Handling in BeamNG compared to sim racers

Hello there,

Playing this game for over 3 years now, I've noticed the true-to-life handling of the vehicles of this game, which makes this game stand out from most other games involving vehicles. If anyone here plays a sim racer game such as iRacing or Assetto Corsa, please tell me how the handling of BeamNG compares to those games!

 

Most of what you drive in beamng translates to Assetto corsa and Race room, but the tires are a lot grippier; especially the racing slicks. Race room is free so try that first.

 

iRacing is ridiculously bad, it has very weird movement of weight / car body.

rF2 has lot to do with car body movement area as well, but at least it's tires are really good compared to iRacing, mostly new DLC is good in it though, most of mods and old stuff has those odd tires when sliding added to odd body movement which is not so natural.

AC is nice but feels scripted.

Raceroom new physics are really nice, old physics which some content still use do lack and it also feels bit scripted at times.

Scripted means that it feels like you have like 256 different levels of slide or weight transfer, you end up into certain slot and if you manage to keep in that slot, you perform.

All sim racers have that to some extend.

rF2 has physics running at 400Hz and tires something like 2700Hz, but I'm not sure physics rate has much to do with it.

Now realism, all of them lack, but what would you do with more realism? Something like racing sim, where you compete with others with sometimes laggy connections probably would be more fun way it is, no matter that it is bit scripted etc. running physics like BeamNG would probably provide more real like experience, but how many would be able to actually race cars close to each other with that?

I like Raceroom as it provides nice sensations to ears and eyes, physics does not even compare to BeamNG, but it is enough good, gameplay features are nice and new updates have helped with AI issues. Also the fact that on some tracks I can be faster than Jimmy is fun, however my cornering is still quite rusty and my age makes me bit slow, so can't really compete with speed with the fastest guys anymore.
I'm so rusty and old already that my best laps can be 1.5-2s from fast guys, but those tend to be far apart, constant lap times being up to 4 seconds behind race pace of fast guys, so don't need to dream of competing anymore.



But then BeamNG is quite hard to setup, to get steering and FFB as well as car setup to best for racing, that takes bit of effort. Also there are not too many race tracks, real world race tracks that are good, Road Atlanta comes to mind as well as Pikes Peak, so racing in BeamNG is rather limited, but thanks to incredible efforts by Ewanc we do have those incredible quality options, Pikes peak is probably best of any sim.

Then racing with other cars is not quite there yet with BeamNG, also tire temps are difficult subject, but then again Raceroom has no adjustable tire pressures for example.

Tires in BeamNG are really good though, as explained in posts of Goosah, tires are top of any game, but there are no dedicated race cars, what BeamNG has are modified factory cars and at least I like to setup them bit differently than what they are setup by default, lot less front ARB for example.

With T150 wheel, it took a while to find settings that work, but FFB in BeamNG is quite incredible, compared to any other racing sim, amount of information I get from front end grip is much more, speed and FFB levels seem to be higher too, can't quite get to that level with other ones.

Raceroom for example uses pretty lot of canned effects, you can get something out of it that is not canned, AC can be ok, but still bit less than BeamNG, rF2 has speed in FFB, but less detail. It can be that I have not achieved perfection in settings yet in those other games.



I hope we don't discuss about Project Cars here, it can be fun, but it is bit funny in way cars handle, there really is not much of understeer in that. I heard there was older versions that had better physics, but haven't experienced those, but PC is not in league of these other games.


So here lies my problem them, BeamNG has totally ruined most of racing sims as nothing gets even close to dynamics of BeamNG, but slowly I'm starting to understand realism is not necessarily what you need to have fun, it's still work in progress though, I have pursued ultimate realism for so long, but each racing game has bit of own things that make it good, you really need to experience them all to know which tick your own desires.

Assetto Corsa Competizione is something I have not tested, not sure if I have missed anything else though.

