Types of Simulator
I see your point. But I associate the word "Simulator" with the software. You don't have a DIL simulator and a HIL simulator. You have a single simulator software (could be a transient step sim model of the car for example) that you can run in different "simulation environments" as you stated. I tell other team members that we have for example 3 laptime simulators, 1 step simulator, 1 ymd simulator... You don't say "we have one HiL simulator" or one DiL simulator but you would say "I am doing a DiL simulation". the first doesn't make sense in English because it is not tied necessarily to the software. Our simulink 4wheel step sim vehicle model can be run in normal mode, HiL, DiL...
Then I tend to organize these concepts from broad to specific. Simulator type -> Simulation type -> vehicle model
The same applies for the types. What you first think is what you want to obtain (YMD, laptime...) therefore I assign this the name "simulator type". Once you know exactly what you want to obtain you need to decide on a simulation strategy or "simulation type" (QSS, SS, transient...) and then you think of the complexity of the model you want to introduce, therefore vehicle model. So you end up with: Simulator type (YMD, laptime) -> Simulation type (QSS, SS, transient) -> vehicle model (4wheel, bicycle, point mass).
The "Simulation environment" in my eyes doesn't fall in the same bag. For most of vehicle simulations, at least in my view, you don't even think of it. When you do a laptime simulation or ymd you couldn't care less about the simulation environment. It is just a sim on the PC with no driver or hardware in the loop. Those are a very specific simulation you do and don't characterize all simulations like these 3 types do. Therefore in my opinion calling type of simulator doesn't make sense because then you get people trying to understand what type of simulator a point mass laptime is for example... this is adding extra unnecessary complexity.
Also calling YMD,GGV,laptime types of simulation doesn't make much sense in English. The difference between a GGV generator and a YMD is not the simulation in itself but what the simulator was meant to show. The method and logic behind is basically the same so I distinguish them as different types of simulators. "type of simulation" sounds more like the method used so I assign it to SS, QSS, transient.
All this said I would like to hear from other people on this matter. The main thing should be adding content but I would like to still hear from others...
