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Application · Simulator builders, training providers and integrators
Motion simulator platform, judged by what a person feels.
A test rig answers to an instrument. A simulator answers to an inner ear — and an inner ear forgives a millimetre of position error far more readily than it forgives thirty milliseconds of delay. That single difference decides the controller, the interface, the acceptance test and most of the price.
Buying a complete simulator? We are the wrong first call. We build the motion subsystem underneath one — the fidelity section says exactly where our supply starts and stops, and who holds the qualification when a device has to be qualified.
The interesting part of this photograph is not the platform. It is where the head is sitting, because that is where every figure on this page is quoted.
The job the platform has inside the device
Eight kinds of simulator, and what each one actually asks the platform for
These eight look like eight industries. To the platform they differ on four things: how much sustained acceleration has to be faked with tilt, how quickly the first movement has to appear, how many hours a day it runs, and who is sitting in it. Everything below follows from those four.
Aviation
Flight training and flight simulation
Fixed-wing and rotorcraft devices where the motion cue supports handling, upset recognition and procedural training rather than entertainment.
Automotive
Driving and vehicle dynamics simulation
Road vehicle simulators for driver training, human factors work and vehicle development, driven by a dynamics model rather than a scripted profile.
Marine
Ship bridge and vessel handling simulators
Bridge, engine room and small-craft devices where the motion is slow, sustained and low frequency — the opposite problem to a driving simulator.
Rail
Rail and metro driver training
Driving desks where the cue set is narrow and specific: traction, braking, track joints, points and the feel of a train that is long behind you.
Motorsport
Racing and motorsport simulators
Compact, stiff, fast platforms where drivers are looking for the edge of grip, and where a soft or late cue is worse than no cue.
Defence & specialised
Specialised vehicle training
Armoured vehicle, weapon station and specialised platform trainers, usually with a documentation and acceptance regime attached.
Building something these eight do not describe? Send the cue the trainee has to feel and we will work backwards to the machine →
Four different things called a simulator platform
Fidelity is not one scale, and only one of these levels changes what we build
Enquiries arrive asking for a “high fidelity” platform without saying what the device has to satisfy. Four answers are common, they demand different machines, and the gap between the second and the third is where most simulator budgets get lost.
An attraction is judged by an operator and a queue. An in-house trainer is judged by whoever signs it off internally. A qualified training device is judged by an authority against a written standard with objective tests and tolerances. An engineering simulator is judged by whether a vehicle model can be trusted through it. Those are four different acceptance regimes, not four points on one dial.
Fidelity is a requirement someone wrote down. Anything else is an adjective two parties will define differently after the order.
Not sure which of the four your device is? Tell us who signs it off and we will tell you what changes →
The 4-Level Simulator Fidelity Crosswalk What each level demands, and what it changes in our supply
| Level | Judged against | What it demands of the platform | What changes for us |
|---|---|---|---|
| Attraction | An operator, a throughput target and a show file | Cycles, boarding time, noise, and behaviour on the four-hundredth run of the day | Sized against duty rather than peak; acceptance run over duration |
| In-house trainer | An internal sign-off, usually by the training manager | A cue that is convincing and consistent, with no external tolerance to meet | Acceptance written with you, since nobody else has written it |
| Qualified device | An authority, against a published standard with objective tests | Transport delay, frequency response and repeatability inside stated tolerances | Objective test data and records issued for the device manufacturer’s submission |
| Engineering | Whether a vehicle model can be trusted through the device | Interface honesty, repeatability between runs, and a known transfer function | Interface frozen in writing; the platform’s own behaviour has to be characterised, not just accepted |
Level 3 is the one that gets under-scoped. The qualification belongs to the device and to the organisation submitting it — not to the company that supplied the motion base. What a motion supplier can honestly promise is a subsystem whose objective test results are in hand before the device is presented, and records written so somebody else’s submission can quote them. Any supplier who tells you they will “get your simulator qualified” is describing work they are not the one doing.
Three numbers decide a simulator platform, and none of them is travel
What a person can detect, what you may get away with, and how late you may be
Simulator specifications are usually written in stroke and acceleration, because those are the numbers a datasheet has. The trainee has no access to either. What reaches them is an onset, a direction, a moment when the picture and the seat agree or do not, and a return to centre they were not supposed to notice.
