A self-driving sim, to be realistic, is also going to need realistic traffic simulation. I helped bring traffic modeling to the computer age, that is what my business did.
When asked for a quick description, I like to say that I built the greatest traffic simulator on the planet. Of course, I'm heavily biased. Eventually, we could even render some of that data into graphics.
Yeah, so it probably wasn't a thrilling simulator with broad appeal and it required a whole lot of compute power and huge data sets. Either way, it probably would have resulted in a good, albeit very large and computationally expensive, engine for a traffic simulating game.
I signed a non-compete that lasts for life. It may not actually be legally binding, but I feel ethically bound to it. But, a game would not be competing in that space - less so if it were FOSS.
What I'm trying to say is that I'd be interested in such a project, though I'd want to seek legal council. I can program a bit, but I eventually hired professionals to do that on my behalf. Let's just say that you probably don't want me submitting actual code, but I can almost certainly help with the math involved.
I'm just spitballing, really. If someone wants to do something like this, I'd be willing to take a peek and see if there were a way to contribute. I sold and retired, but I still hold great fondness for the art. Modeling traffic isn't easy, it's a chaotic system and you never really know the initial starting state.
So, if you decide to go FOSS, let me know. If it is in C, or C++, I might even remember enough to lend a hand coding, though that's probably a horrible idea. My entire code base was rewritten by actual competent people and programmers were different back then. They were quite comfortable expressing their frustrations with working on my existing code. They were, shall we say, very eager to share their knowledge - sometimes with various levels of vulgarity.
Anyhow, to model traffic at a high level of accuracy, even things like the reflectivity of lane markings will have a quantifiable impact on traffic. You can observe the effect by monitoring traffic before and after lane markings are painted. Traffic is even influenced by the fonts used in signage. Lots of seemingly small things can be accounted for and the models made more accurate.
I'd love to lend a hand, assuming it isn't going to get me sued.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Traffic-Drive-What-Says-About/dp/0307...
But, yes! It's absolutely amazing what goes into modeling traffic as accurately as possible. When we expanded to model pedestrian traffic as well, we even went so far as to build a mock store.
It's fascinating to see how small changes can influence traffic and alter the throughput. Simple things, like frequency of signage has a large impact. There are also regional differences where whole regions will, as an average, drive very differently.
You can run all the models, collect all the data, and someone will still get drunk and reverse the wrong way on a one way street. You'll never get perfect predictions and so there are constant changes being made. That kept it interesting.
What I worked on was all proprietary. It'd be interesting to see an open source project in this arena.
I should probably try something current that runs on Linux. Got any suggestions?
(The GTA4 is more realistic simulation.)
I'll try to add a comment the next time this subject comes up. He's got things like a seat and steering wheel/pedals set up.
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Say for example they open source a plugin that outputs everything you requested but didn't disclose any IP related to the game.