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The World's Most Dangerous Driving Simulator
agent elevator writes: Lawrence Ulrich at IEEE Spectrum has an interview with the maker of a simulator for professional racers. The Motion Pro II from CXC Simulations costs racers $54,000 and up. It conveys amazingly fine sensations, including the feel of the car's tires wearing out or the car lightening as its fuel dwindles. It also has the kick to make you really feel a crash: "If you hit the wall in an Indy Car and don't take your hands off the wheel, you'll break your wrists. Our wheel is a one-to-one replication of that, but we don't turn it up that high. It's the first time we've been able to replicate racing forces so high that it introduces liability questions."
Easy, to simulate the event. If you're supposed to do something just before crashing, it would help if you simulated enough of the action so you can prepare for that as well.
Simulators are designed to train so that in emergencies, responses are practically reflex. If you're about to crash into the wall, you need to let go of the wheel or you risk getting sore thumbs from the simulator. Do that a few times and the driver will automatically let go even in a real crash (where thumbs may be severed instead of merely hurt).
Likewise in the helicopter sim - if you're going to land hard, make sure your tongue isn't touching your teeth. And other preparations you may make. It probably won't hurt as bad, but a little of it means if you're in the situation, your reflexes will make sure your tongue isn't where it might get cut.
...they had to turn down from 11 because trainees were actually getting hurt when it crashed? For some reason I remember broken teeth being part of the experience.
I'm not sure why a simulator would ever want to bash people that hard. You'd think it'd be almost more jarring to have the simulation just stop completely -- lights go on, screen dark.
Most likely the simulator is meant to simulate the range of non-crash behavior, and that requires strong enough actuators that when you put it into a crash state they can inflict dangerous amounts of force in an attempt to model the state of the vehicle.