We're putting two of the world's most luxurious racing simulators head-to-head: the ultra-premium $2 million Dynisma racing simulator against the more accessible $63,000 Prodrive model. Is the $2 million price tag justifiable? Join WIRED's deep dive into the features, specifications, design, and performance of each simulator to find out which one reigns supreme.Read more: https://www.wired.com/story/dynisma-worlds-most-expensive-racing-simulator-tested/Director: Anna O'DonohueDirector of Photography: Mateo Akira NotsukeEditor: Estan Esparza; Brady JacksonHost: Jeremy WhiteGuest: Geroge BoothbyCreative Producer: Christie GarciaLine Producer: Joseph BuscemiAssociate Producer: Amy HaskourProduction Manager: Peter BrunetteProduction Coordinator: Kevin BalashCasting Producer: Nicole FordSound Mixer: Michael PanayiotisProduction Assistant: Sasha NovitskiyFact-Checker: Mike DentPost Production Supervisor: Christian OlguinPost Production Coordinator: Ian BryantSupervising Editor: Doug LarsenAdditional Editor: Christopher Jones; Louville MooreAssistant Editor: Justin Symonds
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TechTranscript
00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:01 Jesus Christ!
00:02 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:06 I'm Jeremy White, and I write about luxury tech for wire.
00:09 And today, I'm testing two machines in the racing sim
00:13 space.
00:14 I want to find out exactly what you
00:16 get when you spend $60,000 on a racing sim like this--
00:20 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:26 --versus a $2 million machine like this.
00:30 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:34 So why are we looking at racing simulators?
00:37 Well, motor racing is a rich boys club.
00:40 You need to be loaded, or from a loaded family,
00:42 anyway, to get access to this world.
00:44 But racing simulators democratize this space.
00:47 People like Jan Mardenbrugh, who trained on Gran Turismo,
00:51 have now broken into the pro racing world for real.
00:54 Right, let's go and test the 60,000 pound ProDrive racing
00:59 simulator.
01:00 It's the most beautiful racing sim I've ever seen.
01:04 It's designed by the guy who designed
01:06 Jaguars, for heaven's sake.
01:08 It's made of the materials that they
01:10 used to make luxury superyachts.
01:12 If this isn't luxury tech, I don't know what is.
01:15 [MUSIC PLAYING]
01:19 We're in a very lucky person's garage.
01:22 And this is the ProDrive racing simulator.
01:25 It is a thing of beauty.
01:27 So the main feature here of the ProDrive simulator
01:30 is the bent beach frame that goes all the way around.
01:34 And that is holding the suspended carbon fiber monocoque
01:38 frame.
01:39 You've got the shut off power button
01:41 for the power steering wheel.
01:43 And then this button here turns the PC,
01:45 which is hidden in the nose, on and off.
01:48 And inside, you've got the racing steering
01:50 wheel and a racing seat.
01:51 And that, with the super wide screen,
01:54 is everything you need for a luxurious home racing
01:58 simulator.
02:00 I've got to be careful, because a very kind ProDrive customer
02:04 has let us test his own unit.
02:07 I'm going to try and get in very gingerly.
02:09 Here we go.
02:10 Oh, it's comfy.
02:13 It's got sensors in the seat, so you can only
02:16 adjust the pedals once you're actually
02:20 sitting down in the seat.
02:23 OK, pit lane limit active.
02:24 OK, already getting some feedback from the wheel.
02:33 Pedals are good.
02:33 The pedals feel authentic, especially the brake pedal.
02:37 Nice and stiff, as it would be in a racing vehicle.
02:43 Whoa, dear.
02:48 The screen is wide enough, really,
02:50 to be almost at the edges of my field of view.
02:52 It's got really strong buttons that you
02:56 would get on a racing car for changing gear.
02:59 I mean, basically, it feels like a really expensive Xbox.
03:06 Feels incredibly responsive.
03:10 Oh, god.
03:11 With the ProDrive, the luxury element
03:13 here is about as much about the design
03:17 as the driving experience, and perhaps probably more so.
03:20 It's probably more about how this machine looks
03:22 and how it can be part of your luxury home experience.
03:27 So the ProDrive, and undoubtedly a beautiful thing.
03:32 But the trouble with it was it's like a rich boy's toy.
03:34 You know, the pedals, the steering wheel, the cabinet,
03:37 that's all something that you could possibly replicate
03:40 at home for a few hundred bucks.
03:42 It's not really pushing the envelope.
03:44 I look at luxury tech like this.
03:46 It's about the intersection between price, design,
03:50 and innovation.
03:51 And that middle sweet spot where all those converge,
03:55 that's wired luxury.
03:56 But there's a catch.
03:57 You've got to consider the law of diminishing returns.
04:00 And this states that the value you get
04:02 decreases the more money you spend.
04:05 Look at it this way.
04:06 You spend $500 on a Sonos speaker.
04:09 A high-end speaker will cost 200 times that,
04:12 but it'll only be 20 times better.
04:15 As we're looking at two luxury racing Sims,
04:18 the ProDrive will be up at the top here,
04:21 about halfway through, 60K.
04:23 The $2 million Dynisma will be all the way along at the end.
04:27 So I want to see what the Dynisma is like.
04:32 And this is F1 grade that you can now buy yourself.
04:37 Ferrari has one, for heaven's sake.
04:39 For a few million, you can have one too.
04:42 And I want to know what that's like.
