The real beauty of this simulation is what you can learn from experimenting with various chassis setups and see how those changes affect handling. This is serious stuff, including motion ratios for the springs and shocks, shock-absorber dyno curves, tire-slip angles, and serious changes that you can make to suspension geometry and camber curves. We didn't have time in this story to experiment with custom configurations, but we can see the advantage to dialing in one of our street cars and then experimenting with different spring rates, sway bars, and shock valving to improve handling. This would probably get us closer sooner than doing it the time-honored way. You can even dial in all the various popular street-tire sizes. If you've scaled your car, you can dial that in, and the simulation will even give you data on estimating the car's center of gravity. This is cool stuff!
ConclusionFrom what we've seen, ProRacing Sim has created a trio of winning simulations for any engine, dragstrip, or road-course aficionado. Beyond the fun factor of experimenting with different combinations, each of these programs offers the incredible opportunity to learn how all these systems work in a given car. These three programs sell on ProRacing Sim's Web site for $130 each. If you're looking for a place to learn about vehicle performance and dynamics, these three simulations may be the least expensive high-performance automotive education on the planet. And, you can have fun at same time.
The IntegratorWhile this sounds like some character from a Terminator movie, all three of the ProRacing Sim programs offer something called an integrator function. On the dragstrip simulator, the integrator will perform almost 3,000 separate tests to find the optimal trans and rear-axle gear ratios for either best e.t. or best mph for your vehicle. We tried this function on our test Chevelle and the integrator came up with an improvement of 0.11 second, but the ratios were a bit bizarre for our taste.
The Engine Dyno Sim integrator can test hundreds of cam profiles looking for either best horsepower or best torque given the current engine configuration, or it can optimize the bore-to-stroke relationship in search of either best horsepower or best torque. The Fast Lap simulator offers two integrators that will search for the best damper (shock absorber) valving or ideal gearing for that particular track. These functions help you get close to ideal combinations by time-compressing the testing functions. The bottom line is-it's cool.