My biggest gripe with any type of FRC simlator would be all the finer details which make real robots a major pain... such as each motor/system being inherently slightly different which often you need to tune out. The inertia/strength of appendages and how it effects rest of robot/game pieces. So any half decent simulation should have varying degrees of offsets to better emulate actual performance of a robot. I mean in a simulation maccanum and omni-wheel drive would never lose orientation but we all know what actually happens and it's these finer details which often are the real problem to deal with... Also another big gripe is i imagine the simlation takes speeds of motors as inputs, but that's not the reality at all. the PWM values you send are a force, a very non linear one at that, so the simulation would need a proper half decent physics engine to even just get that part right keeping in mind the current limitations. It's a very common problem to blow breakers under certain loads which the simulation would probably completely ignore. Also properly implementing the motor curve specs and weight(along with rest of phsyics engine) to be able to determine if a motor can even do the desired task it's being used for in the simulation. That's a lot more complicated than just a few parameters. In the end it comes down to a very good physics engine to be of any practical use to us. I'm not talking about the type of physics you see in video games either =p at least no fluid dynamics are required.

(Originally from Reddit user sanels)

Solidworks support?

Seriously though, this sounds super cool. I'm going to have to learn Inventor for this.

Sensor support would be the main feature that would be good, or just some way to add sensors. Basic distance sensors and encoders (CPR on wheels) would be really useful.

Can the field have elevated portions, or just high-friction areas?

(Originally from Chief Delphi user asid61)

What support are you offering for simulated sensors? Encoders, potentiometers, limit switches, range sensors like ultrasonics, gyros, cameras (as Blake previously mentioned)

Make it open source

Simulate battery and electric motor dynamics effects

Out of curiosity, what are you using as the physics engine?

(Originally from Chief Delphi user RyanCahoon)

A couple of weeks ago, I randomly found some of the plans we made for expanding the 5th Gear simulator. I'll post some of that and/or exchange some emails with you guys.

With luck I'll find some API code I was working on too.

A few questions to create some context.....

• If you imagine a typical (weak) school computer, can that computer simulate one instance of one complex robot at real-world speeds? On that imaginary computer how often can the simulation update (in real world, wall clock time), and how much simulated (robot's imaginary world) time would each update represent?

• Do you have TCP/UDP interfaces for exporting the robot's externally visible and internal state, and for importing commands to control actuators?

• To simplify graphics processing and computation in general, do you have a low fidelity mode for each robot?

• Do you have a Graphics-only executable for displaying multiple robots and game pieces on a field?

• Do you have an executable that can create an image (an updating array of pixels) that approximates what a robot mounted camera would see? What about scenery that would surround a field?

The answer to all of the above might be "No". If it is, that doesn't diminish that you are in the process of doing something really special.

Blake

(Originally from Chief Delphi user gblake)

How about an API with a non-GUI mode so that it can be easily used in automated tests?

(Originally from Chief Delphi user SoftwareBug2.0)