The racing game simulator market has thrown up all manner of sophisticated contraptions in the last couple of months, from the PlaySeat Evolution (yours for £229 / $480) to VRX’s quite amazing (deep breath) Xbox 360 Triple Screen Racing and Entertainment Simulator (price unknown, but probably astronomical).

Festo’s Airmotion_ride simulator, as seen above, is not yet commercially available, but will offer any future buyers a feature not supported by its competitors - namely a seat with the ability to tilt in six different degrees of movement (incidentally, the same six degrees of movement offered by the PlayStation 3 Sixaxis controller’s tilt sensors). In other words, the seat can pitch, roll, yaw, heave, sway and surge while the specially designed software (there's a racing game, a flight sim, a helicopter sim, and a rollercoaster game available) is played.

It all contributes to a more realistic experience, reckons Festo, a claim that's tricky to dispute when you consider the flight sim designed for the thing was originally developed for the aviation industry, and endorsed by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration for the training of commercial pilots. We’re not sure what the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration does exactly, but it sounds exceedingly important.

See the Airmotion_ride in action over at YouTube.