What is it?

What's the 401? Well, the best way to answer that is to see it moving - check out the youtube video to the right, or take a look at the high quality version under 'media'. It looks a lot like the 301, but its capabilities are far in advance - because, for simulating a vehicle, its rotation is incredibly important.

You probably know, intuitively, that when you're driving a car that's sliding all over, it's the rotation that tells you when things have gone wrong (if you play that video, this will be fairly obvious!). Research in this area generally says that physical sensations take the lead over your eyes by about a tenth of a second when you need to react to something like a car sliding - and without feeling this rotation axis you rely on your eyes (or, in the 301, the secondary sensation of lost lateral grip) to tell you what's happening.

In the 401, the transfer of information is direct, and much closer to what you'd feel in a real car. And the large range of rotation, something you won't find even in extremely expensive 6DOF platforms, lets that rotation get closer to the amount you'd feel if you were actually driving, and by extension lets you feel problems even sooner. The additional range also means a slower 'wash out' - the gradual return to center that keeps the machine from winding up like a tether ball - and so you're far less likely than in machines with 30 degrees or less of yaw to feel like you're spinning while heading down the straight.

So, this is great! But what we found when we started testing the 401 is this: Not only is it important to feel the rotation of the car when you've broken the rear end loose, or in a four-wheel drift, but it makes an incredible difference even when the car's glued down to the road. The ability to feel the rotation of the car through the corner means you know where you are in space; that sense of turning tells you even more than your eyes how close you are to the apex. Speaking from personal experience, I tend to have a big problem with apexing too early in the 301 and with 'desk driving'. And while I'm sure you'll notice a few instances of that in the video, the feeling of positioning left-right on the road with the 401 is vastly improved. That rotation axis actually gives you a physical sensation of position on the road, something we didn't anticipate when we started out.

We haven't heard other people talk about this, and we think this has to do, again, with the large rotation range provided by the 401. The ability to accurately replicate long, medium-speed turn-ins, and in particular the turn-in leading up to the apex, requires a very large rotation range, something that standard 6-dof platforms can't provide. We think this feel for positioning is essential to fine car control, and for training and serious simulation, we're confident this puts the 401 head and shoulders above other platforms.

So, take a look at the video. Read up on the specs, and find out about the 301 (the 401 has all of its capabilities in addition to the rotation axis). And if you're interested, give us a call and come try it for yourself - pictures are good, and videos are better - but there's nothing like actually driving it.