, not even in f1 simulators. Maybe thats a bad idea but it makes so much sense to me that it would be way more realistic for the pilot.

[IJustLikeBikes]

I bet Mazepin could find a way to make one of these spin around, or even on his best day crash and break the whole sim.

[myweirdtaste]

Best competent video about pro simulators available public.

[surferist]

Do these simulators have custom software for graphics and track specs? Did they laser scan all the tracks themselves and create their own sim software or are they using 3rd party data? Super curious!

[shadeburst]

The teams have shaker rigs that replicate vertical forces but AFAIK testing lateral forces only happens in software. The first team to adopt a centrifugal rig will have a huge advantage but in time it will become a mandatory part of the Tech Regs as an extension of 2.7 "No mechanical design may rely upon software inspection as a means of ensuring its compliance." The average cheap home rig reproduces gradients a thousand times better than the Dynisma and AB Dynamics rigs which utterly fail at reproducing blind corners.

[willemtoet_yt]

Really good video - explains all the fundamentals at play in the best motorsport simulators. 3 to 5 milliseconds latency - this is very good, but not the best available in F1 - agree totally that it is one of the critical things, but this sim is not the best for this particular metric. Am certain that they are working to improve this further. Driver reaction time is about 20 milliseconds or so, thus the latency is excellent compared to older driver in the loop simulators. Agree that the slight remaining latency is the main cause of drivers feeling sick - the world normally reacts faster in a real race car. Some really good and honest info about how the lower G-force is used to give a driver the most realistic feeling one can have. Loved it!

[arnaudj.]

I was waiting for someone like you to try a real F1 factory team simulator!! I’m so excited to watch it

[hybridsimrig]

great video. i really wish home sims like iracing would allow us to render only the elements that we need like in 1:16. if i could only render the outside world and hide the dash i would be a very happy camper

[zurugula]

0:35 \o/
Great content, appreciate it!

[dbzcollector]

This puts my moza setup to shame…. 😭 the only thing I have that they don’t is a fan on the base to simulate wind 😂.

[SpeakerMunkey]

I was literally asking someone about this yesterday, and you go and make a video just for me to answer my curiosity. You are so generous! :)

[Calicarver]

Fantastic video! Masterly created and on a very interesting topic at the heart of F1 development. My F1 sim consists of a MX5 and while it also does not achieve the same G-forces it does replicate without any delay many of the minute and sometimes major feelings like the rear end rotating mid corner and stepping out.

[olivierdechamps]

Really nice video! So interesting to have a focus on such a topic, with a good mix of facts, interviews and visuals. Keep it up!