LapSim is a very sophisticated lap simulator from Bosch. The full version costs 5300 euros, but there is a fully functioning demo available for free from here:

http://www.bosch-motorsport.co...x.htm

There are several tracks in the demo, including "Moport" (really Mosport) and Laguna Seca. The car files include an LMP, a Formula 3, a FWD European Touring car and a "sports" car. The lap times at Mosport are 1:11 for the LMP and 1:15 for the F3. These are realistic. The ETCC FWD car gets 1:25 which would blow all the WC cars out the water!. Check out the Laguna times if you know them.

It even simulates 1/4 mile times. You can spend a lot of your holidays playing with this thing. It is amazing. Think of it as my present for the holidays;-)

 

I download it, its very cool! Takes a few minutes to see what all the data is but its very cool, thanks for the link!

 

There was an article on this software in the April 2003 issue of Racecar Engineering. It is reproduced on the Bosch site here (it was written by the main contact person at Bosch for the LapSim software I believe):

http://www.bosch-motorsport.co...g.pdf

Also when you run the software, turn on the expert mode. Also use the search parameter function in the help menu to see all the parameters that can be modeled. The promo for the software says that it use a Pacjeka model for the tires and that you can get the required tire data from a data acquisition system and that you don't need tire data from the manufacturer.

You can change the hp and gearing and see the effect on straight line acceleration as well as on lap times. It includes aero effects, damper forces, roll centres, etc, etc. Change the brake balance, launch RPM and a whole lot of other parameters and see what effect it has. It models the motion of the car including pitch, roll and yaw, and you can see this on playback of the simulated lap. You can run more than one simulation and view the graphs of different simulations for speed, accel, etc for a lap.

It appears to use Matlab for calculations. It would be nice to see what can be modeled with the free download version. It apparently uses the complete simulation model of the full version, but all of the extra parameters are predicted from the 26 allowed in demo mode. In the full model, one can apparently input all the parameters.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by descartesfool &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">It appears to use Matlab for calculations. </TD></TR></TABLE>

Yessir. for Matlab.