Interesting but a few things are off

[ZombieHunter]

Decent game so far but a few things are off:

• When an engine redlines it does not continue to produce power. In this game you redline quickly and can still accelerate. Redline is beyond max horsepower and is where the engine is going to start destroying itself. You would not accelerate and in newer cars, obviously not in the game, an electronic rev limiter would limit the revs.
  
• The slip angle on the cars is far too high. No cars can maintain this high of a slip angle. NASCAR cars can't even maintain the slip angle that this game is showing on curves. These cars all massively oversteer and that is not how production cars behave. Because on most production cars the battery and weight are situated such that the cars will understeer. All production cars understeer b/c for most drivers understeer is easier to control than oversteer. It isn't until you get into heavily modified cars and parts that you can set them up for oversteer. My STI is AWD and even it understeers a tad on tight corners due to how the weight is distributed.
  In the game because of the massive slip angle and then tires finally 'catching' I've been able to roll the car easily by taking a corner too fast and this is not what would happen in a real car.
  The rear tires could not handle those kinds of loads in an oversteer condition. So the force will take the path of least reisistance which is the tires. They will break loose and skid and the car will spin out.
  
• Handling in a car is all about weight transfer. The weight transfer in this game seems off. There is far too much body roll which would signficantly overload one or more tires on one side and the car would simply spin out. All of these cars in this game lean heavily on the right and left rear tire such that the tire would overheat and blow out and/or be worthless rather quick.
  
• The clutch works great from a stop but doesn't work at all when rolling. If the clutch is pressed at 65 mph and the engine is revved the power will not reach the transmission and thus never reach the tires. So far I've been able to depress the clutch with the throttle on the floor and the game acts as if the clutch does nothing.
  
• The cars rev too slowly. I've never seen a car thar revs as slowly as ones in this game. Even high mileage junk cars still rev faster than this game portrays. Supercharged cars should flash fast or rev out extremely fast.
  
• I've also encountered issues where I take the drive belt off the car and for some reason cannot click the star highlight to put it back on.
  
• FOV is far too narrow when driving and looks odd on widescreen monitors.

[Slow Woo]

Originally posted by ZombieHunter:

Decent game so far but a few things are off:

• When an engine redlines it does not continue to produce power. In this game you redline quickly and can still accelerate. Redline is beyond max horsepower and is where the engine is going to start destroying itself. You would not accelerate and in newer cars, obviously not in the game, an electronic rev limiter would limit the revs.

Are you confusing the rev limiter (usually fuel or ignition cutoff) with the redline? Most cars have the redline on or just after maximum power. There are some exceptions where the redline is well after maximum power. The engine can still continue to produce power after the maximum power has been reached. Depending on the engine setup the power band may drop off radically or may actually continue to produce decently (albeit less than the maximum). In most modern cars it drops off, but not radically. Either way, it doesn't drop to 0 power immediately after reaching the maximum. So you would still continue to accelerate, just at a reduced rate from maximum power (like how the car can accelerate before reaching maximum power too...). Provided that there is enough power to accelerate the car, which at higher speeds becomes more difficult, but in the low gears (1st, 2nd, not ratio) this is almost never a problem.

The rev limiter is usually set in accordance to engine destruction and in some cases it is set well before engine destruction because there is not enough usable power to continue accelerating the engine. There are a lot of factors involved here though. When the engine hits the rev limiter the fuel or ignition (spark) are cut (and then quickly engaged again, in a very fast cycle) so that the engine cannot overrev. The engine will continue to produce power then, but there won't be an increase in power (or revoluions) so the car will not accelerate as the limiter is holding the throttle/ignition at the limit (unless there was a lack of traction when hitting the rev limiter or something). Sometimes the rev limiter is set rather close to the redline (200 or 300 rpms), and sometimes it is set 1,000 or more rpms higher. It's usually somewhere in between.

I agree with everything else that you said.