I'm not sure if I'm simracers, but these I have had Indy 500, GPL(c), Papy Nascar, SCGT, F1 2012(c), LFS(c), RBR(c), rF(c), GTR(c), rF2, AC, PC, Raceroom(c), also tested on PC2 and iRacing both I disliked a lot, of course BeamNG I use many hours a day. Not sure if I'm forgetting something, feels like I'm forgetting something, but I put (c) on those which I have done hotlapping and/or competitive online racing in leagues.

 

Oh and some videos, wish these all games would of been there 15 years ago, but now I mostly fail at driving






One thing to note is that ETKI weight 1365kg or so, while other ones are around 1000kg mark. Engine has pretty much same torque curve as AC version, so it is bit under powered. I have improved version of that config, but it still has bit of trouble getting rear end to hook up while maintaining good mid turn steering.

Might need beefier tires for that weight.

 

The big difference IMHO is that Beamng.Drive is a sandbox driving simulator where you can do almost everything and it will be simulated quite well compared to other racing sims.
You can throw a lot of different scenarios and configurations at Beamng and it will simulate them atleast close enough. In eg AC, RF2, RRRE, PCars2 or Dirt Rally the focus is much narrower. They are probably better at the things they want to simulate than Beamng but everything outside of that focus is falling apart pretty fast.

Those sims are good to recreate the "clean" (without crashes) racing sensation at the absolute limit. Racing on that thin edge on the maximum griplimit and giving appropriate feedback works really good in those. Also racing against >20 a halfway compotent AI-cars is simply not possible in Beamng. Then things like tire temperature and degradation are simulated which are quite important to simulate proper racing conditions which Beamng is lacking completly atm. The surface of the tracks are often also a lot more detailed compared to beamng - laserscanning is somewhat a standard now in most sims.

But try asphalt courses in Dirt Rally, it feels awful. Same goes for loose surface rally mods for AC. Intervehicular crashes are laughable in all those games. Driving like a lawful citizen in the city? Forget it! Most sims switch around 60-80km/h their complete physics model - something something pacejka tyre model and look up tables. Which means driving a car at lowish speeds in eg AC is simulated horseshit. Beamng is in those things miles ahead. I mean you can throw even rockclimbing at beamng and it just works pretty realistic. I could bet none of the other sims are even capable of that without really hacky solutions.

tl;dr Beamng.drive is a really good jack of all trades and all those other sims are masters of the things they focused on.

 

I shouldn't comment but I can't help myself, if you think this is the pinnacle of sim racers then simply put you are wrong.

• Tires are not accurately simulated by any stretch of the imagination(sure could be said no sim racer has perfect tires but bng is far far down the list).
  
• There is almost no mechanical grip.
• The brakes are the easiest thing to lock up on the planet.
  
• The understeer is real.
• Really not crucial to the debate but the sounds are terrible and leave you feeling unimmersed.

Some may say I am hard on the game but really I think I am a realist, are there issues with Iracing or AC? No doubt but that doesn't make this game(not a sim) a faultless experience.

thank

 

Okay, can you please provide data which can show Goosah's data to be wrong? He specifically shows data which tells that tires in BeamNG are very realistic:
https://www.beamng.com/threads/guys-come-to-talk-about-tires.58720/page-2#post-949560

What setup adjustments you have done to vehicles?

My experience is that vanilla race setups are quite off, power to weight to amount of rubber balance of ETKi for example is making car very slippery, while setup of it attempts to make it drivable, but resulting only horrible amounts of understeer, which heavy weight of the car is not helping at all.

I can cure understeer in game quite easily, it is not worse than in other sims, Project cars is not a sim.

Assetto Corsa can be horrible understeer at times, depends from vehicle etc. Much worse than my setups for BeamNG has.

Sounds are placeholders and are really terrible, also there are not much in terms of race tracks either.


