Toyota Builds The World’s Biggest Playstation Err... Driving Simulator

To most of us here at Carscoop, Toyota’s massive driving simulator would have been something like the “king” of Playstations where we’d spend 20 hours a day doing anything from racing to crashing into walls. To the folks at Toyota though, the driving simulator is no toy as it will mainly be used to analyze driving characteristics under such conditions as falling asleep, glancing from side to side, illness, as well as developing active safety technology for reducing the number of accidents. -Continued after the jump

The gigantic driving simulator is located at Toyota’s Higashifuji Technical Centre in Japan. One of the key elements is the use of a real car placed on a platform housed inside a 7.1-metre-diameter dome, the inside of which serves as a giant 360-degree video screen.

Once the driver operates the vehicle, a tilt mechanism, vibration apparatus and other devices manipulate the dome, which can be moved around an area the equivalent of four tennis courts, under precision computer control. According to Toyota, the result is a true simulation of the actual sensation of driving, including a sense of speed, acceleration and riding comfort through turns and other driving maneuvers. The driving simulator dome has even been equipped with sound effects in order to make the experience even more real.