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VR driving simulator
Customer: Am Steuer Nie
Number of employees : < 20
Turnover : < 1 million
Industry: Prevention
Initial situation
For prevention training and awareness-raising measures, the Fachstelle Am Steuer Nie commissioned us to develop a VR driver training simulator that shows the effects of alcohol, distraction and fatigue on the likelihood of accidents.
Implementation and technology
In order to optimally simulate the driving experience, we have connected our virtual reality environment to a motion platform that transfers the vehicle's movements to the driver. We developed the first virtual reality driving simulator with Motion Base ourselves back in 2016, when there was no VR driving simulator available on the market. Our technology partner was responsible for developing the Motion Simulator Base; all software components were implemented in Unity3D. The interface to the motion simulator was also implemented in Unity3D or via C# libraries.
We took on all tasks from conception to programming to graphic design. In addition to the good connection to the motion platform, particular challenges were the integration of visual alcohol effects while taking into account the lowest possible motion sickness among the drivers. In the intended target group of people under <25, the failure due to motion sickness is less than 2 percent.
Further technical specifications
In order to optimize performance (85-90 FPS with the Rift on notebooks equipped with i7 8700 processors and GTX 1070) we have designed a loading tile system (similar to WorldStreamer) and combined this with automated LOD generation of our assets and the use of imposters. This is particularly important with regard to the different cameras (front view, left side mirror, right side mirror, interior mirror), as this eats up a lot of performance despite optimization.
Of course, we don't reinvent the wheel every time, but use existing assets where it makes sense, such as: the Nature Vegetation Packs with procedural generation of vegetation.
We would like to point out that we are one of the few companies in the world that produces procedural virtual reality worlds for driver training from OSM and other freely available sources, based on our own source code with our own OSM-based traffic system.
When it comes to implementing learning scenarios, we usually use node-based systems like Bolt to easily and efficiently control various parameters. On the hardware side, we combine existing VR equipment with additional Arduino sensors, such as our own hardware development: VR Bike - an e-bike VR simulator with the ability to take on the perspective of other road users.
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