Driving simulators are valuable research tool for conducting driving studies instead of conducting these studies on the real roads. However, to be accepted as a representative of the real world, a driving simulator must provide an acceptable degree o
f realism. It is always a goal of the designers of driving
simulators to increase their degree of realism as possible. However, increasing the realism of a driving simulator leads to increasing its cost beyond the allocated cost. So it is common to build a driving simulator initially with an acceptable degree of realism and then have it undergo continuous changes to increase its realism whenever there is a chance to do so. The objective of this paper is to present a modular design of the software components of a fixed-base driving simulator. By following this design, it is possible to start building a simulator with a degree of realism that can continually be increased by improving each of the software components alone without the need to radically change other components of the simulator. This design also helps to build economical alternatives while
conducting a study on a simulator and to collect the experiment data by providing specialized software components for these tasks.
A driving simulator is a combination of hardware and software that enables the user to navigate through a real-time computer-generated virtual driving environment. Driving simulators are very valuable for conducting driving studies that are infeasibl
e or unethical to conduct on the road. For studies that can be conducted in the real world,
driving simulators provide a more cost effective solution and allow a much higher degree of flexibility in terms of changing the conditions of the environment for experimental purposes.
The corner stone when conducting any study on the driving simulator is the construction of a virtual driving environment that serves the purposes of this study. Even though driving environments can considerably vary between different studies, they all share the
presence of common components that exist throughout the environment like roads, traffic signs and other components. The objective of this paper is to present the design of an object-oriented library that facilitates the construction of virtual driving environments when conducting studies on a driving simulator. The proposed library
uses object orientation to hide implementation details from the designer of the environment which results in making the construction of such environments easier and more productive as well as their modification later if needed. The proposed library is based on the Java programming language and on Java 3D technology which makes it
portable and usable on any platform that has an implementation of these two technologies.
