Results from nonequilibrium molecular-dynamics simulations of collisional energy transfer from vibrationally highly excited azulene in compressed CO2 are compared with experimental results from our laboratory obtained under comparable physical conditions. As observed in the experiment, the cooling rates show a purely monoexponential decay of the excess energy. The influence of the microscopic solvent shell structure on these processes is investigated using the full three-dimensional anisotropic CO2 structure around azulene obtained from the simulation. The analysis shows that local heating effects of any kind do not play a role in our model system. Predictions of the pressure dependence of the energy transfer rates by the isolated binary collision model are compared with results from the simulations using two different definitions of the collision frequency in dense fluids.