I am total noob at moddelling and i have propably no clue how beamng works, but, would it be possible to make a real engine with moving cilinders? Like not visual cilinders but that they actually are connected to some sort of drive shaft <- no car knowledge either -> and then the engine should be deformable, but it should be able to take a hit ofcourse. And i know simulating like 8 cilinders could be hard on the hardware but simulating one for the idea that the engine is actually doing something should be awesome. If i have some spare time i might gonna look into it myself, but if someone whos already familiar with how the physics work in this game and how to aplly like moving things to their mods like cilinders going up and down, what i hope, then I would ask: Please, make something like that .
Im pretty sure the Lotus 49 had moving engine parts, but it got removed due to copyright. But official vehicles have moving fans, but that's all I know, there could be more, but I'm not to sure. What you're saying could could be implemented but not sure if its a priority.
Because the cylinders are fully encased within the engine block and headers, you wouldnt see them which would be a totally wasted effort. The most you can really do are the fans and maybe external throttle bodies and/or camshafts (although those too are usually under a valve cover so also not visible).
Indeed, it's only worthwhile to simulate things on the exterior of the engine, such as belts and pulleys, throttle body movement (more so with DCOE linkages where you can clearly see it move), and timing pulley movement (where you can have either clear or no timing cover, and obviously only for belts). Perhaps in future, this game may display internal components (perhaps like a combination of Automation and Street Legal Racing), but for now it's not really needed, or perhaps even possible.
The only reason it could be worth it is if say in the open world aspect of the game you are driving your car a bit hard and manage to blow a piston out of the engine. Yes I'm sure it would take a ton of computing power and not be used that often but it'd be a neat idea depending on how this game ends up being optimized in the future.
Uhm, i didnt say all of the cylinders had to be simulated, but just one, for the idea, and it doesnt have to get moddeled properly just a few mbeams moving up and down and whatever else is rotating, but then simplified, just that when the engine deforms it actually stops working like a real car would, or that it is damaged but still driving but not giving its full power for example. Just the idea of the engine actually giving power to the wheels would be awesome. But i guess its to much to ask.
j-beaming that IS possible, there's just no point because of the added intensity from doing so also engine damage is planned (idk if it's going to including cylinder damage causing less power though, a dev would have to answer that)
There would not be any need for N/B to do that sorta stuff. you could have a sinple box standing for engine (as we have now) and the moving cylinders and all inside it would be just props, bounded to the block n/b. Would be simple, but worthless as well, unless you want a somehow cut-out part of the engine, and it would add thousands of polys.
It's theoretically possible, but would tenderize even the best CPUs. I hate to say it, but I personally believe that in the future engine damage should be "faked" to an extent. I could see a simple structure of static beams in the engine where one beam represents a major component to help with that approximation, though.
Just coming on here as a little history lesson.... it can be done, and has been done (sort of) way back in the day by tommylommykins back in RoR. He even did a plane! Unfortunately the video of his best concept truck seems to have disappeared, but this picture still remains (imported from here) When he did it he used shocks with negative damping values so that when the shocks received energy, rather than dissipating the energy, the shocks would amplify it! This led to a somewhat interesting possibility for engine creation which I will quote tommylommykins on: Unfortunately this video doesn't seem to exist anymore, which is the best one I thought... Now obviously something like this, if were built for BeamNG, would be nothing more than a neat toy, but my point is that not only can it be done, but it has been done on much older computers with a more bloated code and less refined physics engine. I think that BeamNG would probably handle something like this just fine and in fact probably run it better and more smoothly then RoR ever could... of course assuming that the negative damping trick still works. Someone is gonna bring up the point of "Well there are no flexbodies on those contraptions and they are quite basic node beam structures so that in itself wouldn't lag but if we put that in a T-Series my computer would turn into lava!" What would I say to that? Well, that they are probably right. These machines were just goofy toys meant to prove a concept and they did just that. They weren't meant to look good, they weren't even meant to function well, they were just supposed to work in an odd fashion which they did just fine. If a full detail car were to be built in BeamNG with this kind of engine, the whole thing would have to be taylor built to the engine. The chassis, the drive line, the suspension, the mesh... everything. But my point is that It could be done and I think it would work better than most of you think it would. Now moving up from just a toy to where you actually would use something like this, you could probably just make a special beam that would have the properties of the thermodynamic air cycle in a piston. Once oscillation would start, it would just keep making force whenever it expanded and taking force whenever it contracted and you would end up with a pretty decent simulation of an engine. Just connect it to a con rod and that to a crank shaft and your good to go! Now how to actually harness the power is another problem entirely, but I will leave that for a different thread cause this one is about engines, not clutches and transmissions and what not.
I am so sorry for responding so late, I kinda forgot I had this thread posted, and you put so much effort in responding, I feel almost obliged to say thank you for your response, even if its a year later. Toy or not, I think it would still be funny to mess around with it, but I would understand its not worth the effort to create this. Maybe... one day
No big deal... I seem to be the thread ender because I post these big posts and then everyone must be like "well that answered every question I thought of ever" and then no one posts on them after that, but I appreciate that you read one!
