A comparison of immersive and interactive motorcycle simulator configurations

Two main factors seem to contribute to the development of a riding configuration, and consequently of a motorcycle simulator: the trajectory control modality and the leaning rendering. The goal of this study was to compare two riding simulator configurations through the assessment of the underlying mental workload adopting a multidimensional approach based on psychophysiological, performance, and subjective measures. In the first configuration (reduced motion), the trajectory control is obtained by means of positive steering, while the leaning is produced just by tilting the visual scene. Like a real motorbike, the second configuration (dynamic) allows a progressive transition between positive and counter steering as the speed increases, whereas the leaning is rendered by splitting the rolling angle between the tilting of the visual scene and the rolling of the platform. Each participant completed six lane-change tasks per configuration, of which the first three and the last one were single tasks, and the remaining two were dual tasks. The occurrence of three single-task runs at the beginning of the experiment allowed us to examine the process of adaptation to each configuration, which is a critical precondition for simulator validity. The dynamic configuration proved to have higher validity, as confirmed by psychophysiological and subjective measures. FINDINGS might have implications for the development of future riding simulators.