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Benefits At A Glance

  • Game quality graphics and audio engines offer a very high level of realism and immersion.
  • Evaluate engineering developments with a human in-the-loop without expense of production and real-life testing.
  • Allow drivers to test new hardware in-the-loop without the need to run the real-life vehicle on track.
  • Driver training and evaluation without risk or expense associated with on-track testing.
  • Evaluating setups and optimising vehicle package in advance of an event.
  • rFactor Pro offers a rapid return on your investment through increased productivity, improvements in vehicle performance and consistency, and by offering new capabilities to your design, development and testing teams.
  • Automotive manufacturers will benefit from testing and development, with a human in-the-loop, of both their existing hardware (hardware-in-the-loop) and their new software in development (software-in-the-loop).
  • Racing teams will benefit from driver training, race engineer training, engineering development and setup evaluation.

rFactor Pro Benefits

Training

Systems Familiarisation

rFactor Pro’s CAN bus interface means the simulator will work with your real wheel and driver display.

The interface is bi-directional, so rFactor Pro responds appropriately to any switches and rotaries on the wheel and to any paddles used to change gear, or perhaps for a hand clutch, while at the same time writing to the driver’s display, shift LEDs and any other CAN devices.

This means the simulator is a very useful tool for new drivers to learn the electronic systems and familiarise themselves with the controls before they drive the real car.

Evaluate new drivers

The simulator is a very useful and cost-effective tool for evaluating new drivers and making comparisons with existing drivers’ telemetry. Drivers’ performance in the simulator is an accurate reflection of their performance on track. Telemetry downloaded from the simulator is detailed allowing accurate analysis of the driver’s performance.

Learn new tracks

We have very positive experience of using the simulator to learn new tracks in two different contexts. In both cases a measurable benefit was gained: When a driver is new to an existing circuit then the simulator can allow them to make their first appearance at a new track productive from the first lap. When new tracks are constructed or introduced to a series, the whole team benefits from simulation: The drivers learn the track, race engineers may evaluate setups and full race distances may be run on the simulator to test different strategies.

Driver Training

The use of a high-fidelity simulator will provide drivers the opportunity to spend more time, cost-effectively, on track to hone their lap times.

The ghost-car feature allows one or more cars to be injected on track following recorded telemetry. The injected telemetry may be a combination of best sectors from simulation telemetry or from data downloaded from the real car.

A single ghost car may be used to run a single best lap, restarting just ahead of the driver every time the start line is crossed, providing a visual cue as to the current fastest line around the track. For oval racing the ghost car could follow a line calculated to optimize tyre wear.

Up to 72 ghost cars may be injected simultaneously following data recorded over an entire race, offering the opportunity for practise against an entire grid.

Full telemetry is available allowing analysis and briefing based on the driver’s performance in the simulator.

rFactor Pro’s network code allows two or more simulators to run together on the same track, adding more testing possibilities for setup and race strategy evaluation.

Observers may watch from separate screens, from any camera angle or zoom-level desired; on car, birds-eye view chase-cam or track side.

Race engineer training

The simulator offers a very good training environment for the race engineer and for improving the communication between the driver and his engineers.

The simulator can be used by the driver to test the setup predicted by the race engineer and any lapsim tools they may be using and to evaluate any changes or trade-offs in the setup.

Communication between the driver and race engineer is improved as the race engineer can see exactly what the car is doing as the driver describes particular handling behaviour. In some circumstances it may even be appropriate for the driver and engineer to swap places so that the engineer experiences the behaviour the driver is trying to describe.

The race engineer may have a separate networked screen to watch the car from any position or angle or to analyse the telemetry output from the car.

Engineering development

For series where teams may innovate and design their own cars, such as F1, LMP1, F3, a simulator offers a virtualized environment for testing new engineering developments. There are many areas where virtualized testing can benefit from a human driver-in-the-loop:

Taking F1 as an example, KERS and adjustable front wing flaps were introduced for 2009, their control strategies are managed by the driver, so being able to model those in a driver-in-the-loop simulator is a far more cost-effective way to evaluate their effectiveness than constructing them and then testing on the real car. There are other areas where the driver can take advantage of systems in a way that a driver-model in a lapsim cannot; a good example is when evaluating control strategies for the differential, a driver may find ways to use the diff', perhaps with a down-shift, to yaw the car in tight corners.

Setup evaluation

The driver and race engineer may use the simulator to evaluate setups for an event. Perhaps in combination with the engineer’s dynamic or quasi-static lapsim, an optimal setup will be predicted. The simulator allows this to be tested and any trade-offs between settings evaluated in advance of the real race meeting.

Overview | Features | Using rFactor Pro with Simulink1