0:02

Welcome to Third Angle and we're

0:04

getting in the driving seat, but where we're going,

0:06

we don't need roads.

0:19

I'm your host, Paul Ames from industrial

0:21

software company PTC. In

0:24

this podcast, we share the moments where digital

0:26

transforms physical and meet the brilliant minds

0:28

behind some of the most innovative products around

0:31

the world, each powered by PTC

0:33

technology.

0:37

There was a time when you were most likely

0:40

to come across a driving simulator in an arcade

0:42

or at a theme park. But in recent

0:44

years, the world's top automotive manufacturers

0:46

and racing teams have

0:48

been increasingly relying on them to train

0:50

drivers as well as enhance ride

0:53

experience in the car design process.

0:56

The simulators that Dainisma have built

0:58

are so advanced and have pushed the boundaries

1:00

of driving simulations so much that

1:03

more traditional simulators just don't

1:05

cut it anymore.

1:07

It's all to do with an obsessive attention

1:09

to detail, engineering and experience

1:11

so that the human body and the human mind

1:13

find it very difficult to tell the difference from the real

1:15

thing.

1:17

For Formula One drivers, for instance, every

1:19

split second counts. And so by

1:21

reducing the latency of the simulator to

1:24

just a few milliseconds,

1:25

they can perfect their

1:27

reaction speeds and access the impact

1:29

of upgrades to keep one step ahead of

1:31

the competition. And this is just one

1:33

of the ways in which Dainisma are changing

1:36

the face of simulation and have no

1:38

doubt helped some of the biggest names in motor

1:40

racing onto the podium.

1:42

Now, as a huge motor racing fan, I couldn't

1:44

pass up the opportunity to try out one of

1:47

Dainisma's simulators myself. So

1:49

I went along to their HQ in Somerset

1:51

to meet Ash Warne, founder, CEO

1:54

and chief engineer, and of course, put

1:56

my driving skills to the test.

2:01

Well

2:01

I've just stepped into Dainismar just

2:03

outside Bristol and I'm here today now to

2:05

have a go in their 9 degree

2:08

of freedom motion simulator and

2:10

with me today is Ash Warren who

2:13

looks after the setup here so he's going to be my

2:15

tutor and my guide and hopefully keep me out

2:17

of the barriers.

2:23

Okay Paul so here

2:24

we are this is DMG1 this is our demonstrator

2:27

we're going to give you an experience of a

2:29

motorsport scenario today so we've got

2:32

an F1 car model and we're going to send you to Spa.

2:34

We've got Tom Canning here and he should be able to talk you

2:36

around the track the gears etc get

2:38

you up to speed quickly and what we're really looking

2:40

for here is for you to be able to feel some

2:43

of the unique capabilities of this system

2:46

in particular the bandwidth the latency

2:49

how you can really feel what the car is doing

2:51

and how quickly the simulator is able to provide

2:54

that

2:54

feedback to you such as for example if you get

2:56

the back end stepping out you're really able

2:58

to feel that immediately and respond to it and catch

3:00

the slide where it's in other simulators you might just

3:03

spin out. I don't suppose you haven't got a Formula

3:06

3 model here have you? A Formula 3 model? Yeah

3:08

I don't know I'm just asking it's just that I used to drive Delaras

3:12

years ago and so that's probably

3:14

closer but I mean not that it really makes any difference.

3:16

You'll get up to speed very quickly I'm sure just you

3:19

just break a bit later yeah go a bit faster.

3:21

Okay yeah the general ingredients of it.

