Using the virtual world to develop, test, and perfect new vehicles is not new. But Ford's new multimillion-dollar advanced driving dynamic simulator in Dearborn is the automaker's latest tool to get vehicles on the road quicker. Ford has already pressed its growing family of simulators into service to help develop the Ford Mustang Mach-E electric SUV, the Ford Maverick midsize pickup, and the Ford F-150 Lightning full-size electric pickup truck.

Since Ford's new DiM250 Dynamic Driving Simulator was commissioned in February, it has been in operation full time with eight or 10 people in it most weeks. The main users are the vehicle dynamics and driver-assistance tech teams, but those working on all-wheel drive, stability control, and electrical systems will increasingly book time in the new simulator.

So far there is only one buck—essentially an interior with no grille, wheels or back half of the vehicle—that was extracted from a Ford Explorer prototype, offering a comfortable and spacious cabin to go for a drive. It sits on a machine that is like an air hockey table upside down; the buck moves along a metal table and the nine actuators give it nine degrees of freedom to tip and dip like a real car would. A 15-foot-tall circular screen wraps 270 degrees around the contraption and its belted-in occupant. Instructions are piped in from the control room as the simulator moves side to side, up and down over cracks and uneven pavement, and vibrates over washboard surfaces.

MotorTrend was invited to give it a try. The first demo mimicked being in a Maverick midsize pickup on a three-lane highway that was concocted by the advanced driver assistance systems team. It had smooth lanes as well as some Michigan-special rough roads where the simulator bounced up and down, sideways, all the feels you get on the real potholed roads the state is known for. Then we were in an F-150 Lightning on a ride road, a virtual duplication of Ford's test track in Dearborn. The next outing was in a generic SUV on a road complete with traffic, including a Transit van, a bus, and a police cruiser that was not programmed to pull me over, no matter what I did.

There are about 20 different roads and surfaces programmed so far and a menu of digital replicas of tracks around the world that can be called up. That includes European courses and roads so those working on vehicles for the European market feel at home while working stateside. The software engineers create new drives as needed. They can take 100 miles of highway and edit the digital version so that it consists of only the worst portions. Plans are to create a wider variety of surfaces such as desert terrain that an F-150 Raptor racer would tear up.

Behind the room with the simulator and giant screen is a control room with banks of computers and screens manned by engineers who monitor everything the driver is doing and can change the environment. They are rainmakers, literally. Or they can create fog. Or bathe you in the glare of the headlights of the bus bearing down on you from behind as the sky grows dark. Snow can create a wet and slippery surface. If there is an incident, the good news is the test car drives right through the simulated object—no physical damage to repair beyond shame and colleague ribbing. We kept our car unscathed.

The control room can add powertrain sounds. In the electric Lightning, road noise is the prominent sound. Vehicles can be loaded down and tested. They can also add traffic or have someone in the control room drive another vehicle that interacts with the driver in the simulator; it allows the team to test with traffic without having four other engineers on the road driving.

The simulated drives might look like a video game, but everything is engineer-level, says Robert Rieveley, technical expert in simulation who does a lot of the ADAS work. It does not take long to get used to the virtual environment, especially when the cockpit is taken from an actual vehicle making adaptive cruise control and lane assist controls easy to find. Steering inputs feel a bit more hair-trigger than real life, but lane changes and evading buses that start to cut you off are navigated with the same reflexes and motions as the real world. The one area where reality is lacking is that there is no sense of speed; it is easy to find yourself unwittingly exceeding 90 mph. Engineers say they will use software to add graininess in the future to create a greater sense of how fast you are going. And plans are to add headphones to filter out the whirr of the machine so the driver can better hear road noise.

Simulators allow engineers to test the hundreds of thousands of what-if scenarios that arise during vehicle development and there is not the bandwidth to physically test them all in a short period of time. A month of real-world testing can be done in less than a week in the simulator, says Louis Jamail, supervisor of the simulator and core methods group. It is a cost-effective alternative to building 10 versions of a vehicle to learn nine don't work, Jamail says. And engineers don't have to cobble things together, there are fewer Frankencars when engineers can drive consistent virtual prototypes in a simulator. "We save money with each one-off prototype we don't have to create."

It helps Ford react to customers faster and pivot quicker to match trends or respond to customer clinic feedback. Engineers can start testing and improving developing vehicles with software and computer keystrokes, as opposed to creating a prototype, taking it to a test site, bringing additional vehicles and drivers to create traffic, and then performing repeatable tests. The savings in both time and money far outweighs the millions spent on the simulator, he says.

The other beauty is the ability to create and evaluate multiple build versions of a vehicle virtually. For example, the Maverick team was able to develop a better torsion beam suspension for the AWD model virtually—there were no models in the real world with that rear suspension to work with during development. The simulator tested the virtual variant which enabled engineers to make changes. The simulator also makes it easier to identify and develop upgrades for midcycle refreshes.

What distinguishes the VI-Grade simulator from the Ansible Motion simulators installed in 2016 at the Ford Performance Technical Center in Charlotte, North Carolina, is the latency time, the time lag between what you do and what you see. It is this gap in time that messes with the eyes, brain, and stomach. The newer Dearborn simulator is quick to react and less likely to make you nauseous. The Dearborn simulator will help develop mainstream products, as opposed to the ones in Charlotte that are more focused on singular race cars and engineers sit in a high-performance buck.

But Charlotte has been used for some mainstream vehicles. One of the first big programs was the Maverick—the first half of the program was developed in the Charlotte simulator, Jamail says. The same machines helped develop the character of the Mach-E, to make is less of a compliance vehicle and more of a sporty offering worthy of Mustang badging. It was especially valuable in getting senior management aligned on the vision for the vehicle. And the Performance Center simulators were used to test the trailing arm of the new independent rear suspension in the F-150 Lightning, as well as work on the trailering system for the electric truck.

Ford still has its older VIRTTEX cockpit simulator in Dearborn which is the size of a building. It is slower to react and can only provide a smooth ride. It still works well to tackle noise, vibration and harshness issues, driver distraction, and work on driver-assist technology, but does not have the built-in motion of the new simulator to work on driving dynamics over a wider range of bumps, cracks in the road and other real-world challenges.

Ford plans to build more bucks for the Dearborn simulator which is scalable to be able to handle the automaker's broad portfolio that ranges from large pickups to smaller SUVs and the Mustang coupe. Engineers say they will be able to swap bucks in a few hours. The newly commissioned simulator is still powering up and growing its capability daily. Ford and Lincoln have a bevy of EVs on the horizon which will keep the new Dearborn simulator busy.