Edited for clarity

[Creative Pudding]

thanks for the feedbacks! These are helpful informations to make the game better.
At this moment we dont use rev limiter, but only torque curves, which does not fail to zero but somewhere half way (depending on motor) it stops. So it is generating some power. We are using real engine's torque curves to simulate the torque at given rpm. It is a pretty complex simulation how the engine can spin up (depends on almost everything in the car..) and we are using 1 small "cheat" to prevent few extreme situation, where we cut-off the engine power completely above max rpm. Since you can actually build way too much variety at this moment, we need to prevent some weird behaviours. In real life using too weak diff would be destroyed with a very powerful engine and most of the issue with rev-limitter would be "solved with a broken diff". As you also said the motor could be destroyed as well. Some of these are already simulated at some level, others will come later.
Weight transfer is interesting and hard, because many people has different opinion. We have real racers testing the cars and they loved that they can actually feel the weight of the cars (street setups), they also agreed that street cars are moving a lot, especially the heavy big once like BB or Wanja. However there is always something to more to improve and find the balance which make most of you happy! Working on it :)

[ZombieHunter]

With respect to redline no the power does not drop to zero but it falls off after peak HP rapidly. It is hard to say how much accleration happens between peak HP and redline and after redline I wouldn't know b/c I'm not stupid enough to try it and my car won't let me in stock configuration. I played again and found that the V6 and V8 engines act much more like I would expect. My first encounter with the Walea 4 banger was awful and the thing would barely move but would redline and keep accelerating long after I was beyond redline which didn't seem right - likely b/c the engine would have grenaded.

My main issue now is the revs. Some engines revs super slow and I've never seen this in any car unless the intake or exhaust is completely blocked or there are other serious issues. Revs falloff correctly (unlike SLRR where they hold too long) but revving up is far too slow on many engine.

That said I just beat all of the backyard stuff and the second race area with my supercharged V6 and the handling model on dirt was great. The handling model on asphalt however appears to use the same or near the same friction coefficients and the handling is completely off on asphalt roads. Great for dirt, no at all great for roads. On dirt you can obviously get away with much larger slip angles. I would figure if the model is correct then changing the friction coefficient for various surfaces would reuslt in a pretty close approximation.

I also notice the handling model is akin to NFS Shift series. It feels like it is modelling two tires in line with one another down the longitudinal axis of the car. I understand why since these calculations are simpler but it makes the car feel as if it is pivoting on a ball in the middle of the chassis. I had the same issue with the Shift series.

[Creative Pudding]

reving time is easy to change, the only hard part what is good :) The idea simply that each motor should have different rev times (mainly up), which been affected by many other parts like state of carb, airfilters, exhaust, etc. If any of these are broken or damaged they will slow down the engine. We will check and might increase the speed of revving a bit.

What do you feel OFF about road friction? Is it too slippery or too much grip for you?
Did you tried different tires (street/slick/dirt), sizes and pressures on road? Any of those which would be close to good for you?

We have 3 tire models and several road friction models. The final grip is depends on the surface + tire parameters (and many other thing not related to tire). We can tweak each one of them individually, but it;s very hard to find one setup which make most of you happy.

[ZombieHunter]

Originally posted by Creative Pudding:

reving time is easy to change, the only hard part what is good :) The idea simply that each motor should have different rev times (mainly up), which been affected by many other parts like state of carb, airfilters, exhaust, etc. If any of these are broken or damaged they will slow down the engine. We will check and might increase the speed of revving a bit.

What do you feel OFF about road friction? Is it too slippery or too much grip for you?
Did you tried different tires (street/slick/dirt), sizes and pressures on road? Any of those which would be close to good for you?

We have 3 tire models and several road friction models. The final grip is depends on the surface + tire parameters (and many other thing not related to tire). We can tweak each one of them individually, but it;s very hard to find one setup which make most of you happy.

On roads it is just off. As I said slip angles are far too high on asphalt. Fine for dirt. Makes the cars feel a bit sloppy on the road. The front end will turn but the back end won't which looks like you are difting through all the corners - too much oversteer and I can't tweak anything to fix it.

[R05340728]

Originally posted by ZombieHunter:

Decent game so far but a few things are off:

• I've also encountered issues where I take the drive belt off the car and for some reason cannot click the star highlight to put it back on.