3:28

Like just the left and go flat

3:30

out. Really

3:32

good so now remember it's flat out all the

3:35

way until the last you can. So

3:38

Donizmed develops driving simulators

3:40

for automotive and motorsport

3:43

markets so a driving simulator

3:45

is a tool that is used predominantly to develop

3:47

a car whether that's a road car or

3:49

a race car and ultimately what we're what

3:52

we're trying to do is to recreate

3:54

the experience of being in a real car as

3:56

accurately as possible but

3:58

critically a simulator

3:59

is able to adapt. So one minute

4:02

or in one incarnation it could be

4:04

an SUV, then it could be an EV,

4:07

then it could be a saloon and then it can be a race car. So

4:09

it's it's important in driving

4:12

simulation to be able to evaluate

4:14

different setups and this is ultimately

4:16

what their value is to be able to try

4:18

things out without having to go and build

4:21

the physical thing and build a prototype. You're

4:23

able to take an idea directly from

4:26

a piece of paper into a mathematical

4:28

model that encapsulates what's going

4:29

on and put it in the simulator and the driver

4:32

can drive it or in an autonomous

4:34

vehicle scenario perhaps just experience

4:36

it and provide feedback to the developer

4:39

whether they be an automotive

4:41

manufacturer or a motorsport company.

4:44

And of course as well the environment is all

4:46

simulated so you can quickly go from the glamorous

4:49

location of driving around Monaco to

4:51

being stuck in traffic on the M40. So

4:55

what really drove me to leave the world

4:57

of F1 and set up my own business was

5:00

really the desire to create something. I

5:03

had many ideas, I could visualize

5:05

what was possible but wasn't always able

5:08

to go and do that within the confines of

5:10

a large business of a team for example.

5:13

So I struck out in 2017

5:16

and founded Dynisma, had a vision

5:18

of what should be possible in

5:20

terms of the capabilities of the technology

5:23

that weren't there and weren't being offered

5:25

by competing products at the moment. So

5:27

yeah I set about modeling,

5:30

designing and within a year

5:33

had come up with a prototype that demonstrated

5:35

all of the unique capabilities

5:37

that we still see in

5:39

our products today. So

5:42

first it's going to be second gear.

5:50

Well held. I'm Tom

5:52

Canning, I'm a racing driver for Aston

5:54

Martin and I work with Dynisma on

5:56

the sim model, car model

5:59

development side. I was just working

6:01

with Paul then, talking around the lap

6:03

around Spa in the Formula One car.

6:05

Through my racing I drive on quite a lot

6:08

of simulators and there's nothing really

6:10

else out there that compares to this. You

6:12

just get so much feeling through your backside.

6:16

It's the closest to real life you can get without actually

6:19

going out and tracking a car. OK Paul,

6:21

how did that feel? It felt amazing,

6:23

it felt awesome. Ultra realistic and

6:25

then the actual way the back of the car starts to move

6:27

and step out and the loading on the curves.

6:30

Yeah, fantastic. Really, really,

6:32

really realistic stuff. So brilliant, thank

6:34

you. Yeah, I saw you

6:35

catch some oversteer, some slides,

6:38

you were really dialed in there.

6:42

So just to explain to our listeners what we're actually

6:44

looking at here at Dainisme with

6:46

the demonstrator. We've

6:49

got what is a regular

6:51

racing car monocoque that

6:53

is supported on six arms and

6:55

gives it the six degrees of freedom that

6:58

you require. But then that

7:00

is in turn mounted on a

7:03

table, a plinth, which is also

7:05

able to move in three degrees of freedom.

7:07

And that gives you the nine degrees of freedom

7:10

total there. And then wrapped around

7:13

that, we've got a huge screen

7:15

with five projectors projecting

7:18

then the full field of view for the driver

7:21

in fantastic sort of reality

7:24

in terms of the detail that you're

7:26

looking at. Not just of the scenery

7:28

and everything else, but the inside of the vehicle that we're

7:30

driving as well. So there is a huge amount

7:33

going on here. It's a very, very complex

7:35

environment, but all comes together

7:37

to provide an unbelievably realistic driving

7:39

experience. I think that's one of the really unique

7:42

things about driving

7:42

simulators that you just touched on there is

7:45

the fact that they are firstly very complex

7:47

systems. So there are tens of computers

7:49

and CPUs and graphics cards all working together

7:52

to produce this cohesive simulated

7:54

environment. But it's also the

7:56

sheer number of cues and stimuli

7:58

that we're providing.

