THAT WAS COOL!

I got to drive the driving simulator today. Holy cow. They take you out for a couple of runs and you get used to it. Your goal is to keep right at 65mph. through it. You are graded by that. You earn money for each second of the run you are at speed. I did well on the test runs. Almost perfect. Then the real deal. I am driving along and there is a curve that drops off to the left. The sign says 55 so I slow down. As I get into the curve I see that there is NO way this car will make it. It is front wheel drive so I am screwed. If I hit the breaks, I will just push harder, and I can't throttle through it like a good car. I ride it out and spin off. The next one a Hummer pulls out and tries to head-on with me. I just let off the gas and rode it out and missed him. I got back on the road okay. There were five testing runs in all. The last one kind of sucked. There was a van that came up from behind really fast. He passed me. He was in the left lane and the van looked like it was going to spin out of control so hit the breaks to clear room and leave me more options. He did not spin. Another van passed me and did the same thing. Turns out that is just a bit of a glitch in the software. I did not let off that time. He merged in front of me and as soon as he did a big box came out of the van. I think I missed the box, but again spun out in the ditch in doing so.
The test was to see if electronic stab. control helps people. They did not tell you if you had it or not until after. I did not have it as it turns out. That is good because that car handled really badly.
All in all it was just an amazing experience. The graphics were not as good as an Xbox, but because of all of the other things going on it seemed very real. When I missed the hummer and brought it to a stop I felt my heart racing. There was a lady in the back seat giving me instructions. When the run was done, she would say go ahead and stop it in the road and put it in park. I had a problem with that. Just stopping on the highway. I would always look behind me... then think.. oh, it is not real. So I guess that is a sign of how well it is all done.
You sit in a real car. The tires are off of it and there are hydrolic actuators on each hub to simulate road vibration and such. The screen goes all around you. All the guages work. That car has over 100,000 miles on it, but has never moved an inch. The whole thing moves around to simulate g's when you stop or turn.
They asked if I would be interested in doing it again, I said, "lets go". She said they like to wait about a year so that no one person is an expert on it and messes up the statistics. DAMN.
You get paid $25 for driving and up to $15 bonus depending on how many seconds you are at speed. I was about a buck short of the $40, and I don't think I hit anything so I was happy with that.
The only thing I would change about the whole deal: When you are driving your warm up runs, you are on the flat and just change lanes a couple of times so you really never get the feel of how the car handles in curves and the steering ratio. I wish I could have gotten a better feel for the vehicle before I did the panic situations.
All in all it was one of the coolest things I have done in a very long time. Even though they make you put the little test dummy sticker dots on your face so the cameras can track your facial movement. When I was leaving the were nice enough to tell me I still had one on my face :-)