VI-grade launches VI-Certified, an elevated partner program for 3rd party tools and solutions on VI-grade simulators

Darmstadt (Germany), Sep 30th, 2020 – VI-grade today announced the launch of VI-Certified, an elevated partner program aimed at validating 3rd party software operation on VI-grade simulators.

VI-grade develops and optimizes its Driving Simulators with a complete software suite for vehicle modeling, graphics, sound & vibration, and motion cueing, thus enabling an off-the-shelf, turn-key solution. In addition, VI-grade’s open architecture and Application Programming Interface (API) make it easy to integrate 3rd party software and hardware components, as often desired by customers.  Today, with the establishment of the VI-Certified program, we are taking a step forward with our partners to ensure that the best of these third-party applications work natively on VI-grade simulators without issue, thus saving customer time and money during deployment.

Being a VI-Certified product means that a testing schema, approved and reviewed by VI-grade, has been completed and regularly validated on all VI-grade simulators. Participating partners also commit to provide timely software updates within each new version as well as dedicated customer support.

“We decided to establish the VI-Certified program following the feedback received from our clients.  They requested the integration of partner technology to be consistently tested on our simulators” said Tony Spagnuolo, VP of Business Development, VI-grade.  “Customers need an efficient process to use partner software in our Driving Simulators, and do not want to be burdened with integration testing. Based on this feedback, we created VI-Certified, that enables customers to use their established products, knowing that these products have been fully tested by partners and assured by VI-grade. This reduces cost and time of deployment for our Driving Simulators, which continue to grow in popularity in the worldwide automotive industry.”

The following partner products are inaugural members of the VI-Certified Program: rFpro (supports VI-grade GridMesh Road), CarMaker by IPG Automotive, cosin FTire, Fraunhofer CDTire, MegaRide thermoRIDE and adheRIDE, Siemens Digital Industries Software MF-Tyre/MF-Swift, SCANeR from AVSimulation. Additional 3rd party solutions will be progressively added to the initiative.

“We are very pleased VI-grade has certified the integration of rFpro into its driving simulators,” said Matt Daley, rFpro Managing Director. “VI-grade has thoroughly tested the integration of rFpro into its simulation solutions and this helps to give customers confidence of the quality and robustness of the offering. Their Open Strategy is fantastic and extends the options available to our customers.”

“With MF-Tyre/MF-Swift being the tire model of choice for a multitude of global OEMs, a robust and user-friendly interface with all tools used throughout the development process is a key element or our product strategy. The VI-Certified program is an excellent confirmation of the seamless integration of MF-Tyre/MF-Swift in the VI-grade product suite. Moreover, it emphasizes the professional and quality driven cooperation between our companies” said Willem Versteden, Product Manager Simcenter Tire, Siemens Digital Industries Software.

“For many years we have successfully collaborated with VI-grade to extend vehicle dynamics testing on driving simulators to ADAS testing. Thanks to our product SCANeR interfaced with VI-grade products, customers can benefit from ever richer and complex environments, scenarios and sensor models” said Thomas Nguyen That, Automotive Domain Director, AVSimulation. “This allows them to experience and validate their ADAS systems even more efficiently.”

“Our CarMaker simulation software already enables to create virtual prototypes of vehicles which can be then used with all VI-grade Driving Simulators, thus enabling a seamless development process” said Steffen Schmidt, Managing Director IPG Automotive GmbH. “Component models, control systems and real ECUs can also be integrated into the vehicle. As part of our partnership with VI-grade, we are jointly working towards solutions that extend the current functions of CarMaker on the Driving Simulator.”

“For cosin, the leading provider of high-fidelity tire simulation software, quality assurance of interface components has always been key to a smooth user experience” said Gerald Hofmann, Managing Director, cosin scientific software AG. “Putting together the pieces of complex co-simulation scenarios, including hardware components and hard real-time requirements, is a challenging task. The VI-Certified program creates confidence that the integration of FTire with VI-grade products has been thoroughly tested from early development to software deployment on the customer’s system.”

“The VI-Certified program further increases the trust level for the stability, robustness and reliability of our CDTire model family” said Manfred Baecker, Head of Tire and Vehicle Simulation, Fraunhofer ITWM. “Especially for online simulations with CDTire/Realtime, it documents that the solutions that we offer with VI-DriveSim have become mature, creating a significant added value for the customer. Additionally, it documents the fruitful cooperation between VI-grade and Fraunhofer to further enlarge the application range of Driving Simulators in the industry.”

“Being included within the VI-Certified program is a further evidence of the robustness, reliability and continuously improving level of integration of the MegaRide solutions within both the optimization offline routines and the hard real-time online environments of the VI-grade simulation platform” said Aleksandr Sakhnevych, CTO, MegaRide. “VI-grade is consolidating its role of global integrator and our full compliance to their platform standards, as a turn-key solution, opens fascinating R&D and business scenarios.”

More info on the initiative can be found on the VI-Certified webpage. 
 

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