Threshold one · what is detectable
A quick movement is easier to feel than a slow one, which is the opposite of most people’s instinct
Measured discrimination thresholds for yaw rotation fall as the motion gets quicker — roughly 2 °/s when the movement is spread over about seven seconds, down to roughly 0.8 °/s when it happens in a third of a second. The faster you move, the less you can move before it is noticed.
Two consequences follow, and they point in opposite directions. Cues have to arrive fast to be believed, so onset matters more than amplitude. But the return — the washout that quietly puts the platform back where it started — has to be slow, because the same sensitivity that makes a quick cue convincing makes a quick return obvious.
The other half of the physiology is the useful half: sustained motion fades. Hold a steady rotation and the sensation of it drains away within seconds, which is why a machine with 500 mm of travel can produce a convincing turn that lasts a minute. It is not producing the turn. It is producing the beginning of one, then quietly recovering.
A simulator does not reproduce motion. It reproduces the parts of motion a person is still capable of noticing.
Threshold two · what you may get away with
Tilt coordination is a compromise, and it is worth saying so out loud
Sustained acceleration cannot be produced by a platform with finite travel, so it is faked: the cab is tilted so that a component of gravity presses the occupant into the seat the way acceleration would. It is the technique that makes simulator motion possible at all, and it works because the tilt is applied slowly enough not to register as a rotation.
Most washout filters limit that tilt rate to somewhere around 3 °/s. That figure is a working convention rather than a standard, and it is worth noticing that it sits above the discrimination thresholds measured in the laboratory. Tilt coordination is not imperceptible. It is unobjectionable, which is a different and more honest claim.
This is also the real answer to the axis-count question. Three axes can tilt, so three axes can carry a sustained cue in one plane. Six can tilt while translating in another direction at the same time, which is what a simulator needs the moment two cues have to coexist.
Nobody in this industry produces sustained acceleration. Some suppliers are just clearer than others about what they are doing instead.
Threshold three · how late you may be
The order the cues arrive in is a design rule, not a preference
The flight simulation standards define transport delay as the total system processing time from an input at a primary flight control until the motion system responds, and FSTD latency as the additional time beyond the response of the real aircraft. Flight training device qualification commonly caps that at 150 ms; the ceiling that applies to your device belongs to the standard your device is being qualified against, not to us.
The rule underneath the number is stricter and more useful: the motion response must not arrive after the visual and instrument response. In the real vehicle the body feels the change before the eyes confirm it. A simulator that reverses that order is not merely less convincing — it is producing a conflict the brain has no natural experience of, and that is where the complaints start.
Which is why the delay budget gets assembled before the frame is drawn. Model step, network hop, cueing filter, command interval, servo response and mechanical rise time are all in it, and only the last two are ours.
Have a latency figure in the specification but no measurement method? See how the end-to-end number is actually taken →
Two simulator cue timelines comparing motion-before-picture with picture-before-motion inside the same 150 ms transport-delay limit
The 3-Threshold Cueing Budget The three numbers a simulator platform is really specified against
| Threshold | Figure, and where it comes from | What it decides on the platform | What happens if it is ignored |
|---|---|---|---|
| Detection | Roughly 0.8 – 2 °/s for yaw rotation, lower for quicker onsets; published human-factors measurement, not our own | How small a cue is worth producing at all, and how gently the washout has to return to centre | A return-to-centre the trainee can feel, which teaches a motion that is not in the vehicle |
| Tilt rate | Around 3 °/s in most washout filters — a working convention, not a published tolerance | How much sustained acceleration tilt can stand in for, and therefore whether three axes are enough | False cues: a manoeuvre that reads as a pitch when it should read as an acceleration |
| Transport delay | Commonly capped at 150 ms in flight training device qualification; defined in the FSTD standards from control input to motion response | Controller architecture, host interface, command rate, and where the cueing filter runs | Cue conflict, poorer transfer of training, and the complaints that follow it |
The detection figures come from Soyka, Robuffo Giordano, Barnett-Cowan and Bülthoff, Experimental Brain Research 220 (2012), which measured direction-discrimination thresholds for yaw rotation across motion profiles — other people’s work, cited as such rather than presented as ours. The transport delay definitions are in Appendix F to 14 CFR Part 60. Neither is a CSCmotion specification; both are checkable without asking us anything.