7:59

The idea here is to convince probably

8:02

the most complex thing in the universe, i.e. the human,

8:05

that they're engaged in some other activity

8:07

and they're doing that in a very serious fashion, giving

8:09

accurate feedback to steer the

8:11

development of road cars and race cars. So

8:14

it's important that we model what the

8:16

person sees, what they feel and what

8:18

they hear as well.

8:22

Our unique selling points really focus

8:25

on the high bandwidth and the low

8:27

latency and the smoothness of our simulators.

8:30

And these correspond basically

8:32

to, first of all, bandwidth. It's the amount

8:34

of information that you can get through the system.

8:36

So if the analogy was television, then

8:39

we're 8k, whereas other simulators

8:41

are standard definition. It's about putting

8:44

higher fidelity, higher frequencies through

8:46

the motion generator, as we call it, to

8:49

put some numbers on it. Many of our competitors

8:51

have a bandwidth of 20 hertz,

8:54

whereas we are 50 and even in excess

8:56

of 100 hertz on different systems.

8:59

And what this means is that vibrations,

9:02

movements that you feel in a real car

9:04

are able to be accurately transmitted through

9:07

our motion generator and therefore given to the

9:09

participant in the simulator study using

9:12

a Donissma simulator. Whereas in

9:14

other simulators, they tend to feel

9:17

muffled, filtered, you

9:19

miss some of the sort of harshness that you can get

9:21

in reality and the higher frequencies,

9:24

including vibration

9:26

and noise.

9:29

The second USP

9:31

is low latency. So we have a latency

9:33

of between three and five milliseconds. So

9:35

what this means is that within three to five milliseconds

9:38

of the vehicle model calculating that

9:40

some movement needs to be transmitted

9:42

to the driver, we can measure using an

9:44

accelerometer on our motion platform

9:47

that that movement has happened. So this

9:49

is, again, an order of magnitude better

9:51

than many of our competitors. And it's in

9:54

the motorsport example is really what sets us

9:56

apart because it allows the driver to drive

9:58

the car. on the limit as they're

10:01

able to in reality. Whereas in other simulators

10:03

you find that if you try to correlate

10:05

the balance of the car, i.e. how understeer

10:08

or oversteer it is, you end up

10:10

with a car that you know it's back

10:12

end slides out but you can't catch it because

10:15

the simulator doesn't respond quickly

10:17

enough and therefore the driver gets the

10:19

cue to correct too late they've already

10:21

spun out. So what you tend

10:23

to find in other simulators is that

10:26

you lose correlation because you have to dial understeer

10:28

into the balance of the car just to get it around the lap.

10:30

Whereas in our simulator we're able

10:33

to have a very unstable

10:35

oversteer car balance where the driver is

10:38

soaring at the wheel keeping it in a straight line

10:41

as they're breaking and turning and sliding

10:43

into the corner. This is something you can't

10:45

do in other simulators. The final

10:47

USP that I've mentioned

10:50

is just the smoothness of our motion systems. Drivers

10:52

have described it as feeling a lot

10:54

more like the real car and

10:56

that's you know it's no mistake really we took design

10:59

cues from how vehicle suspension worked

11:01

in developing motion simulators

11:03

whereas typically other technologies

11:06

are based on perhaps flight

11:08

simulators where high frequency really

11:10

isn't as important as it is in a ground-based

11:13

vehicle.

11:15

So Ash tell me a little bit about the head mounted

11:17

display and how that enables you to offer the

11:20

mixed reality environment for the simulator. Yeah

11:22

sure so obviously Paul what you've just

11:25

driven there is the projector based

11:27

visuals so this is very sort of typically

11:29

how it's been done in driving simulators for a long time.

11:32

What we've been able to do is implement

11:34

a vario head mounted display in

11:36

our simulator and this replaces

11:39

the projectors. This allows

11:41

you to feel a far greater sense of immersion. You

11:44

can see your hands in the mixed reality

11:46

context you can see the steering wheel in front of

11:48

you and yet that's augmented with the

11:51

with the graphical environment around you. I

11:53

think uniquely what we've been able to do is

11:55

to to get the system working in a motion

11:58

simulator so despite the fact that we're able to do that

11:59

that the chassis is moving and shaking around

12:02

to provide you all of those cues of

12:04

what the vehicle is doing. We're still able to keep

12:06

track of where the headset is and correctly

12:09

present to you both the graphical world

12:12

and the real world within the cockpit.

