Comments

Gabor - about 19 days ago

The app worked very well for me, I especially liked the physics tutorial. Practicing a bit before my first real life attempt with the trailer helped me!
The only feature I could imagine adding is being able to customize/change the geometry, eg width of the road, width and length of the ramp, width of the garage door. 
Thanks for the nice work,
Gabor

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Jim - about 19 days ago (replying to Gabor)

Thanks very much for your feedback - I'm glad you found the app useful!

Your suggestion about customising the dimensions of scene objects is a very good one.   It would allow users to set their own levels of difficulty and is something I hope to implement in the future. 

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Tolyzor - about 1 months ago

Very nice simulator! It could use a split screen view showing just the mirrors simultaneously. I found the mouse is the best device for steering in this since you have both speed and control. I also found the "quick start" was anything but! most of it is self explanatory, just launch the sim and then have a help button. The android version could use tilt to steer too. Can you add harder obstacles, like reverse and park in a garage?
(posted on Youtube 03/08/2020)

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Dale Harders - about 1 months ago

Great learning tool! Thanks for releasing it free too!

I want to contribute as a software developer. Any chance of the source code being open-sourced, or available for other contributors like myself to add features and give back? Cheers from Australia!

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Jim - about 1 months ago (replying to Dale Harders)

Thanks for the positive feedback!   Thanks also for the offer of help with new features but there are no plans at the moment to make the code open-source.

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Richard Wilson - about 8 months ago

Had a play, suggestions to improve it:-
Make the forwards & reverse work from the up down arrows like the left & right arrows do the steering.
Have a view of both mirrors & front at same time. Like you would in a real car.
Sort out the left right view confusion.
Add a BE towing test reverse layout. The park between cars is similar but an actual sim of the test would seal the deal.

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Jim - about 8 months ago (replying to Richard Wilson)

The up/down arrows should already control the forward/reverse speed - unless you are in Autopilot mode where forward is disabled. Please contact me separately about this and I'll try to help you get it working.

I'll look into adding the BE towing test reverse layout in the near future, although I don't want to risk positioning the program as an alternative to a real world training course - it definitely isn't!

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Richard Wilson - about 8 months ago

Your right park & left park & corresponding mirror views dont seem to match.

Currently doing right park with right mirror view but the view is from the left mirror & the parking space is to the left of the car.

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Jim - about 8 months ago (replying to Richard Wilson)

I get asked about this a lot but I'm pretty sure the images are the correct way round. It can be confusing because it's easy to forget that the screen images are not direct views but reflected views.

Using your example of a right turn approach with the right mirror view, the reflection of the side of the car and the side of the trailer should appear down the left edge of the mirror, with the parking space visible further over to the right (as in the real world).

Also, as you reverse into the gap you should expect the side of the trailer to become more visible in the mirror as the turn begins.

If you're not convinced, please let me know and I'll send you more detailed examples.

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Richard - about 8 months ago (replying to Jim)

I was thinking about this last night. I this no your right. Its the size of the image and that it does not look like a mirror so the brain sees it as a direct view. Framing it in a mirror mask would help as would having both mirrors on screen at same time.

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Jim - about 8 months ago (replying to Richard)

I agree with all of this. I will investigate some solutions.

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Richard Wilson - about 8 months ago

I have been looking for a serious simulator for a while to point my clients to pre training. However this seems to have made a simple thing overly complex. Also to be of true value to help with doing it for real the only view that matters is a true style mirror view of both mirrors at same time with a front screen view ahead.
I will be down loading it now & trying it to the death to see if it is good enough for my clients.

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Jim - about 8 months ago (replying to Richard Wilson)

Thanks very much for taking the time to try the program.

It has been difficult to find the right balance between making it simple to use but sophisticated enough to be of value. Although I'm currently showing only one mirror view at a time, I did experiment with multi-view displays. The main problem was trying to find a layout of views that would make best use of the space available on a single computer screen.

Here is a link to a demonstration video of one arrangement I tested but decided not to include in the current version. Please let me know what you think.
https://youtu.be/l4LSXxs2pO0.

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Richard - about 8 months ago (replying to Jim)

If you couldmove the mirrors into the correct places it would be better. Better yet reduce mirror image size and shape them like mirrors. Make it like a car sim as the driver would see it.

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Jim - about 8 months ago (replying to Richard)

I'll investigate some alternative multi-view layouts

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SeptimusFry - about 10 months ago

Just a preliminary comment: I have seen ‘gaming’ style baby programs illustrating and simulating reversing with a caravan but have never found a ‘serious’ program which genuinely takes vehicle geometry into account. I shall download the program on my W10 pc and give an honest opinion then. But why could it not be there for my iPad, a perfect platform. I could have a virtual steering wheel and pedals...

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Jim - about 10 months ago (replying to SeptimusFry)

Thanks very much for taking the time to try the program and I look forward to hearing your comments in due course. I'm sorry it's only available for Windows at the moment - that just happened to be the development environment I chose to use. I'm currently investigating the feasibility of making versions for Android and iOS but these will take some time to put together.

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