Equipment

The simRING features the front end of a car mounted on a moving platform that emulates the real-life motions of a car as it reacts to turns, changes in elevation, and other road conditions. A 360-degree, 16-foot diameter, 6’ high screen fully surrounds the simulator vehicle, which provides the driver with a full-fidelity depiction of surrounding traffic, landmarks, and roadway conditions. The system likewise features on-board controls to navigate the simulator, as well as a stereo sound system that emulates noises heard inside and outside the vehicle during a typical driving excursion.

The technical capabilities of the MSL have enabled more than $6 million in faculty-driven research over the last decade.

• Moog Motion Platform – A six degree-of-freedom motion platform powered by six DC servomotor-driven ball screw design actuators. The platform is capable of supporting up to a maximum payload of 1000 kg on a 1.84 m by 1.84 m triangular base. Individually, the angular degrees of freedom (pitch, roll, yaw) of ±22° are possible at a rate up to 30 °/s. and an acceleration of up to 500 °/s². Displacement degrees of freedom are approximately ±0.2 m at rates up to 0.5 m/s and 0.5 g of acceleration.
• Ford Contour Passenger Cabin – The cabin has been augmented to minimize excess weight, and includes: 2 front seats with seat belts, a steering wheel and pedals, a full front vehicle console (for on-board instrumentation), rear and side-view mirrors (for rearward view and blind-spot verification), and an emergency stop switch.

• ECCI Trackstar 6000 Pedals – The unit comes with 3 floor pedals (accelerator, brake, and clutch), each spring-loaded and mechanically actuated and pressure modulated.
• Ricmotech Mini-Mite Direct-Drive Steering System Base – A direct-drive, force-feedback steering system that comes with a leather steering wheel with 13.5” diameter, 900 degrees of angular rotation, rear-wheel paddle shifters, and 6 wheel buttons for driver input and feedback.

• M1 Interactive Ring Screen – Our visualization system consists of a circular 16’ diameter, 6’ high Ring Screen mounted 5 feet off the ground. This system provides the driver with a fully immersive 360 degree field-of-view while driving.
• 6x SONY VPL-FH36B LCD Projectors – Each visualization screen is front-projected with a SONY LCD projector, featuring: 3900 ANSI Lumen brightness, a 2000:1 contrast ratio, and WUXGA (1920x1200, 16:10) native resolution.
• 2x Matrox TripleHead2Go DP Edition – External multi-display adapter that expands each graphics output channel (on the graphics card) into 3 distinct display channels.
• Extron DXP HD 4K Series HDMI (44 and 88) Switchers – High performance matrix switchers that enable input display signals (from the computer) to be converted for output to our display system projectors (simulator) and flat panel monitor displays (control booth).
• Cumulative Display Resolution (pixels) – 11520 (circumference) x 1080 (height)

• Sound System – A stereo 2.1 (front-left, front-right, and L.F.E. subwoofer) channel external sound system powered by a Creative Labs SoundBlaster PC soundcard and an Audioengine N22 desktop audio amplifier.

• Dell Precision T7500 Tower Workstation – A tower graphics workstation with dual-core 2.16 GHz Intel Xeon processors, 12 GB Memory, and an EVGA Nvidia GeForce 1080 GTX graphics processor. This workstation has 6 (1920x1080) monitors (one for each visualization screen), and controls all aspects of our motion simulations (e.g., graphics/motion/audio cueing and accompanying real-time simulation analysis).