Specification says “high fidelity motion” and nothing else? Send it and we will return it written in these three numbers →
How simulator work actually divides
The 4-Configuration Simulator Platform Stack
Four configurations, each governed by a different requirement. Ask which one a programme is in before asking what it weighs — the answer names the requirement that will overrule all the others once the build starts.
S1
Attraction and entertainment platform
Throughput and duty govern · multi-seat, rated occupancy as one load
A show file, a queue and an operating calendar. Nobody in the seat is being assessed, so the engineering question moves from fidelity to how the machine behaves on its four-hundredth cycle of the day.
Inside the supply
- Moving frame, controller, drives and cabinet delivered as one unit
- Sized against a cycle count and a boarding pattern, not a peak demand
- Show-file playback with repeatable timing run to run
- Noise, service interval and maintenance access treated as requirements
Not included: seating and restraints as certified articles, the show content, ride control and dispatch systems, and any amusement-device approval of the installed ride.
S2
Professional training simulator platform
Cueing and delay govern · cab, visual system and occupants together
The configuration most training devices need. The cue has to be right and it has to be on time, and the acceptance test has to produce numbers somebody else can put in a submission.
Inside the supply
- Motion base with the cueing filter running where the interface document says
- Transport delay measured end to end and reported, not estimated
- Objective test data — frequency response, repeatability, turn-around behaviour
- Motion envelope stated at the eye point rather than at the mounting plate
Not included: the cab, the visual system, the instructor station, the vehicle model, and the device qualification itself.
S3
Engineering and vehicle-development simulator
Interface honesty and repeatability govern · often a buck rather than a cab
Here the platform is inside somebody’s development loop, and a result has to be attributable to the vehicle model rather than to the machine reproducing it. That makes the platform’s own behaviour something to characterise, not just to accept.
Inside the supply
- Command level and coordinate convention frozen at an interface review
- Measured platform response, so the model can be corrected for the machine
- Run-to-run repeatability reported as a spread, not as a single figure
- State returned to your host, with units and sign conventions in writing
Not included: the vehicle model, the cueing algorithm if you are supplying it, the real-time host, and the analysis of anything the simulator produces.
S4
Large, multi-seat or motion-plus-travel
Structure and installation govern · full cabs, multi-crew mock-ups, rooms that came first
Full cabs, multi-crew mock-ups, platforms on rails or towers, and installations where a building fixes the footprint before anybody discusses the cue.
Inside the supply
- A layout drawn around a doorway, a ceiling height and a cab that already exists
- Structural analysis against the real mounting arrangement
- Interface loads issued for the foundation or steelwork designer
- Installation, commissioning and acceptance on site
Not included: foundations and building works, the enclosure or dome, permits, and the operator’s safety approval for the installed cell.
S1 and S2 get confused more often than any other pair, and it is expensive in both directions. A training base put into an attraction is over-specified for the cue and under-specified for the cycle count; an attraction base put under a training device meets the motion spec and fails the delay one. The separating question is not how good the motion has to be. It is who is going to sign it off.
Between two configurations because the programme is still moving? Send the acceptance route and we will name the configuration →
Which mechanism sits under the cab
The platforms these configurations are built on
In a simulator, axis count is a cueing decision before it is a geometry one. The question is not how many directions the cab can move in. It is how many cues have to be true at the same instant.
Three axes
3DOF motion platform
Three axes — heave, roll and pitch — on a serial mechanism. Enough for a cue that lives in one plane, and enough to tilt — which means a well-built three-axis device can carry a sustained cue that a badly specified six-axis one cannot.
Six axes
6DOF motion platform
All six axes on a parallel mechanism, moving together. Necessary the moment two cues have to coexist — tilting for a sustained acceleration while translating for a bump is a six-axis problem and cannot be faked with three.