04:45 The clever thing about it,
04:46 the innovation is the latency,
04:48 the delay in inputs for using the racing simulator.
04:52 They've managed to get their racing Sim
04:54 down to four milliseconds.
04:56 Most of the time, they're 50 milliseconds or 60.
04:59 And that's brilliant.
05:00 This thing costs up to $12.6 million.
05:07 And yes, you will be able to get one of these
05:09 for your home one day.
05:11 This is the motion generator.
05:12 The secret to why this is so realistic.
05:15 This is the rig that allows it to move around.
05:18 Then you've got the struts.
05:20 I shouldn't be able to do this on a normal simulator rig,
05:22 but because it's so low friction,
05:24 look, I can shift this on my own.
05:27 That's how low the friction is on this.
05:28 Then you've got the carbon fiber tub, an F4 tub.
05:31 The pedals that you reach through to around here
05:34 are actually higher than your lower body in the seat.
05:37 So you've got that different driving position.
05:39 And then as you step back,
05:40 you've got a massive wraparound screen.
05:43 So I'm going to try this out now
05:44 to see how it really performs.
05:47 Let's do it, come on.
05:48 Oh my word.
05:50 Oh, okay.
05:55 It does actually feel like you're there.
06:00 Oh, blimey.
06:04 Oh, and there goes curb strike.
06:07 Mind you, the brakes are unbelievable.
06:10 God, is this what it's really like
06:11 to drive in a formula car around Monaco?
06:14 Oh my God.
06:19 Jesus Christ.
06:22 We're never going to make that chicane.
06:24 No, no, that's again, did it again.
06:28 I can't make that, that's ridiculous.
06:31 I'm feeling absolutely humbled, really.
06:33 It's superbly convincing.
06:36 Very quickly, you feel like you're actually there.
06:38 It's like that, you can feel the back end
06:40 of the car going out.
06:42 The acceleration is absolutely phenomenal.
06:44 All you can see is this massive screen.
06:46 And I have no idea how humans drive faster than that
06:51 round this course, basically.
06:54 The thing is, Dainismo is so pro
06:56 that I don't think I can test it all on my own.
06:58 We need a pro racing sim driver.
07:00 And that is George.
07:02 George is not only a pro racing sim driver,
07:04 he's also a pro driver in the real world.
07:06 Whoa.
07:07 This is mega.
07:12 This feels amazing.
07:16 Oh, it's feeling really good.
07:18 Like you say, you can feel everything
07:19 on the rear of the car.
07:22 Every time I go over a curb, it feels so realistic.
07:25 I'm so used to static sims,
07:29 and I've never experienced a sim like this before
07:32 with the motion.
07:33 So in a weird way, it was training my brain
07:36 that this is real.
07:38 The more I'm going around now,
07:40 the more visually and mentally my brain's accepting it.
07:43 And this is quite easily
07:45 the closest I've ever driven to anything.
07:50 I think my heart rate is probably
07:52 even cherries right now.
07:55 Oh God, it's just fantastic.
07:58 - They've just changed the settings for George,
08:02 giving him less grip on the tires,
08:04 because annoyingly he's doing much better than I was.
08:07 The value of this system is evident here.
08:09 Like look at it going on,
08:10 look at everything that's taking place there
08:12 to make this as realistic as you possibly can.
08:14 The struts there providing information to the driver
08:18 at incredibly low latency, three to four milliseconds.
08:21 All the breeze movement, the massive screen,
08:24 everything taking place.
08:25 This is where the value's gone.
08:27 And if you look at that graph of how much you get,
08:30 how much money you spend,
08:31 this is right on the end of that graph.
08:33 That's how much money you have to get and spend
08:36 and develop to actually get something
08:39 as sophisticated as this.
08:41 - Wow.
08:42 There we go, thank you.
08:44 - Are there any parts of driving around the track
08:46 that particularly stood out for you?
08:48 - I think I definitely struggled a little bit at first
08:51 with like the tighter corners,
08:52 because that sense of speed is there, unlike at home.
08:56 And you go from hundreds of miles an hour
08:59 down to like really slow speeds in a second on the brakes.
09:02 So I definitely struggled with those tight hairpins,
09:05 but then after a few laps, just the feeling,
09:08 everything about this sim just made it feel
09:11 a lot more natural and I was able to get to grips with it.
09:13 - How much do you reckon it would improve your driving?
09:16 - I think it would help so much just in terms of
09:19 learning the track, learning the characteristics of a car,
09:22 then even setting up the car.
09:24 You know, you can trial it in the sim
09:26 and then apply it to the real world.
09:27 And I think that's where the market is
09:30 and that's what's going to be a game changer.
09:31 - The things that strike me about this simulator
09:34 is that it is, really is super realistic.
09:37 You really do feel like you're driving.
09:39 Yes, it's massively expensive,
09:41 but the value here is the money's all in that machine there.
09:44 So yes, it costs millions,
09:46 but the experience is priceless really.
09:50 - So testing over and what have we learned?
09:54 Well, we've learned that luxury tech is very expensive.
09:57 That's hardly a surprise.
09:59 But the difference between the ProDrive
10:00 and the Dynisma is that ProDrive is going for aesthetic
10:05 over all else really.
10:07 Dynisma is really trying to push the boundaries forward.
10:10 Go back to that Venn diagram, design, money, innovation.
10:15 ProDrive does two of those.
10:17 Dynisma does all three.
10:19 And that's what makes it the best in the world.
10:22 (dramatic music)
10:25 [BLANK_AUDIO]