12:22

So Ash,

12:24

we're now here at Dynismus manufacturing

12:27

site so we're just stepping into what

12:29

is one of the larger units here where

12:32

all the engineering takes place and so forth.

12:35

So if we just step inside and then we can

12:37

get started having a look around. So

12:39

the guys are just building up the ground system

12:42

here. This is really important part of

12:44

the load transfer to ground so our

12:46

systems are very responsive,

12:49

high bandwidth as I've mentioned and this requires a great deal

12:51

of stiffness so

12:52

hence you can see some really solid

12:55

structures here. To sort of

12:57

strengthen the size and the weight of this chassis

12:59

I guess is all part of making sure that nothing

13:02

moves that shouldn't move. That's what we say.

13:04

Yeah and in simulator parlance that nothing

13:07

moves that shouldn't move would be eliminating

13:09

miscues. So you know we're in the business

13:11

of creating cues, feelings

13:14

for the driver or for the passenger that

13:16

correspond to the situation that you're trying to simulate

13:18

and what we're doing and I think what we specialize in and

13:20

I think we do better than our competitors

13:22

is eliminating those miscues, the

13:25

bangs, cracks, whistles and grinds

13:27

that often appear on other simulators.

13:34

We

13:34

should also touch on sustainability and

13:37

the fact that what we're doing with simulation

13:39

means less models are being used, less materials

13:42

are being used, less manufacturing

13:44

time, less greenhouse gas. You

13:46

know this is all part of a more sustainable

13:48

future for manufacturers in all industries.

13:51

Absolutely yeah so more simulation means

13:53

fewer prototypes, it means fewer prototype

13:56

miles. The more that can be done virtually

13:58

the fewer emissions are being generated.

13:59

One of the big contributors

14:02

is having to take prototypes

14:05

all over the world in order to assess them in different environments

14:07

and the more that can be virtualized and

14:09

simulated offline that the fewer

14:13

prototypes, mule cars there are shipping around

14:15

the world to all of these extreme environments

14:16

for example.

14:23

That was Ash Warne, founder, CEO

14:26

and chief engineer at Dynisma. Now

14:29

the team there use technology, physics

14:31

and engineering and fine tune it to work

14:33

in harmony with the human body so

14:35

that the motion cues are perfectly aligned

14:37

to the vision, the sound and the feeling

14:40

from the simulator. One

14:42

of the tools that help them to do this is

14:44

PTC's cloud native design and

14:46

PLM solutions on shape and

14:48

arena connected.

14:50

Time to meet our expert PTC's EVP

14:52

John Hirschstich who can tell us more.

14:56

Now John I was fortunate to spend time at

14:58

Dynisma and the first thing that struck me

15:00

was the sheer size of the simulators

15:03

on offer.

15:04

Now I've seen a number of simulators offering

15:06

the 9 degrees of freedom movement

15:08

which is typical today

15:10

but never one that was capable of carrying

15:13

such a high payload, anything up to

15:16

750kg and this means that they can

15:18

simulate the whole vehicle cabin

15:20

with multiple participants not

15:22

just the single driver monocoque

15:25

that we often see with the racing simulators.

15:28

Now because of that the Dynisma offering

15:31

is in high demand not just from the world of

15:33

motorsport but also some of the world's biggest

15:35

car makers who are now keen to use the

15:37

simulators to test drive concept

15:40

cars before they enter production. Now

15:43

they needed a design and a PLM solution

15:45

that could scale up quickly and were compelled

15:47

to switch to PTC's cloud native

15:50

on shape and arena connected.

15:52

Now John are you able to give an overview of what

15:54

that means from a solution perspective

15:57

and how Dynisma can capitalise on

15:59

it?

