I’m a sim racer and amateur racer with a passion for Motorsport, good racecraft and the technical and setup aspect of sim racing.
Featured Image: Dynisma DMG-1
Imagine spending £2.5 million on a racing simulator. Now imagine spending £8 million. These aren’t hypothetical figures – they’re the actual price tags for Dynisma’s latest Formula 1 development simulators, and according to the video below, F1 teams are queueing up to buy them.
Every F1 fan knows that testing time is heavily restricted, so simulators are now the go-to car and driver development tools. But what makes a simulator worth many millions, and why are F1 teams so confident in their results? The answer lies in advanced motion systems and some clever physics tricks. And, a lot of money.
At the heart of Dynisma’s base model is a six-axis motion platform with a movement range of 2.5 metres.
For context, that’s about the length of a small car, and it’s not even their largest system – their 360 XY model boasts a 5-metre range. But the real magic isn’t in the size – it’s in the speed. These simulators achieve a latency of just 3-5 milliseconds between driver input and physical response, making them vastly more responsive than traditional systems.
The Holy Grail of Racing Simulation: Making the Car Feel Real
For sim racers that have spent time in a high-end sim racing rig, you’ll know that force feedback through the steering wheel is just one albeit an important part of your connection to the simulated environment. You can simulate some track and pedal feel with a Buttkicker and pedal haptics, but that’s about it unless you’re adding motion simulation.
What makes Dynisma’s £2.5m simulator particularly special is how it tackles the three most challenging aspects of race car simulation: rotation feel, brake modulation, and the onset of oversteer.
Let’s start with rotation. While most sim racing rigs can give you some feedback through the wheel as the car rotates, the DMG-1 lets you feel the car’s weight transfer through your body. When you turn into a high-speed corner, the simulator’s fast response time combines with its clever motion control to replicate that initial weight transfer. You feel the car’s mass shift before you get to the apex – just like in a real race car.
The braking simulation is where things get clever. Instead of trying to replicate the full 5G’s of deceleration force (which would be physically impossible without a massive movement range), the system focuses on what drivers use to modulate their braking: the changes in force.
As the downforce bleeds off under braking, you feel the subtle reduction in grip through both the pedal and the platform’s movement. It’s this kind of detail that lets drivers find the limit of brake pressure without locking up.
But perhaps the most impressive feat is how the DMG-1 handles the transition to oversteer. In a regular sim rig, you typically only feel oversteer through the force feedback wheel. Here, the combination of that 1.3-metre movement range and 1000°/s² rotational acceleration means you feel the rear of the car start to move before it fully breaks away – giving you the same physical cues you’d get in a real car. It’s this early warning system that lets drivers catch slides instinctively, just as they would on track.
Here’s the video from DRIVER61:
Setup and Component Testing
F1 teams test new components in these simulators. The entire process starts in CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) and wind tunnel testing, where engineers collect detailed data about how components like front wings affect the car’s aerodynamic behaviour.
This data is then translated into a ‘vehicle model’ – a complex physics simulation predicting how these aerodynamic changes affect the car’s handling.
But where the simulator proves its worth is in validation. While computer simulations might show a theoretical improvement, the simulator measures how these changes affect real driver inputs – everything from initial brake pressure to throttle application through corners, steering angle adjustments, and even how early a driver can get on the power at corner exit.
By comparing these measurements against baseline data from known configurations, teams can predict with remarkable accuracy whether a new component will deliver its promised performance gains in real-world conditions. It’s this level of confidence that lets teams commit to manufacturing expensive components – like a £150,000 front wing – knowing they’ll perform as expected when they reach the track.
The Future of Home Simulation?
Looking at Dynisma’s £2.5m simulator, it’s tempting to wonder if we’ll ever see this technology filter down to the consumer level.
While we’ve already seen the democratisation of direct drive wheels and load cell brake pedals, motion systems remain the final frontier of home simulation. Currently, consumer motion rigs typically rely on basic actuators or belt systems that can hint at car movement, but they’re a universe away from the precision and response time of Dynisma’s system.
However, the core principles being pioneered here – particularly that high-pass filter approach to force simulation – could point toward future consumer technologies. We’re already seeing this with innovations like Simucube’s ActivePedal, which uses direct drive technology to provide precise brake feel without needing a full motion platform. It’s not unreasonable to imagine that in five to ten years, we might see scaled-down versions of these systems, perhaps focusing on specific sensation channels rather than trying to replicate the full range of movement.
The real breakthrough might come from how these simulators handle latency. That 3-5ms response time is crucial for making movements feel natural, and as processing power becomes cheaper and more accessible, we could see this technology start to appear in high-end consumer equipment.
While we’re unlikely to see 1.3-metre movement ranges in home rigs anytime soon (your significant other might have something to say about that), the principles of precise, rapid feedback could eventually make their way to more compact home solutions.