Have you ever heard of these words: CRUDEN Simulators and PANTHERA? If yes, I’m not too surprised, if not, don’t worry.
I’ll tell you more.
Make yourself comfortable..and get yourself a cup of tea…
Who is Cruden BV?
Cruden BV is a Dutch company based in Amsterdam, which has been dealing with simulation since the late 1990s.
It develops professional motion simulators, and thanks to their previous experience in the design of simulators for the aerospace industry (Military), has transferred this knowledge to the automotive, motorsport, and marine industries.
Naval you read that right!
Originally the company had another name. It started as a spin-off of Fokker Aircraft, (the company was formerly known as FCS Racing Simulation and was renamed Cruden in 2006.
They have pioneered simulator technology for many different applications, such as searching for drivers for self-driving delivery moments and crew training simulators for small fast boats.
In 2003, FCS acquired its know-how in flight simulation and developed a racing simulator that combined a motion base with a detailed dynamic vehicle model, motion detection software, and professional image generation.
Cruden simulators supply to the automotive industry, universities, research institutes, and international motorsport companies, including Formula 1, F2, F3, WEC, and Formula E teams. Having also supplied the attractions and entertainment industries since the company was founded, Cruden spun off this side of the business in 2016, setting up a separate company Cesys, which markets a range of interactive experiences to this specialist sector.
In addition, the company produces simulator components and operating software.
Cruden’s HQ is designed to house the simulator manufacturing process, including simulator components and new product development. The building houses all functional teams covering the mechanical design of Cruden simulators and Cesys simulators components and systems.
In fact, Cruden simulators are built in-house, that is, they are produced by the company in all their components. From actuators, pedals, steering wheel servo motors etc.
Cruden Simulators And Panthera Software
Have you ever heard of a game called Racer? Racer is a free car simulator project, using high-end car physics to achieve a realistic feeling and an excellent render engine for graphical realism.
Well, this title is now called Panthera and has been deeply modified by the Cruden team to bring it to a high level of professional simulation.
The “Panthera Free” edition is focused on the automotive and you will recognize that most of it actually resembles the Racer.
It includes Cruden’s CSVM stands for “Cruden Simulink Vehicle Model” and it is the basis for professional (physical) vehicle models. CSVM Lite is a lighter, simplified version than the one included in the full licensed version of Panthera Free. Its purpose is to evaluate the integration of external vehicle models with Panthera. The physics engine within Panthera is the same (Newton).
Most of the effort these days goes into the framework, hence the integration of external models (mostly via Simulink).
You can download the FREE version of Panthera HERE.
As I was writing this article, to tell you about this great company and their wide range of simulators, as we saw at the beginning, I thought I’d contact them directly. I wanted you reading this article to have as much information and curiosity as possible, at your fingertips, of those that passionate people like us would like to ask if given the chance.
So I tried to send an email, and I had the pleasure of exchanging a few words with Dennis Marcus who is the commercial manager of the company. Dennis was really helpful, and enthusiastic from the start, and invited me to ask him some questions.
As you can imagine, I immediately got to work and here I am reporting our exchange:
Hello Dennis let’s start:
Which of the current F1 teams are your customers?
Given the importance of driving simulators in F1, our customers do not allow us to talk about their simulators.
Do they use all your components or maybe just the Panthera software on their current simulators?
We build turn-key simulators including hardware and software. We offer a variety of visual systems and motion platforms to meet customer specifications.
Do your simulators only work with Panthera software or can customers install any software on them?
The software is what makes or breaks a simulator. All of our simulators run on Panthera software. If a customer already has simulator hardware and wants to upgrade the software functionality we can integrate Panthera with non-Cruden hardware.
For a high-end motorsport simulator, visual feedback is essential. It requires eye limiting resolution, high refresh rates, and low latency. The track content plays an important role in this and has to be optimized. This is a specialist task which we do for our high-end motorsport customers.
Tell me more about the Panthera software. I know there is already much information on your website, but the Free version is the same as the version the professional team uses?
The vehicle dynamics model is usually a development done in-house by high-end motorsport teams. The Panthera software is designed to facilitate the integration of external vehicle models in such a way the latency is reduced to the minimum.
About the FREE version that we can download, where we can find tracks and cars? there’s anything available, or it’s up to the community let’s say make cars and tracks? What a user get once installed? any car or track?
We build simulators as engineering and testing tools for the professional motorsport and automotive industries. Panthera is not targeted at the sim racing community..
Is there any chance to watch some videos of your F1 simulator and some of the rendering of your F1 circuits?
You can find some videos of racetrack on our YOUTUBE channel
Is rFpro your main competitor?
rFpro is a render engine and we have customers who use Panthera in combination with rFpro for rendering. The Panthera render engine is based on Unity, but Panthera is much more than this. It is also the software framework through which we integrate all of the simulator hardware components and the engineering tools, like vehicle models and HIL systems.
What you guys need to know and understand, and it’s very very important, is the correlation between simulator data, and data recorded from the real car at the real track. During and following a race weekend our customers compare the data from the real car with the data from the simulator to improve the fidelity of the computer models of the car and tires, much like they do with their wind tunnel. This is a continuous process. The better the correlation the more valuable the simulation sessions will be for car development and race preparation.
Well Thanks a lot Dennis for your time.
As you may have noticed if you have been following me for a while, this was my first interview, but I must say that the guys from Cruden BV were really really helpful and kind. I hope you enjoyed this article and satisfied some curiosity, and introduced you to a leading company in the industry that produces “wonderful toys” for professional simulation.
Let me know in the comments what you think, and if you like, share this article!
See you soon. Bye!
