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About the Project

Traffic Simulator (TrafficSim) is a virtual reality driving simulator developed for Dr. Ghazan Khan from the Sacramento State Civil Engineering department and his research team to help gather data from users about their driving habits and driving reactions under different road conditions. This project has the long term goal of assisting Dr. Khan’s team with the development of better, safer roads for everyday citizens by determining which conditions help the average driver practice good habits and which conditions encourage undesirable behaviors. TrafficSim shall provide value to Dr. Khan in the form of an accurate and immersive virtual reality driving simulation that will record behavioral data for graduate students. This behavior data can then be studied for the purpose of statistical analysis.

Highlight of the Project

While such simulation tools already exist without virtual reality, they either do not provide an immersive or accurate enough simulation to be of meaningful use or are too expensive and impractical to be considered by the department. Through the use of virtual reality, this project will prove to be a more cost-effective and practical tool for his team’s research, while maintaining the realism of a more expensive research simulation environment.

Map Editor (Figma)

Our group has expanded on the map editor by:

  • Adding stop signs, traffic lights, and construction/school zone signs
  • Allowing the user to save their custom map

Traffic Control (Figma)

Originally, the simulator only had the ability to place individual vehicles in the map. Our group has added the ability to set spawn points where vehicles can spawn and the user is able to modify the spawn rate.

Weather Conditions (Figma)

The simulator currently has no weather mechanics, with the road conditions being dry the entire time. Our group has expanded upon this by beginning work on:

  • Implementing a slider in the settings to change the weather to rainy/foggy in real time
  • Adding road glare that inhibits the driver's vision
  • Adding rainy/foggy blocks of road in the map editor
Due to time constraints, the weather feature has not been completed. However, we have included documentation for future groups to continue implementing this feature.

Pedestrian Behavior (Figma)

The original behavior of pedestrians is to continuously walk in a straight path. Our group has modified the behavior of the pedestrian AI allowing the user to modify the pedestrian's path so that the pedestrian walks in a pre-defined path that can also be delayed by any amount of seconds.

Car Settings (Figma)

Originally, the simulator only has 6 settings to modify the car’s behavior. In addition to modifying the car’s turning physics to make the simulator more realistic, our group has extended upon the car settings by:

  • Beginning the implementation of traction control
  • Implementing a text field to set the acceleration delay
  • Implementing fuel consumption rate
  • Beginning the implementation of a slider to modify the car’s handling
Our group has also finished implementing the fuel capacity/level since the car originally does not consume fuel while running and will continue to run even when the current fuel level is set to zero.

Timeline

  • Sprint 0 (9/18/2020 - 10/4/2020) - Secured our client and drafted project charter document
  • Sprint 1 (10/13/2020 - 10/25/2020) - Created business context diagram and business event table and finalized project charter document
  • Sprint 2 (10/27/2020 - 11/6/2020) - Created low-fidelity prototypes
  • Sprint 3 (11/10/2020 - 11/20/2020) - Created high-fidelity prototypes
  • Sprint 4 (11/24/2020 - 12/4/2020) - Finalized high-fidelity prototypes, presented our work, and prepared our backlog for Sprint 5
  • Sprint 5 (1/31/2021 - 2/17/2021) - Implemented fuel consumption rate, non-functional UI, and acceleration delay
  • Sprint 6 (2/17/2021 - 3/3/2021) - Implemented weather states for weather slider
  • Sprint 7 (3/4/2021 - 3/17/2021) - Worked on snowy weather functionality and began work on scenario editor
  • Sprint 8 (3/19/2021 - 3/31/2021) - Added ability to add NPC spawn points in map editor and fixed bugs in scenario editor
  • Sprint 9 (4/1/2021 - 4/14/2021) - Added ability to modify traffic density, completed basic functionality of the scenario editor, and created user guide
  • Sprint 10 (4/15/2021 - 4/27/2021) - Added additional traffic signs into the map editor, finished testing, and created maintenance guide