Hexapod geometry
Stewart platform
Six legs laid out for stiffness and crispness rather than travel. Chosen where onset quality decides the device — racing rigs, high-frequency cue sets, and cabs where the pivot has to sit at the head rather than under the floor.
The Axis Read from the Cue Set Read the axes out of the cue set, not out of a competitor’s datasheet
| What the trainee has to feel | What to specify | Why |
|---|---|---|
| One dominant cue at a time, in a single plane | 3DOF | Three axes tilt as well as six do; the extra three are paid for and unused |
| Two cues that have to be true simultaneously — sustained plus transient | 6DOF | Tilting for one cue while translating for the other cannot be done in three |
| Onset crispness above everything, with modest travel | Stewart | Stiffness and low moving mass decide how quickly the cue can start |
| One axis needing far more travel than the rest — long surge, or a track | Serial axis + platform | A parallel mechanism stretched for one long stroke pays for it in all five other directions |
3DOF vs 6DOF works the axis question through in full. Electric vs hydraulic is worth reading before a training centre purchase in particular: a device that runs sessions all day in an occupied building is judged on noise, standby power and what the floor looks like after two years, and those are the arguments that decide it rather than peak force.
Know which manoeuvres matter but not how many axes it takes? Send the manoeuvres that have to feel right and we will read the axes out of them →
Filmed with a person in the seat, not on an empty rig
What the three thresholds look like when somebody measures them
Three clips, each recording something no datasheet can hold. Footage of an empty platform gliding about proves the actuators work, which was never the question.
The number, taken rather than quoted. A control input and the first platform movement in the same high-speed frame, with the count on screen — the transport delay measurement, shown as a method.
The trick, filmed from outside. The same manoeuvre seen by the trainee and seen from the side, so you can watch the cab tilt to produce an acceleration that is not there.
Accepted at the real load. The acceptance run with the cab, the visual system and people on board, including the stop sequence and where the platform comes to rest.
Want to see the delay measurement before you see the platform? Ask for the measurement clip and the method sheet →
The input most simulator enquiries leave out
Somebody has to compute the cue, and it matters enormously which somebody
Between a vehicle model and a moving platform sits a filter that decides what the occupant feels: which accelerations get produced, which get tilted, and how the platform sneaks back to centre afterwards. Almost every enquiry describes the motion. Almost none says who is writing that filter.
The 3-Way Cueing Ownership Split Plus the fourth state most enquiries actually arrive in
| Where the cueing runs | What you get | What you take on | Where the argument goes if it feels wrong |
|---|---|---|---|
| In our controller | One party responsible for how it feels; you send vehicle state and receive motion | The vehicle model, and a tuning brief describing what each manoeuvre should feel like | To us. It is our filter, and changing it is a support call rather than a negotiation |
| In your host | Complete control of the feel, and the ability to iterate without us in the room | The filter, its tuning, its limits and what it does when the platform runs out of travel | To the delay budget. We can show the platform followed the command, and no further |
| In a third party’s package | A known product with its own documentation and its own user base | The integration, and a delay budget that now has three owners in it | Nowhere useful, unless the interface document says who is responsible for what |
| Undecided | Nothing yet — and this is the state most enquiries are in | Quotations that are not comparable, because each supplier assumed a different answer | Into commissioning, which is the most expensive place to have this conversation |
There is no right row. Row one suits training device builders who want a subsystem that behaves; row two suits engineering groups whose research is partly the cueing itself; row three is common where a device family already exists. What matters is that the row is chosen at the interface review and written down, because the answer changes the controller architecture, the command rate, the acceptance criteria and who picks up the phone when a pilot says it feels wrong.
Have a vehicle model but no cueing filter yet? Send a state output sample and we will say what row it puts you in →
The question buyers ask last and worry about first
Nobody can sell you a simulator that makes nobody ill. Here is our part of it
Simulator sickness comes from conflict — the eyes reporting one motion and the inner ear reporting another, or reporting it at a different time. Some of that conflict belongs to the platform. Most of it does not, and a supplier who claims otherwise is selling something.
What the platform contributes is timing and honesty: how late the cue is, whether it arrives before or after the picture, how quickly the washout returns to centre, and whether the machine ever produces a step the content did not ask for. Those four are ours, they are measurable, and we will report them.
