Scorpius Virtual and real Safety Car

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Scorpius Virtual and real Safety Car - ScorpiusWireless - 16th-May-25

Ryk and Dave have developed a VSC (Virtual Safety Car) for Scorpius RMS. Overtake or go above a configurable speed and you’ll be automatically penalised.
What’s next? The RSC (Real Safety Car). How do you get the car out of the pits, cruise the track and pull back in to not only the pit lane but it’s own pit bay?
It’s not an easy ask.
Enter PEARL.

How’s it work?
PEARL stands for Programmable Electronic Activated Race Line.

The race line is learnt by the car and stored in the car in a registry.
The controller is used to put the car into “Learn Mode”. The driver drives the circuit on his own unique race line that he decides. Once learnt the car is put into PEARL mode.
The lane change sequence is stored in the car and be turned on/off at will.

Every driver can choose not to use it at all. And every driver can have their own unique race line.
As a side note, anti-collision can also be employed or not. As you can see the system is very configurable and customise-able.

You can even change your preferences by hitting the LC button. That cancels the race line preference. This can be done at any LC, you are not locked in to your race line, you can change it on the fly. Very flexible.

So we can program any car to enter the pit hat and put lane using PEARL. This was brought out in 2013. And works faultlessly.

The driving system will also be based on existing software, that is the Scorpius RMS Ghost Car. It’s a constant speed car that will start at the start line with any human driven car. Up to 24 ghost cars are possible!
So we already have by default, a way to start, run and guide the car back to its own bay, before the team even starts this project. A great head start.
But what if the RSC needs to do more than one lap? If shouldn’t enter the pit lane. But the car only stores one sequence. So how to work around this?
Dave pointed out (and reminded me) that the controller code sent to the ghost car has the PEARL bit In the code to work with.

So the idea is to keep the PEARL function off until the yellow flag is ended. This will be done using the menu button by a driver with marshalling rights. No need reach for the PC space bar.

So the RSC can be activated and brought back to pits simply using the controller. Nice.

If a car overtakes the RSC the system knows and a penalty automatically issued. Choose from drive through, stop n go or timed. This was implemented in 2014.

Knowing a car has overtaken the RSC is not so easy, but it has been recently implemented in the VSC so the coding has already been developed for this important aspect. Lots of coding there.
Work is happening now behind the scenes to complete the firmware using all of the above.

Once completed it will be identical to 1:1 racing. That is the Scorpius philosophy design rule. To be as close to 1:1 as possible (where practical).
Many thanks to Dave A and Ryk R.

This is something Ive wanted since 2007. Lol it only took 18 years but it’s arriving and it will be best if it’s kind. You need car smarts, track smarts plus fast reliable Comms to pull this off.

Lucky the team has had all that in place since 2011 and again it pays to be hardware rich as you never know what functions in the future may be required.

I look forward to seeing this working, and it will complete the RMS.
So VSC for tracks with no pit lane and pit bay and RSC for tracks that do have the pit lane and pit bay. All bases covered.

RE: Scorpius Virtual and real Safety Car - ScorpiusWireless - 7th-Jun-25

Beta version now available with Real Safety Car. The car is trained using PEARL mode first by driving its course, exit onto track, do your lap and then enter to pits, then your safety car bay. In Scorpius RMS all Lane Brains are linked to a unique UD and its purpose, ie normal lane changer, pit lane changer, pit bay lane changer, pit exit.
The RMS turns PEARL on/off on the safety car as required in order to either keep the safety car out or bring it in.
https://www.racecoordinator.net/sw.html

We are also adding fuel to our existing constant speed ghost cars.

So we will soon have the VSC, RSC, ghost cars with fuel and the AI car.

RE: Scorpius Virtual and real Safety Car - ScorpiusWireless - 15th-Jul-25

RSC- The safety car can now automatically come out on-track, and has a timing adjustment to come out just in front of the procession leader. When a restart to Green is initiated, the RSC heads to the pits and stops in a consistent (adjustable) place in the pit bay. We’ll need to test multiple deployments, etc. and to add manual deployment and manual return to pits, after things are solid.

Pace Car- Pace cars now have a full race mode, in which they can use fuel, pit, serve penalties, and basically perform exactly like a human driven car. Both constant speed and recorded laps cars will work in this mode. The most advanced pace car anywhere.
We’re currently debugging all the variables, types of penalties being served and how, etc.

So, we now have basic functionality finally (huge amount of software) and are steaming ahead with finer points.

RE: Scorpius Virtual and real Safety Car - ScorpiusWireless - 21st-Aug-25

The RSC is working pretty well, still a few minor items to smooth out (like when the restart gets aborted by a de-slot between the restart countdown and the GO), but getting pretty close. Yay a real safety car has finally arrived after thinking about it since 22011.

Pace cars, constant and recorded: Due to some noticeable issues with lap playback, to test sector re-syncing I had recorded laps that drove distinctly different in each sector- one was medium speed, one was high speed, and the last sector was driven with surges up/down so I could easily tell them apart. This revealed an old syncing issue which has now been fixed. Playback of recorded laps is now much more accurate, resulting in one being able to have noticeably faster laps. The recorded race cars are getting quite solid, we raced with one (w/ fuel) all last night with no issues (it even won one race). Again, a few minor items to smooth out, but already much more functional and much more serious competition than before. Scorpius will have the most functional and competitive “ghost” cars you can run against.

RE: Scorpius Virtual and real Safety Car - ScorpiusWireless - 23rd-Aug-25

I So here’s the Virtual Safety Car sign that is installed around the track at key spots.
This is mentioned in the OLED thread but thought it more relevant here.
[attachment=42227]

Here’s a perfect screen, yellow on black, 2.7” screen, 4 pin I2C compatible. This plugs directly into the MPD. Each screen has its own MPD. All screens would be on channel 28 operated from the RMS program via the Scorpius dongle plugged into the PC. When the safety car period ends the screen returns to blank.

[attachment=42228]

Power is vampired off the rails, convenient and cheap. There is no limit to how many screens you can run.

RE: Scorpius Virtual and real Safety Car - Kevan - 23rd-Aug-25

Could the VSC simply cut track voltage to 3 or 4V so the cars tootle around 'flat out' but at much reduced speed?

RE: Scorpius Virtual and real Safety Car - ScorpiusWireless - 23rd-Aug-25

So how it works….. each Scorpius controller has a speed limiter function so just like 1:1 just before you enter pits you hit the limiter. With virtual safety cars, which are used in 1:1, you just hit the limiter. The race software sees every cars speed 10 times second so you can’t escape it.
With our RSC or real safety car, of course it laps at a reduced speed this bringing all the cars down in speed.
So VSC or RSC we have it covered.

RE: Scorpius Virtual and real Safety Car - Kevan - 23rd-Aug-25

Really cool feature Thumbup

RE: Scorpius Virtual and real Safety Car - ScorpiusWireless - 23rd-Aug-25

…..so if you speed, overtake a real safety car or break order in the procession you get penalised by the RMS. Choose drive thru, stop n go or timed stop penalties. If you fail to serve the penalty within the specified period you get black flagged.