Formula 1 simulators are a joke

[Tim.Wright]

Dave, while I agree that the cueing may not be perfect but I don't think it has to be in order to make the simulator somewhat useful. What is required is a dedicated simulator driver who is "calibrated" to the real car. That is someone who has driven the same car with the same setup changes in the real world and in the simulator. That way, for example, he might feel something in the simulation which he knows from previous experience will translate to a braking instability on the real car.

Once you have this link, then I think the simulator could be a useful tool.

[Jersey Tom]

say you got a perfect idea of what you are doing and you have exact knowledge of the environment and boundaries yo are working in -physical and actual testing is reduced to confirmation of calculationsand of course actual driver training.

Yeah that would be nice wouldn't it... and will never happen.

[marcush.]

It is more than obvious that all teams up and down the pitlane have been taken for a ride in their development correlation with real world performance in recent years.
a very clear indication of the limits of virtual performance development ,driver in the loop ,Adams modeling and what have you.As soon as you are committing some errors of importance in your calcs -or making wrong assumptions or filter out too much ,you are bound to drop from the outer rim of your envelope and find yourself in the nirvana of uncompetitiveness...
the difference is :teams like RedBull have people in place to realise the shortcomings early enough and have the balls to steer the boat actually when others seem to be stuck in their modus operandi and fool themselves that more hours spent with tools leading to wrong solutions will somehow lead to better results.
Well at least those bad solutions are optimised to the last digit....but who cares if you are 1 two or 4 seconds per lap off the pace?

[Jersey Tom]

a very clear indication of the limits of virtual performance development ,driver in the loop ,Adams modeling and what have you. [...] others seem to be stuck in their modus operandi and fool themselves that more hours spent with tools leading to wrong solutions will somehow lead to better results.

As I alluded to earlier... it's no great secret to anyone actually doing this sort of work that simulation etc isn't some great magic, though that may be the expectation of fans who just see fancy visuals on computer screens and projectors. It's a tool like any other, good for some things and poor for others. As the popular phrase goes, all models are wrong - some are useful.

Suffice to say, even the most struggling F1 teams I don't think there's a dozen engineers sitting in a circle clicking the "Optimize Me" button on their laptops and wondering why ADAMS models aren't popping out that make their real race cars rocket ships.

Should certainly hope not anyway.

[Pierce89]

The answer to his moan is to say "fine, we'll bring back some track testing but it must be at designated circuits and those don't include your two circuits." The cost of testing will be the same for all teams.

Why? That's like saying WT testing must be done at Fondtech. Simulation is more cost effective for some teams. Besides, we should all be begging to see F1 cars around Mugello more.

[DaveW]

Dave, while I agree that the cueing may not be perfect but I don't think it has to be in order to make the simulator somewhat useful.

A wouldn't question that at all, but it may be interesting to compare what happens in aviation (where DIL simulators started).

Ground-based DIL simulators are used widely for procedure training, failure simulations, etc.

They are now used in commercial flying for pilot type certification, so it is possible for passengers to be flown around the sky on a commercial flight by a pilot who has never actually flown the type before, but it is fair to point out that a commercial pilot never seeks to explore the edges of the manoeuvre envelope, and usually there are two pilots to take care of things.

Test Pilots are different. A large part their job is to seek out issues and establish safe operating boundaries. They will certainly be using flight simulators before hardware exists, but once it does they will want to be driving the real thing.

Interestingly, perhaps, test pilot training uses flight simulators (of course), but they also use "real" flight simulators to hone their techniques. In the USA, for example, Calspan operates several flying simulators to "provide real world visuals, cockpit accelerations, and flight stresses". In the UK, the Empire Test Pilots School operates a similar facility. These exist because it is recognised that ground-based simulators have serious cueing limitations.

Arguably, a racing driver has more in common with a Test Pilot than he does with a Commercial Pilot.

[shelly]

As one knowledgeable guy once told me, aviation simulators (not for test pilots) are needed to adapt the man to the machine, f1 simulators are needed to adapt the machine to the man, e.g. learn which set-ups he can drive for a sustained number of laps

[Gridlock]

Consider 2 things:

1) The costs LDM refers to have been spent. It's too late. Yes, his argument stands up if you haven't already invested in all the modern sim stuff, but now it just sounds like the bitter rantings of a man who was responsible for a shitty windtunnel ("it's art!") and 4 years being beaten by a caffeine salesman.

2) Track testing of F1 does next to nothing for road cars or technology in general, whereas advances in sims can be trickled down to road car development easily (and profitably if you have a consulting arm).

It would be nice to see F1 cars pounding round circuits like we used to, and useful for drivers coming into F1, but we've already moved back towards testing for 2014 sufficiently IMO and anything further is just appeasing the man who owns 2 tracks and 17 test drivers, and who has fond memories of the early part of this century.

[Jersey Tom]

advances in sims can be trickled down to road car development easily (and profitably if you have a consulting arm).

Not sure I'd agree with that. And with many things I'd still make the case that consumer development trickles down into motorsport rather than the other way around.

For example the people banging on and moving along ADAMS over the years.. number of them in motorsport is probably peanuts compared to everyone in the consumer / OEM realm.

Though to be fair up until very recently there had been some glaring errors in even the ADAMS/Tire documentation, and even implementation...

[Gridlock]

Absolutely it's a myth that F1 stuff goes to road cars (the S-Class Merc does more each year than F1 has done in the last 50...) but non-obvious solutions and advances in modelling can emerge from sims that mass manufacture can use, whereas track testing??

[Greg Locock]

Parked outside the window is a car for which i have a very good ADAMS model. Some days we test the car, some days we test the model. On average I can run the model for about 300 minutes of 'real time' testing a day, every day of the week (that is 5 licenses running about 16 hours a day each at 10% real time speed). On the track we might manage to record an hour of usable data in a day. If the parts are here. If the weather is right. If the track hasn't been booked. If the instrumentation doesn't fall over. If the car doesn't need to be reflashed. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy track testing, but even when you have the test track at your front door it is fiendishly expensive, whereas a geek in an office with a good library and good tools and a brain can at least eliminate bad avenues and look at combinations and thrift alternatives for about the cost of two mechanics. Anyone who cannot manage the interaction between track testing and their models isn't engineering, they are either playing silly computer games or wasting money and not exploring the possibilities.

Inceidentally I'm not too clear on whether the original rant was aimed at DiL, or all simulations, including those on the backs of envelopes. If the latter then shrug and move on.

[Kiril Varbanov]

The discussion went a bit offtopic, if I see it correctly.
As someone mentioned earlier, money have been spent already. Still, simulators are irreplaceable. How do you prepare, as a driver, for a brand new circuit?

Here's a detailed article I've done a while ago on F1 sims specifically - http://f1framework.blogspot.com/2013/05 ... ators.html

I did not include Lotus, but their simulator is relatively new installation, though with somewhat limited functionality. Lower cost, too.

[DaveW]

... Anyone who cannot manage the interaction between track testing and their models isn't engineering, they are either playing silly computer games or wasting money and not exploring the possibilities. ...

Here is an example of a track test that should have happened behind closed doors, but actually consumed much of the practice time of one car ahead of a Grand Prix. Were they playing silly computer games? Probably. They were trying to obtain an aeroelastic advantage, forgetting that a wing design that can diverge might also flutter.

The instability appeared to be a wing bending/torsion flutter. Events like this can be predicted, but require an accurate dynamic model of both the structure and the aero. An Adams model (certainly) and a CFD model (probably) would not "cut" it.

It is an example of a whole class of real world problems that a DIL simulation cannot hope to replicate...