Driving simulation research is hobbled by a “sunk cost” mindset. Owing to the slow revision cycle and tedious debugging process, teams can become locked into a specific avenue of research. As they test and tweak their sim, they may stumble upon a promising new direction–but the idea of changing horses midstream is just too grueling to consider.

This is why Thomas Kerwin, Director of Operations for the Ohio State University Driving Simulation Lab, is excited about the new generation of entirely GUI driving simulation software suites, like SimCreator DX.

“With SimCreator DX,” Kerwin notes, “you can place new objects in the scenario while the scenario is running. So, we can do that while someone is in the big simulator we have, and we don’t have to restart the sim. We can just add in and create sort of a mock-up of a site in an experiment and see what the researcher thinks. You can actively brainstorm and say ‘What if I put something over there, what if we add trees, and maybe that would work better’ and you can just drag-n-drop those trees into the world while the simulation is running. The live designing feature is something that is different … and will help us out in quickly trying new ideas.”

Download this quick-start guide now to see how you can use live designing to quickly “test drive” new ideas–without sacrificing the power and flexibility that come with direct access to the source code underlying every element.