Comments

J8ke - yesterday

Great program, it really helped us before going to our caravan towing course - the instructor was amazed that my wife and I did the reversing manoeuvre on our first attempts!

One suggestion - make the mouse wheel control the left/right movement. That way, you can turn the mouse 90 degrees and pretend it's a steering wheel. I already do this by putting the mouse arrow on the steering slider bar, but it's a bit fiddly and any slight movement of the mouse scuppers it.

Thanks and keep up the great work!

reply to this comment

Jim - yesterday (replying to J8ke)

Thanks very much for your comments and also your interesting suggestion.   I'm currently working on some improvements to the driving controls so I will look into offering this as another steering option.

reply to this comment

Ruben - about 4 days ago

Hi Jin,

thank you very much for your app... tomorrow I have the B+E exam and If I approve It's thanks to your simulator that it helped me a lot to understand how the trailers reacts with wheel movements. This app should be recomended in every auto school, the problem is that reduces the number of classes that you have to do and their income :)

Excellent work!

reply to this comment

Jim - about 3 days ago (replying to Ruben)

Hi Ruben.   Thank you so much for your very kind comments!  It's a pleasure to have been able to help.

reply to this comment

Heather - about a month ago

When will there be an Apple version? This was recommended on Horse & Hound as well as British Horse Society. Need the version for iOS 

reply to this comment

Jim - about a month ago (replying to Heather)

Hi Heather.   I'm very glad to hear you're eager for the iOS version to be available!  It's currently going through final testing and if all goes well it should be ready within the next few days.

reply to this comment

Steve_D - about 2 months ago

Hi

Firstly, excellent work, really good and useful piece of software, however I would like to add one thing.

I am red/green colour blind and am having serious difficulty with the small grid map in the bottom right hand side of the simulation screen and when I look at the birds eye view. I really struggle to the vehicle and trailer against the background! Is there anyway to be able to change the colours on the background, and or vehicle and trailer?

 

reply to this comment

Jim - about 2 months ago (replying to Steve_D)

Thanks very much for making this point.   There is no way to change these colours at the moment but I agree there should be.    I'll email you separately to discuss this in more detail.

reply to this comment

Dezo - about 2 months ago

I really like your application. Thank you! However I have few ideas for a potential improvement.

1. It would be nice to have some really small and low trailer e.g. 2m long motorcycle trailer - short geometry should be harder to control. Low profile harder to check visualy.

2. Many tips on the internet recommends to handle steering wheel at the bottom, to match direction of trailer with the hand movement - it would be nice to show whole circle on steering graph - so one can focus on bottom part as well.

3. Little bit higher maximum forward speed would be nice to save time during initial position setup.

4. Customizable key bindings would be great - stoping with the right click, maybe steering with the mouse wheel etc

Again thank you very much for the app, I'm looking forward for a real experience in the following days.

reply to this comment

Jim - about 2 months ago (replying to Dezo)

Thanks very much for your excellent suggestions.  I was already planning to add a short wheelbase trailer, which can be really difficult to manoeuvre as you rightly point out.   I'll also take a look at your other ideas as soon as I can.

reply to this comment

Fredrik - about 5 months ago

This app was really helpful in getting my B+E licence. A couple of hours in the simultaror combined with 1.5 hours of real trailer reversing was enough to seal the deal, without any previous experiance in reversing enclosed trailers. This program is really good too get the inital training.

/Fredrik, Sweden

reply to this comment

Jim - about 5 months ago (replying to Fredrik)

Thank you very much for your kind comments.  It's great to know we've been able to help you!

reply to this comment

Matthias - about 7 months ago

thanks a lot for this great piece of work! Could you possibly consider to add support for real driving wheels and pedals (basically Joystick)? In my understanding this would be a tremendous leap towards putting this knowledge into life proficiency.

Kind regards from Germany.

reply to this comment

Jim - about 7 months ago (replying to Matthias)

Thanks very much for your positive feedback!  I'm pleased to say that adding support for gaming controls is already on the list for future development.  I believe it would add an extra level of realism to the simulator experience and I hope to look into it over the next few weeks. 

reply to this comment

Gabor - about 8 months 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

reply to this comment

Jim - about 8 months 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. 

reply to this comment

Tolyzor - about 8 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)

reply to this comment

Dale Harders - about 9 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!

reply to this comment

Jim - about 9 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.

reply to this comment

Richard Wilson - about a year 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.

reply to this comment

Jim - about a year 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!

reply to this comment

Richard Wilson - about a year 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.

reply to this comment

Jim - about a year 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.

reply to this comment

Richard - about a year 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.

reply to this comment

Jim - about a year ago (replying to Richard)

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

reply to this comment

Richard Wilson - about a year 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.

reply to this comment

Jim - about a year 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.

reply to this comment

Richard - about a year 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.

reply to this comment

Jim - about a year ago (replying to Richard)

I'll investigate some alternative multi-view layouts

reply to this comment

SeptimusFry - about a year 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...

reply to this comment

Jim - about a year 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.

reply to this comment