About Carnetsoft

History

Carnetsoft was founded as a company in 2004, from ST Software, that was founded in 2000 by the owner of Carnetsoft BV. We have extensive experience in driving simulator development, starting in 1990 at the University of Groningen (The Netherlands), then at the Traffic Research Center, where an advanced research simulator was developed. This was one of the first driving simulators ever that was used for behavioural research into driving behaviour and Human factors. So it can be stated without exaggeration, that Carnetsoft is one of the companies with the most experience in the development of driving simulator software. At the time, expensive Silicon Graphics computers were used for the rendering and UNIX was used as the platform to run the simulations on. At that time, we developed a flexible real time simulation script language that has served as an example for other simulator manufacturers in their development of scenarios. Also the real-time interactive intelligent traffic (autonomous agents) was revolutionary at the time.

Originally, the focus was predominantly on driver behaviour research and research simulators. The founder of Carnetsoft, dr. Wim van Winsum, obtained a PhD in driver behaviour research and has worked as a scientific researcher at the University of Groningen and the research institute TNO, see publications on simulators and driver behaviour.

From the year 2000, we have been developing training simulators for driver training, first for the automobile club ANWB and later for other Dutch driving schools and for driving schools in several other countries.

Since 2011, Carnetsoft has started to develop simulator systems with a new rendering engine and software that runs on only one computer, instead of using three computers, to keep the costs as low as possible.  We use standard off-the-shelf components, and the standard windows OS. The range of product has been extended to software for research simulators, driver training and safety awareness and to clinical applications. We have chosen for desktop systems and abandoned the cockpit simulator, mainly because desktop simulators are cheaper and because we think that a cockpit does not add sufficiently to the experience of driving and to the training value of a simulator, given the additional costs.

Mission

The goal of Carnetsoft is to develop and market research simulators of high graphical quality and high effectiveness, priced such that most research institutes  can afford to buy one. The system has been developed such that it can be ported to different languages and rules of the road of different countries quite easily.

Check this page for information in Dutch rijsimulator