F1 teams spend millions on their simulators—what makes them different?
F1 teams spend millions on their simulators—what makes them different?
F1 车队在模拟器上投入数百万美元——它们有何不同之处？
Among the ways Formula 1 has changed in the 21st century has been its adoption of driver-in-the-loop simulators. It all started in the early 2000s, probably at McLaren, maybe at Toyota or Ferrari; F1 teams are notoriously secretive about their performance advantages. Along the years, they’ve gotten more and more capable, but so too have high-end consumer sims like the multi-axis setups that cost tens of thousands of dollars. What is it that makes the multimillion-dollar simulators used in F1 that much more expensive, and that much better for the job?
在 21 世纪一级方程式赛车（F1）发生的诸多变革中，采用“驾驶员在环”（driver-in-the-loop）模拟器是其中之一。这一切始于 21 世纪初，可能是在迈凯伦（McLaren），也可能是在丰田或法拉利；F1 车队对于其性能优势向来守口如瓶。多年来，这些模拟器的性能越来越强大，但价值数万美元的高端消费级多轴模拟器也在不断进步。那么，究竟是什么让 F1 使用的数百万美元模拟器如此昂贵，且在工作表现上更胜一筹呢？
For one thing, latency. “There’s this intimate link between the inputs that [a driver] provides to the car, the way the car responds, and then the driver immediately feels that and reacts to it. So this is a very dynamic closed loop involving the driver and the car,” explained Ash Warne, founder and CTO of Dynisma Motion Generators, a UK-based simulator company that supplies Ferrari, Alpine, and soon Cadillac with DiL simulators that can cost as much as $10 million. “And what we do in a driving simulator is obviously to take away the car entirely and to bring in our system, and we need it to replicate the real car as accurately as possible, because otherwise your World Champion racing driver, who has this innate and instinctive understanding of what the car should be, will immediately pick up on it as different,” Warne said.
首先是延迟问题。“驾驶员对赛车的输入、赛车的响应方式，以及驾驶员随后的即时感知与反应，这三者之间存在着紧密的联系。因此，这是一个涉及驾驶员与赛车的动态闭环，”英国模拟器公司 Dynisma Motion Generators 的创始人兼首席技术官 Ash Warne 解释道。该公司为法拉利、Alpine 以及即将加入的凯迪拉克提供“驾驶员在环”模拟器，其造价最高可达 1000 万美元。“我们在驾驶模拟器中所做的，显然是完全移除真实的赛车，代之以我们的系统。我们需要尽可能精确地复制真实赛车，否则，作为世界冠军的赛车手，凭借其对赛车应有状态的本能理解，会立刻察觉到其中的差异，”Warne 说道。
And he really does mean low latency. “Between 3 and 5 milliseconds. So this is from the moment that the car physics model says, for example, the back end of this car is stepping out and starts to accelerate the car in yaw to when we can actually measure, on an accelerometer on the chassis of the simulator, that movement happening,” Warne said. For context, that’s about an order of magnitude quicker than the best commercial flight simulators, or the National Advanced Driving Simulator that we drove in Iowa a few years back.
他所说的低延迟确实非常极致。“在 3 到 5 毫秒之间。也就是说，从汽车物理模型计算出（例如）车尾开始甩出并产生偏航加速度的那一刻起，到我们在模拟器底盘的加速度计上实际测量到该运动发生为止，”Warne 说道。作为对比，这比目前最好的商用飞行模拟器，或者我们几年前在爱荷华州驾驶过的国家高级驾驶模拟器（National Advanced Driving Simulator）要快一个数量级。
Warne started Dynisma after working for both McLaren and then Ferrari, after realizing that an ultra-low-latency simulator was possible. “I was able to prove, just with pen and paper, and then with simulation, that we ought to be able to get this kind of delay down, around 3 milliseconds,” Warne said. The first prototype, built when Dynisma was still a one-person operation, used hobbyist-grade electronics and motors to prove the concept. “Rather than using the industrial computers and [programmable logic controllers] and control systems we use today, the first system was developed using an Arduino and Raspberry Pi and a whole bunch of other consumer electronics,” Warne said.
