Greetings, driving simulation connoisseurs!
Today, we wanted to share an exciting sneak peek into our ongoing efforts to improve the tire physics model in BeamNG.
As some of you may know, accurate modeling of vehicle dynamics is at the core of our development principles, and allows us to offer a truly immersive driving experience to the players. We’ve made significant strides in our simulation over the years, but we’re always looking for ways to push the technology even further.
Implementation of highly realistic tire physics is one of the biggest challenges for any serious driving dynamics simulation, in part due to the lack of sufficient reference data that could be utilized for testing and calibration, and especially for us - due to the research driven approach. We’re working tirelessly (pun intended) on solving this, and although at this early stage we cannot predict when future improvements may arrive, we still wanted to be transparent and share a part of the development journey with all of you.
To tackle the scarcity of reliable tire performance metrics, we’ve recently collaborated with Calspan to perform a vast number of comprehensive tests, leveraging their world-class tire testing and data gathering facilities. The project is designed to capture the nuanced real-world behavior of different types of tires across a multitude of conditions, including some extreme scenarios.
Check out the video recap of our visit to learn more:
So what’s next? As a result of this collaboration, we’ve gathered an enormous volume of detailed tire data - covering a wide range of tire types, conditions, and testing scenarios.
To make effective use of these results, our immediate focus is on improving the current calibration methods to accommodate the scale and complexity of the data. With that in place, we can then refine and calibrate our tire models to better capture the nuanced effects we’ve identified during testing, and ensure consistent, realistic behavior throughout the varied vehicle scenarios.
Stay tuned for future developments as we continue exploring the depths of tire tech!