Driving Simulator Development and Performance Study

The driving simulator is a vital tool for much of the research performed at theSwedish National Road and Transport Institute (VTI). Currently VTI posses three driving simulators, two high fidelity simulators developed and constructed by VTI, and a medium fidelity simulator from the German company Dr.-Ing. Reiner Foerst GmbH. The two high fidelity simulators run the same simulation software, developed at VTI. The medium fidelity simulator runs a proprietary simulation software. At VTI there is a wish to integrate the medium fidelity Foerst Trainer simulator hardware into the VTI simulation software environment. This would increase research, development and maintanance flexibility and simulator availability since development and research could be performed on one additional simulator. Anintegration would lead to a homogenous software environment that also decreasesdevelopment, maintanance and training costs.To integrate the Foerst Trainer simulator and the VTI simulation software to communicate a program that translates and relays input and output between the two was developed. An assessment of the hardware-software integration was performed through an experiment where the high fidelity Simulator 3 and the medium fidelity Foerst Trainer simulator were compared. The experiment was designed to measure the participants driving performances and the perceived realism of the simulator. The results of the experiment shows that there is suprisingly small differences between the simulators, but more research is needed for more conclusive results