Like many people here I've often wondered how accurate Virtual Dyno really is. As a tuning tool it's obviously useful, but how do the numbers it generates compare to real dyno numbers? Today I got to find out.

Car is a IX MR with VIII 5-speed. Stock block, BBK Full, GSC S2s, full supporting mods, straight 93 octane pump gas. Tuned by tscompusa (Tom). More astute members may recall that I made a thread several months back with higher Virtual Dyno numbers than these. That was in the chilly months. Turbo weather. Today was 80 degrees and extremely humid. All pulls (dyno and street) were done in 3rd gear.

Here are some logs I did just a few hours ago and threw into Virtual Dyno. Note smoothing to make up for bumps in the road I use. I did not change anything else in Virtual Dyno. Standard Evo 8 5-speed gearing/weight, entered my weight as 155 as always.



This afternoon I put the car on the Dynojet at AMS. Same map and weather conditions as above. Had to make a road trip out of it but I wanted to learn the truth so it was worth the drive . Here are the results.



As far as I can tell the numbers aren't too far apart. I'm actually surprised the Virtual Dyno numbers aren't higher than Dynojet based on some of the things I've read here. I'm not going to say much else because you all have eyes and I know how strongly some people feel about Virtual Dyno. The results are what they are. Hopefully this thread is helpful for others using the software.

To be honest though I don't care very much anymore. The car feels the same to me whether Virtual Dyno shows 420 or 450 whp. While I get the appeal of having nice numbers, I feel like a lot of people on evom take them way too seriously, myself included in the past. I should also say that I've been running this map (with minor revisions) for over a year now and the car is still going strong. I'm very happy with Tom's tuning and customer service.

 

Congrats. Those numbers are very close to mine with almost identical mods. In my experience vd and dj can be equal to each other as long as the user doesn't cheat using vd.

 

Great comparison, thanks!

 

Just curious, what does AMS charge to make pulls on their Dynojet?

 

$105

 

A buddy of mine had his car dynoed up at ams. His car laid down like 377whp, with 340lbs of tq, not sure on exact numbers, Il have to ask him again, but we tested the vd out too. Vd showed 381whp with 352ft lbs of tq. I think under the right circumstances on a smooth road, it can be fairly accurate. To DJ numbers that is.

 

I've used the graph that estimates power in evoscan (not virtual dyno) before to compare a ton of runs that were made on the dyno and what I can add to the argument here is that if the road being used is flat, the 'virtual dyno' will be close to spot on in the peak power department. Torque however is usually not nearly as accurate.

Good tool to give you an idea of peak power, but nothing else. Won't help you see dips in your powerband or anything of the sort...

 

Thanks for doing that comparison Blitz. Hopefully ill have a few more soon also for comparison.

Anything that has to do with RPM and logger speed will be seen on virtual dyno.. so you can detect misfires and dips for sure under the right circumstances.

 

VD has always come within 10WHP for me (always pulled on same flat road). I use it as a tuning tool. And then of course the "butt dyno" never lies

 

VD FTW! all the VD hater argue with that bahaha. if u have the correct weight n are on a flat road its going to be dead on end of story

 

You have really lost your mind haven't you? Its only good for peak power? If anything a dyno is NOT for showing this. It does show the dips in power where it should. So I have to disagree with pretty much everything you said. I think you have had a bad experience with 'Virtual Dynos' but not Virtual Dyno. You used the one built into evoscan, which has been known to be crap. Oh but it should get better since he decompiled my app and stole my code for the new version.

 

I agree with you ... but when you develop something good there will be haters. Let them hate and keep using sub par products. Lets make VD the standard on all forums. (Its already on 16 forums and doing pretty well I think)

 

Great comparison!

 

One thing I found interesting is that it looks like my car spooled faster on the Dynojet than in Virtual Dyno. Peak torque on Dynojet is almost right at 4000 rpm. On Virtual Dyno peak torque is 4500 or a bit later. Not sure why that is. Happy to see my BBK spools like it should.

 

What is virtual dyno?