[kingbadger]

Adaptive damping is, IMHO, one of the most impressive options you can have. It allows you to have a limo-like gliding along feel ( when the wife or kids are with you) or a firm sporty ride when you are on your own! It works with the computer to vary ride while the computer also (in sport) doesn't change up as soon, makes the engine more responsive to the throttle and alters the steering rates. But without adaptive damping, nothing can change the ride quality.

I' taking many liberties with accuracy here, but you can think of regular dampers as being like a doctors syringe full of oil. It takes effort to squirt out the oil because you have to force it out through a small hole. There is a spring around the syringe to push the plunger back out.

On a car a one way valve allows the oil to be sucked back in very quickly ( through a large hole) as the spring pushes the wheel down/car up after being squashed. It stops whole car bouncing up and down on the springs multiple times (think simple harmonic motion in school physics class!)

Adaptive damping electronically varies the size of the hole very fast based on information from the car's various sensors and your chosen setting. Sport will use smaller apertures and give a firm ride, normal gives bigger apertures and a softer ride. It's a neat system, quite inexpensive (for BMW) since its code plus more expensive dampers. Fully "active suspension" is much more expensive and complex - and more likely to fail as a result. Computer controlled hydraulic pumps at each wheel etc.