What the platform cannot fix is the rest of the list: field of view, frame rate and latency in the visual chain, how aggressive the scenario is, how long a session runs, how much a trainee moves their head, and how susceptible that individual happens to be. A better motion base does not compensate for a scene running late.
This matters at the point of purchase, not afterwards. A device that turns out to be uncomfortable is usually diagnosed by comparing two latency figures, and by then only one of the two suppliers is still in the room. Ask for both early, while they are still cheap to compare.
Comfort is a system property. We can be responsible for our share of it and honest about the size of that share.
The 4-Source Conflict Split Where discomfort actually comes from, and who can change each one
| Source | What it contributes | Who can change it | Can it be measured before purchase? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Platform | Cue timing, ordering against the visual response, washout smoothness, and any step the content did not ask for | Us | Yes — all four are in the delay report and the acceptance record |
| Visual chain | Field of view, frame rate, its own latency, and how it behaves when a frame is dropped | The visual system supplier | Yes, by the same method — ask them for it in the same units |
| Content | How aggressive the scenario is, and how long a session is allowed to run | The training organisation | Not before purchase, but it is the cheapest thing on this list to change afterwards |
| The individual | Susceptibility, head movement, fatigue, and whether it is their first session | Nobody, entirely | No — and any supplier claiming to have solved this row is worth reading carefully |
Row one is where a motion supplier can be held to account, and it is the only row we will make claims about. The most useful thing we can do about rows two and three is hand over our numbers early enough that they can be set beside somebody else’s.
Already running a device where people report discomfort? Send the delay figures for both chains and we will say which one to look at →
The number everybody quotes and almost nobody measures the same way
How an end-to-end delay figure is actually taken
A transport delay figure is only meaningful with its method attached. The common failure is not dishonesty, it is scope: a supplier measures the part of the chain they own, reports it truthfully, and the integrator reads it as the system number.
Method
One clock, both ends
A high-frame-rate camera capturing the control input and the first platform movement in the same frame, or an instrumented input and an accelerometer on the moving frame timestamped by a single clock.
Scope
From the control, not from the command
The figure that matters starts at the trainee’s input, not at the moment a command packet reaches our controller. Everything between those two points belongs to somebody, and the budget has to say who.
Ordering
Motion against picture, not motion alone
Alongside the absolute figure, the measurement records which cue arrives first. A device inside the delay ceiling with the picture leading the seat has passed the number and failed the intent.
The 8-Line Simulator Brief The lines a simulator quotation has to be built on
| Line | What it decides on the platform | If it is left blank |
|---|---|---|
| What the device has to satisfy, and who signs it off | Acceptance regime, objective test set, documentation depth | We quote an in-house trainer and the device turns out to need qualification data |
| The eye point — where the occupant’s head sits relative to the interface | Every travel and acceleration figure the project will ever quote | Figures stated at the mounting plate, and manoeuvres that do not fit once they are restated |
| Gross moving load: cab, visual system, seats, occupants, cabling | Actuator force, achievable onset, and how much travel survives | Sized for a bare cab and delivered under a loaded one |
| Where the cueing filter runs, and who tunes it | Controller architecture, interface, and who answers when it feels wrong | Three parties, no document, and a commissioning argument |
| Transport delay target and the method it will be measured by | Command rate, interface choice, and whether the target is reachable at all | A number agreed once and then measured two different ways |
| The manoeuvre set that has to feel right | Envelope check at the eye point, and the axis count that follows from it | The envelope gets checked after purchase, which is the wrong order |
| Duty: sessions per day, occupancy and the operating calendar | Motor and drive selection, thermal design, service interval | Sized for a demonstration and run as a training centre |
| Room, access route and installation constraints | Geometry, installation method, commissioning plan | A machine that will not fit through the door of the centre that ordered it |
Eight lines; simulator enquiries usually carry three of them — payload, travel and axis count. Put “unknown” beside the other five. An unknown produces a question. A guess produces a machine built to it, and then a meeting about why it was built that way.
