A Real-time High-fidelity Driving Simulator System Based on PC Clusters

There are many challenges to create a real-time highfidelity driving simulator based on PC clusters with multi-channeled projector support, while still maintaining at least 30 frame rate for complex scenes. This paper describes how such a system was conceived and implemented to support behavioral research on highway safety and operations. The real highway safety research study is used to compare the driver behavior derived from real-world roadway data with data collected in a simulated environment to valid the simulator. The hardware and software architectures are discussed in detail, respectively. Such architectures have been constructed to support upgradeability, scalability, extendibility, and flexibility. The experimental results of the real study are shown in daytime and nighttime, respectively. The conclusions and future work are described in the end.