I had that issue initially too, click on the generator, then you can pick a belt to put on it. The generator does not have an orb to click on once its on the car, its like when you have a hub on the car with no wheel installed, the blue highlighted area just tells you "something is missing here".

[ZombieHunter]

Originally posted by R05340728:

Originally posted by ZombieHunter:

Decent game so far but a few things are off:

• I've also encountered issues where I take the drive belt off the car and for some reason cannot click the star highlight to put it back on.

I had that issue initially too, click on the generator, then you can pick a belt to put on it. The generator does not have an orb to click on once its on the car, its like when you have a hub on the car with no wheel installed, the blue highlighted area just tells you "something is missing here".

Thanks. Figured it out. I see the orbs are only for the main components and then components attach to those kind of how containers work in an adventure game.

[agrimes]

Very interesting thread... As for getting at engine parts, I always click on the block from the bottom of the car and then drill down through the tree to whatever... (usually, at least...)

Now I'm curious as to what chassis you are trying. I suggest using a Magura with 235 slicks all around at maybe one tick above the bottom of the ideal pressure window.. I want you to have an Euroa II engine with Euroa II ignition and carb. I want the black magura factory shocks, yellow or red magura performance brakes, Magura FACTORY 2.2 RWD diff, use panea parts for hubs, driveshaft, half shaft, and control arms. Use the wallawalla sport radiator, and omit radiator fan, horn, and headlights. Tell me how that car does...

There are also yellow and red grade sport and racing shocks, but for the Magura the factory suspension is actually the best (at time of writing). Also try the 4WD diff of the same ratio.

Tell us about that one... The current Panera is a bit weird but the Magura should be easy enough to master.

[ZombieHunter]

I ran both of those at the dirt and asphalt tracks and on the road. Dirt is fine. Asphalt is way too 'squishy' and too much slip angle. I can't imagine even with performance parts a slip of more than 15 to 20 percent. Most production cars handle about 10% slip.

Honestly the game feels just like NFS Shift. Their model was very squishy with a lot of reverse oscillation. I never felt like I could lean on the tires at any time. I feel the same in this. Leaning in dirt feels just right but leaning on the tires on asphalt usually results in serious oversteer in all cases regardless of setup and then snap oversteer in the other direction when you correct. Snap oversteer to the left when you turn right and then re-adjust left really makes the cars nearly uncontrollable.

It is very difficult to judge b/c I cannot feel the car like I can in real life. Obviously driving a real car I can feel where the limit is and hear the tires talk back to me to see if they are under the limit, at the limit or over the limit. In games it is very hard to judge velocity without feel. Most production cars and race cars can't take a really sharp corner at 30 mph. This is also the limit where MythBusters determined most cars start to lose it. Of course production non performance cars with understeer like mad and performance vehicles with looser setups will tend to oversteer at this point.

If there was telemetry provided in the game then I could look at the numbers and tell where things are off. I don't know the spring rates well yet in the game and I can't tell how much weight is on each tire. That is going to take many more laps around the tracks and streets to figure out. Usually in a NASCAR game or F1 game I can approximate these numbers at any given time in the race and know when I'm pushing too hard or not hard enough not too mention tire temps will tell the tale as well.

What I can say for sure is these cars, all of them, oversteer in all corners regardless of setup. Almost impossible to run the oval on certain cars with this twitchy model.

[agrimes]

Agreed, with the oversteer with the panea, It's a real bastard. I ended up using 285 tires on the rear and ended up using a heavier diff back there even though I'm usually obsessed with weight.

I've never had the opportunity for the RL experience you obviously have, I'm really fascinated by your comments.

I guess I've been playing the game too much for it to bother me that much. If you need it to understeer, make the front tires too small... Also switch to follow cam and see what's slipping, then dial everything in until the entire car starts slipping at the same time.

[TDK]

Having worked on, and indeed played many AAA racing games, I'm finding the central pivot system very annoying. It would be great to look at this to really help improve the playability of the racing part of the game.