Cannot fill in the delay line because the visual chain is somebody else’s? Send what you know and we will assemble the budget with the gaps named →
From a list of manoeuvres to an accepted subsystem
Five steps, and each one hands over a document
Simulator programmes go wrong at two points: an envelope agreed before anybody fixed the eye point, and a delay figure agreed before anybody fixed the method. These five steps put both at the front, where they are still cheap.
The 5-Step Cue-to-Acceptance Path What comes out of each step, and who needs it
ST 01
Read the cue set
You send the manoeuvres that have to feel right. We work out what the real vehicle does in each one, and which part of it a platform can honestly produce.
ST 02
Place the eye point
The reference point is fixed at the occupant’s head and the envelope is restated there at your load and height — before geometry, not during commissioning.
ST 03
Freeze the interface
Command set, coordinate convention, units, update rate, where the cueing filter runs and what happens on a late packet or a stop. Signed by both sides.
ST 04
Measure the delay
End to end, by the method agreed at ST 03, with our share separated from the model, the network and the visual chain. Recorded, not estimated.
ST 05
Loaded acceptance
Run with the cab, the visual system and occupants aboard, repeated with the spread reported, and issued with the objective test data attached.
Purchase order blocked until an acceptance protocol exists? Ask for the protocol pre-filled with your manoeuvre list →
Where the subsystem stops and the device begins
What we deliver, what the device builder carries, and what we decline
Simulator scopes go wrong in a familiar way: a motion supplier agrees to everything, and the gap between “a platform that moves correctly” and “a device somebody will accept” is discovered by an integrator with a delivery date. The four zones below go into the proposal, so the gap shows up while it is still a drawing.
Ours
- The mechanism, controller, drives and cabinet
- Motion produced from the command level in the interface document
- The stop circuit, the mechanical limits and workspace protection
- The envelope stated at the eye point, and the objective test data
- The measured transport delay for our part of the chain
Never ours
- The cab, the visual system and the instructor station
- The vehicle model and the simulation software
- The syllabus, and whether the device trains anybody
- Device qualification, and any submission to an authority
- Whether a session is run, continued or abandoned
Outside our class of machine
- Complete simulators supplied turnkey
- Certified seating and restraint systems
- Amusement-device approval of an installed ride
- Domes, projection and image generation
Signed by both
- The eye point, and the envelope restated there
- Where the cueing filter runs, and who tunes it
- The transport delay target and its measurement method
- The manoeuvre set the envelope was checked against
We would rather be named as a subsystem in somebody else’s submission than be described as something we are not in our own proposal.
Unclear whether the scope calls for a motion base or a device builder? Send the device description and we will draw the supply line on it →
Where to go next
Reference reading for a simulator platform specification
Two application pages that go further than this one does, plus the axis decision and the vocabulary a specification has to use.
Application
Flight simulator motion platforms
What changes when the device is an aircraft trainer: the objective test set, the delay ceiling, and what a device manufacturer needs from a motion supplier.
Application
Driving simulator motion platforms
Road vehicle simulation, where the cue set is dominated by longitudinal and lateral onset and the vehicle model is usually the customer’s own.
Axis decision
3DOF or 6DOF, read from the cue set
Which cues three axes cannot carry, what the extra three cost in moving mass, and how to place a device on one side of that line or the other.
Vocabulary
Motion platform glossary
Gross moving load, motion reference point, washout, tilt coordination, eye point — one definition each, so two companies can write the same specification and mean it.
Two more internal pages carry most of the follow-up questions: payload, stroke and acceleration under a duty cycle explains why raising one lowers the others, and electric vs hydraulic covers the arguments that actually decide a training centre purchase — noise, standby power and what the floor looks like after two years. For outside reading, the transport delay and latency definitions in Appendix F to 14 CFR Part 60 are short and worth having in front of you when a specification is being written.
Asked before a specification is written
Motion simulator platform FAQ
Do you supply a complete flight or driving simulator?
No, and you will hear that in the first reply rather than after a quotation. We supply the motion subsystem: mechanism, controller, drives, cabinet, the interface, and the records that describe them. The cab, the visual system, the instructor station, the vehicle model and the training content are the parts that make it a simulator, and they need knowledge of the aircraft or vehicle rather than of the machine producing motion. Where a customer wants one supplier for the whole device, we are the wrong company and it is cheaper to know that in week one.