Warne 在先后效力于迈凯伦和法拉利之后创立了 Dynisma，因为他意识到制造超低延迟模拟器是可行的。“我仅凭纸笔计算，随后通过模拟证明，我们完全可以将这种延迟降低到 3 毫秒左右，”Warne 说。第一个原型机是在 Dynisma 还处于“一人公司”阶段时制造的，当时使用的是业余级别的电子元件和电机来验证这一概念。“与我们今天使用的工业计算机、可编程逻辑控制器（PLC）和控制系统不同，第一套系统是使用 Arduino、树莓派（Raspberry Pi）以及一大堆其他消费级电子产品开发出来的，”Warne 说道。
High bandwidth is another must, and it’s an area where we see a big difference from flight simulators. “They move very, very slowly, and they’re interested in doing sustained bank angles, whereas we’re doing a very different problem,” Warne explained. “It’s all about being in a vehicle that’s stuck to the roads, and all of the vibrations that come from every bump that you get in the road, also from engines, etc, tires vibrating, all of these sorts of higher-frequency vibrations get transmitted in a car up through into the driver’s seat,” he said.
高带宽是另一个必要条件，这也是我们与飞行模拟器之间存在巨大差异的地方。“它们的移动速度非常非常慢，关注的是持续的倾斜角度，而我们处理的是一个完全不同的问题，”Warne 解释道。“我们的核心在于模拟一辆紧贴路面的车辆，路面上的每一个颠簸、引擎的震动、轮胎的震动等，所有这些高频振动都会通过车身传递到驾驶员的座椅上，”他说。
“The biggest thing with simulators has always been the fight to make the tires feel like a tire, even though you don’t have tires. And that’s a very critical thing for the driver to feel the displacement of the suspension, the tire moving under the rim. That’s such a very distinctive feeling for the driver. So right now a lot of work is put into that,” said Simon Pagenaud, sim driver for the Cadillac F1 team. Pagenaud has seen racing simulators evolve alongside his career, which includes an Indy 500 win as well as championships in both IndyCar and the American Le Mans Series.
“模拟器最大的挑战始终在于如何让轮胎感觉像真实的轮胎，尽管你并没有真正的轮胎。对于驾驶员来说，感受悬挂的位移和轮胎在轮毂下的形变至关重要。这对驾驶员来说是一种非常独特的反馈。所以目前我们投入了大量精力来优化这一点，”凯迪拉克 F1 车队的模拟器车手 Simon Pagenaud 表示。Pagenaud 的职业生涯见证了赛车模拟器的演变，他曾获得印第 500 冠军，并赢得了 IndyCar 和美国勒芒系列赛的冠军。
“My first experience on the simulator I think was probably 2008 with Wirth Research… when we had the De Ferran Motorsport program and it was already pretty good, but it definitely is not at the level it’s at now,” Pagenaud said. “The evolution since my first time on the simulator is tremendous. The visuals, of course; the movement of the platform is another thing. I would say the hardware has massively improved, and the latency is something we fight for with computer power every day, but the latency is really everything to give the driver the right feedback,” Pagenaud said.
“我第一次使用模拟器大概是在 2008 年，当时是在 Wirth Research……那是我们参与 De Ferran Motorsport 项目的时候，虽然当时已经相当不错了，但绝对达不到现在的水平，”Pagenaud 说。“从我第一次使用模拟器至今，它的进化是巨大的。视觉效果当然是一方面，平台的运动又是另一方面。我认为硬件已经有了质的飞跃，而延迟是我们每天都在通过算力去攻克的难题，但延迟确实是给予驾驶员正确反馈的关键所在，”Pagenaud 说道。
Time to work: But what is it that a sim driver actually does for their team? “The biggest thing right now, especially in F1, is trying to understand the energy spent into the tire and not overheating the tires. So it is a big part of our job right now, trying to figure out what can we do to make the tires last longer, work better with the race car, give us more grip,” he said. “The goal is to make the car better and help the race drivers perform better on race weekends.”
工作内容：那么，模拟器车手究竟为车队做些什么呢？“目前最重要的事情，特别是在 F1 中，是试图理解轮胎的能量消耗，并避免轮胎过热。所以我们现在很大一部分工作就是研究如何让轮胎寿命更长、与赛车配合得更好，并为我们提供更多的抓地力，”他说。“我们的目标是让赛车变得更好，并帮助正赛车手在比赛周末表现得更出色。”