15:59

to, you know, Onshape

16:02

and Arena together provide

16:04

unique value to Dainisma and many

16:07

other companies around the world because

16:10

we are the only cloud-native

16:13

CAD, PDM, and PLM

16:15

solution in the world. And what

16:17

this means is we help companies

16:20

deploy Agile process to

16:23

design, test, produce,

16:26

manufacture products on

16:28

a faster, more

16:31

agile basis than they could ever do before,

16:33

before Onshape and Arena. And

16:35

it comes from several key aspects

16:38

of the unique cloud-native Onshape

16:40

and Arena CAD, PDM, PLM

16:42

solution. First, they're connected

16:44

in the cloud. This means that our connection

16:47

will synchronize the CAD, PDM, and

16:49

PLM across engineers, manufacturers,

16:52

suppliers,

16:53

instantaneous sharing of product design

16:56

information so that there's essentially a global

16:58

real-time single source of truth. All your

17:01

internal teams, your manufacturing partners,

17:03

perfectly in sync. And when it comes

17:05

time to add a new partner,

17:08

that happens instantly. You know,

17:10

much like the response of this to the Dainisma

17:12

simulator, which I understand is amazing

17:15

because it's down to milliseconds.

17:17

When you're adding a new supplier or a new team

17:19

member with Arena PLM, you

17:22

don't have to wait hours or days for

17:24

them to be onboarded and installed.

17:26

And what hardware do you have? You click a few

17:28

buttons, instant access through the cloud.

17:31

We see collaboration being

17:33

vital. It's the name of the game in today's

17:36

world of modern product development. It's

17:38

vital to Dainisma.

17:40

They're designers and engineers. They

17:42

need to be able to see

17:44

what each other are doing to run through different

17:46

ideas, tweak them in real time so

17:49

they can see in moments what the other

17:52

team members are working on.

17:53

Being in a cloud, not

17:55

just in the cloud or using cloud, but

17:58

cloud-native means that

17:59

everyone involved can get the information

18:02

they need

18:03

anywhere in the world, extremely

18:05

efficient way of logging in changes.

18:08

Dynisma, they're pushing the boundaries

18:11

of innovation in terms of simulators

18:14

and to achieve their level of performance.

18:17

You know, the level of state of the art down

18:19

in the millisecond Formula One,

18:22

we feel they need the state

18:24

of the art, high performance

18:27

CAD, PDM, and PLM, that arena and on-shape

18:29

offer. We're a SAS cloud native

18:32

design, development, manufacturing, supply

18:34

chain platform.

18:36

We're robust, we're usable out

18:38

of the box, but you can tailor us to

18:40

meet specific requirements very easily. And

18:42

when you make modifications, everyone in the

18:44

world, as you customize your system, you're

18:47

not worried about upgrading and admins

18:49

and all that happens instantly for everyone

18:51

around the globe.

18:52

So we're super excited

18:55

to

18:55

be part of the Dynisma story and

18:57

the stage of growth.

18:59

I'm jealous that you got a chance to try

19:01

out the simulator. I'm hoping I get to do it myself.

19:04

And I think that I really see

19:06

an exciting analog between Dynisma

19:09

simulating the twists and turns of modern

19:11

racing at the highest possible speed

19:14

and arena and

19:16

on-shape, giving them the PLM,

19:19

CAD, and PDM tools

19:21

so their team can work at the highest

19:24

possible speed and take the turns

19:27

fast, you know, and come up in product

19:29

development. So delighted

19:31

to have Dynisma as a

19:34

customer of cloud native arena and

19:36

on-shape from PTC.

19:43

Huge thanks to Ash for showing us around

19:45

their facility and helping make my

19:47

dream of driving the Spa circuit in

19:49

an F1 car virtually come true.

19:52

And to John for helping us to understand the deployment

19:54

of on-shape and arena connected. Please

19:57

rate, review and subscribe to our bi-weekly

19:59

third angle episodes wherever you listen to

20:02

your podcasts and follow PTC

20:04

on LinkedIn and Twitter for future episodes.

20:12

This is an 1860 production for PTC.

20:14

Executive producer is Jackie Cook, sound

20:17

design and editing by Oli Giyu, recording

20:19

by Clarissa Maycock and music by

20:22

Rowan Bishop.