Can you get our simulator qualified?
No. Qualification belongs to the device and to the organisation sponsoring it, and the standards are written that way — 14 CFR Part 60 governs the qualification of the device rather than the supply of its parts. What a motion supplier can honestly do is deliver a subsystem whose objective test results are in hand before the device is presented: frequency response, repeatability, turn-around behaviour and a measured transport delay, written so your submission can quote them. Any supplier who offers to get your device qualified is describing work they are not the one doing.
Should the motion cueing run in your controller or in ours?
Both are things we build, and the choice is yours, but it has to be a choice rather than an assumption. If the filter runs in our controller you send vehicle state and hold one party responsible for how it feels. If it runs in your host you get complete control of the feel and take on the filter, its tuning and what it does at the edge of the workspace. A third party's package is common where a device family already exists, and it works as long as the interface document says who owns what. The expensive answer is the fourth one — nobody has decided — because it makes competing quotations incomparable.
What transport delay can you achieve?
Our share of it is a fixed property of the controller and the axis count, and it is issued as a number in the delay budget rather than as a promise. The figure that decides your device is the end-to-end one, and most of that chain is not ours: the model step, the network hop, the cueing filter and the visual system all sit in it. So the useful answer is a method rather than a number — we agree how the measurement will be taken, itemise every element with its owner, and measure it end to end at acceptance with one clock rather than two.
Is 3DOF enough for a professional simulator, or do we need 6DOF?
It depends on whether two cues ever have to be true at the same instant. Three axes can tilt, and tilt is how any platform produces a sustained acceleration, so a well-built 3DOF device carries a convincing cue when that cue lives in one plane — many marine, rail and single-axis training devices are exactly this. Six axes become necessary when the device has to tilt for one cue while translating for another, which is the normal case in flight and road vehicle work. Axis count read from the cue set is a cheaper decision than axis count read from a competitor's datasheet.
Will people get motion sick in it?
Some will, in any simulator, and no supplier can promise otherwise. Discomfort comes from conflict between what the eyes report and what the inner ear reports, and the platform owns part of that: cue timing, whether motion arrives before or after the picture, how smoothly the washout returns to centre, and whether the machine ever produces a step the content did not ask for. Those four we measure and report. Field of view, frame rate, visual latency, scenario aggressiveness, session length and individual susceptibility are not ours, and a better motion base does not compensate for a scene running late.
Electric or hydraulic for a training centre?
Electric, and the arguments that decide it are rarely about force. A device that runs sessions all day sits inside an occupied building with people walking past it, so noise, standby power, heat rejection and what the floor looks like after two years are what the facilities manager will raise. Electric actuation also holds position without a power unit running, which matters when trainees board and leave a stationary platform several times an hour. Where a requirement genuinely needs hydraulic force density we will say so, but for simulator duty it has been the exception for years.
Another supplier quotes the same payload and travel for less. What is the difference?
Compare the conditions before the figures. Ask at which point the travel and acceleration were quoted — the mounting plate or the eye point — and at what load, including the visual system and occupants. Ask whether a transport delay figure is included, whose part of the chain it covers and by what method it will be verified. Ask whether objective test data and an acceptance record are in the price or quoted as extras. Those account for most of the gaps we see. Where a competing quotation genuinely covers the same conditions and costs less, we would rather hear about it than guess.
Commercial questions — lead time, payment terms, spares, installation — are answered in the full FAQ.
Send the simulator requirement. We will work the platform out of it.
The manoeuvres that have to feel right, the load including occupants, where the head sits and who signs the device off are enough for a first pass. If what you need is a complete simulator rather than a motion subsystem, that is what you will hear back — and hearing it in week one is worth more than a quotation.
What comes back first
- Which of the four fidelity levels the device is, and what that changes in the scope of supply
- The envelope restated at your eye point, naming the manoeuvres that do and do not fit
- A delay budget with our share filled in and a measurement method proposed
- The configuration it falls into, and whether the cue set needs three axes or six