Gadgetory

here's a fact for you during every Grand Prix race weekend each team has two cars out on track we know that but also a third driver back at the factory simulating every session so bloody strong ambitious unbelievable if you're an f1 fan like me you probably have one of these a steering wheel and pedals attached to an f1 game and you buy it because you think it's realistic you can race every track with every team and sometimes it even rains but this simulation is it a very basic level because this is an f1 spec simulator simulators in motorsport began life in the aeronautical industry and developed from fast jet trainers about 15 years ago the technology easy being developed into driver training with demands on restrictions and testing even tighter now and computers getting ever faster simulators today are said to be as real life as possible so much so I've even bought a race boots the realism comes from accurately simulating all the senses you would feel from driving a race car visually seeing breaking points and cues and a pectus and stuff like that that we have a audibly hearing the gear changes hearing the braking look up and hearing your engineer talking your ear as well and then physically comes in two different forms here on X car we talk a lot about driving from the seat of your pants and the feel you get from the cars that we drive a lot of the sensations and the things we like about cars or what we feel firstly the force feedback through the steering wheel no power steering on this particular machine and therefore the steering is constantly trying to rip out of my hands the brakes incredibly hard like it expected a formula 1.com no servo on those and also the clock every time I change up a gear the whole chassis moving around as you'd expect from any gearbox in a high-powered race car as I turn through this right-hander in a race car my body will be squashed to the left hand side the car but without actual G this simulator exerts pressure onto my left side of the body confusing my brain into thinking I've got G Falls there are nine pads all over the car simultaneously working and because they are pneumatically controlled they can sustain the force therefore accurately replicating g-force this is a proper workout more similar to aeronautical stimulators the whole rig is suspended by hydraulic rams these ads the pitch and roll sensation to the suspension and attacking curbs from a real car all of this does a fantastic job of making me feel like I'm actually in a full-on car there is no doubt this is the most realistic simulator I've ever driven but how can it be used to develop drivers improving technique and also improving the car dan jackson is my make-believe race engineer for the afternoon he'll be monitoring the carcel emma tree is like complete one full lap of the circuit see how I measure up the old 2007 circuit in Bahrain has got a very Mickey Mouse section in the middle of it hofer can get around without crashing a great way to early they're too slow it's like Max feel the rear of the car sliding around a kelly haven't got the same temperature of the tides and I wanted one corner left one big breaking so let's demain get this right back down down down yeah I can suddenly feel the car working now got the tires and brakes up the temperature on the very last corner and that's a laugh dan you believe it's lunchy whatever been doing wrong there's a couple of things really the first thing is you're not putting the brake pedal to four hundred percent for I told you I can do a hundred kilos and the second thing really is you're not you're not confident enough under break and say you need to be able to push the brakes want and as the car sales them to lead off the rate whereas what you're doing learning if you have put in the braids coming off the blades going back on the race to sort of you're not really getting that smoothie entry to the corner you need one application of the brakes and bleed off with you so down and then one smooth application of the swap lives left at the corner I think that's the brutality of this shaking me up and not being able to really think about being smooth all the input I'll try and put that and protest with this next run as if we beat my time wha fighter I've got to that level now where I'm psyched to really feel the setup of the car and actually trying to attack the rear seems to be very loose down how can we make the car feel better okay so what we'll do is we're going to add a quicker rear wing and will soften up the anti-roll bar over there and as well Matt should then stabilize the rear end and in theory even though on this simulator I should have to feel that when I'm driving how they accelerate out the corn I got to feel the car trying to rotate on me I'm not that much better than last time just one simple change completely transform the way the car handled and f1 teams and those third drivers back at the factories can use that to recommend changes to the race drivers at the circuit finding that sweet spot much much faster and therefore hopefully having a more successful weekend technology has come on so far that the real and simulated worlds are now truly being amalgamated and it got me thinking the champions of yesteryear came from karting honed their craft pounding around the world in expensive go-karts I wonder whether the champions of tomorrow will come from the simulated world from the casual gaming community asked red bull junior yanmar dobrze who three years ago was playing gran turismo on his bed and he'll tell you the future is now