Among the ways Formula 1 has changed in the 21st century is its adoption of driver-in-the-loop simulators. It all started in the early 2000s, probably at McLaren, maybe at Toyota or Ferrari; F1 teams are notoriously secretive about their performance advantages.

Over the years, these simulators have gotten more and more capable, but so too have high-end consumer setups like multi-axis systems that can cost tens of thousands of dollars. What is it that makes the multimillion-dollar simulators used in F1 that much better?

The key lies in latency. “There’s this intimate link between the inputs a driver provides to the car and how the car responds,” explains Ash Warne, founder and CTO of Dynisma Motion Generators, a UK-based simulator company that supplies Ferrari, Alpine, and soon Cadillac with DiL simulators that can cost as much as $10 million. “The system needs to replicate the real car as accurately as possible.”

“Between 3 and 5 milliseconds,” says Warne, meaning this is from the moment a car physics model says the back end of the car is stepping out until an accelerometer on the simulator chassis measures that movement. For context, that’s about an order of magnitude quicker than the best commercial flight simulators or the National Advanced Driving Simulator in Iowa.

The race for better sim tech isn’t just about F1 anymore; it could drive advancements in real-world vehicle development and driving technology too, making your daily commute a bit more futuristic.