ABSTRACT
Work on the Iowa Driving Simulator IDS started around the beginning of 1991. Several University of Iowa researchers were working on the National Advanced Driving Simulator NADS concept and mechanical designs for some military vehicles at the time. Consequently, these people had some design problems associated with building NADS and some operational testing problems with the other vehicles in clearly mind. Then a sudden opportunity arose whereby the University could acquire a computer driven visual image generator system from the US Dept. of Defense. With this promise in hand and the University’s commitment to build a simulation bay on a current building, IDS was launched. It seems like irony but in the movie called, Field of Dreams,” the leading character determined that he would build a lighted baseball park on a location out in the middle of farm country and “They would come!” These researchers and the University of Iowa took on an analogous attitude. Oddly, that fictional baseball park, a tourist attraction, is not 50 kilometers from the University.
