Compensation for delay in the visual display of a driving simulator

One of the aspects that cause an interactive vehicle simulator to differ from the real system is delay in the visual display. Because of this delay, the person in the simulator receives visual feedback of his control actions slightly later when compared with the real system, which can reduce the task performance. compensation techniques can be applied to reduce the effects of delay. This article describes an algorithm that was implemented in a driving simulator for this purpose. Two experiments were carried out, in which subjects drove the simulator with and without compensation, to evaluate its effect on task performance and control effort. The results show that the display delay is counterbalanced by the compensation in an effective and efficient manner: when using the compensation, driving behaviour in the simulator has a better resemblance to that in the real vehicle.