Some challenges in making setups:
-ARB rates are not effective rates like in many other sims
-Spring rates can be something else than wheel rates
-Tires in race models seem to be narrow for level of power and weight
-Camber settings are really low for race cars
-Brakes are set way too strong, reducing brake pressure to 40% or less is fixing that
-Sense of speed, default FOV is quite low, so it is easy to go to corner lot faster than one thought be going

BeamNG is the most realistic, but problem is you have to scratch default setup and build one from zero, however if you know what you are doing, you can get it to work.

Problem with street cars is that there are no adjustments, so one has to make few new parts to allow adjustments.

For me it appears that you are judging more of setup than simulation, while setups are not perfect, simulation can provide hugely better experience than you get by default setups.



You can't cure weight transfer in rF2, it is really weird and body movement is totally off.

You can fix insane slip angles of AC either, those are not very realistic at all and their powertrain simulation that provides power to wheels and tires is not very good, weight transfer etc. feels scripted, you kinda lean on steps of stairs when cornering, etc.

Main issue with race sims is that tires need to handle forces, if those forces are off (which they very much are) that leads to situation where even the best of tires are meaningless when they handle all the wrong kind of forces.



So I think you have no idea what you are criticizing, while your points are valid about understeer and lack of grip, you are pointing wrong things being the reason of that and if you could experience properly setup vehicles in BeamNG with properly set FFB, then you would probably enjoy driving in BeamNG lots more, so I think we need better car setups and tuning.


Update:
Aerodynamic balance, could be added to list too, that affects a lot how car steers at higher speeds.
Tire squealing, BeamNG does not have scrubbing sound, does tires squeal in BeamNG when they are just scrubbing making impression you are sliding when you are not?


Also racing sims might have some balancing done to provide more fun racing, they are not vehicle simulators, they are racing simulators and on that they do a lot better job than BeamNG as BeamNG is not racing simulator, but vehicle simulator.

 

Usually I agree with your ‘realist’ point of view, however I do have a to disagree with you on this one. @fufsgfen explained everything better than I ever could, so I’m not going to repeat anything he said. I mainly just wanted to say that BeamNG is still the best driving/vehicle simulator currently available. It is by no means a racing simulator and doesn’t really compare to other racing games, although if you take into consideration fufsgfen’s points you can make it feel very similar. I have used a few other racing sims and while they do handle really well they just feel incredibly ‘artificial’. It’s hard to put my finger on why, but you just don’t get the same response from the vehicle that BeamNG gives you.

I know this is a weak arguement and is all over the place, but I basically wanted to enforce what fufsgfen said, and how it really is just a matter of tuning, and not how the game simulates vehicles.

 

My personal thoughts:
I have both BeamNG and Assetto Corsa and I have to say that drifting for example is a lot easier (maybe I have some helps still activated, I didn't really change a lot in the options) in Assetto Corsa. For example Yesterday I've drifted around in the driftjunkies server in assetto corsa for over one and a half hours. I'm a noob at it but at least in Assetto corsa I can do a good drift sometimes and on the track, while in BeamNG I've never succedeed to do a complete drift with a good recovery, it Always ended in a spin out

 

Implying BeamNG is more realistic or less realistic?

 

If my real world drifting attempts would of worked like in AC, I would be a champ

But that is the thing, it does not need to be exactly like IRL, for racing simulator it is better if it is bit easier than IRL as it gives lot more fun for lot more people.

Dirt Rally is horrible in terms of realism, but magnificent in terms of how it gives sensations, but it takes long time to realize that there are better things than ultimate realism, as long as driving does not feel too much annoying, I think close racing etc. all those wonderful sensations, that will go a long way.

 

I think you explained those other games perfectly. They aren't meant to be as accurate as possible like BeamNG.drive, they are attempting to combine realism and fun/playability.

 

I have Rf2, AC, Automobilista, and DIRT rally.
Well I think I have to spend more time with the FFB settings to get it work perfect on BeamNG, in some cars I do feel it very real handle, in others not so much, and I'm used to have RWD and FWD, also I drove a AWD, so at least I can compare a bit to real world (I'm not a race driver though!).
With Rf2 I don't know if I have set it up perfectly my T-300 but I love how it feels.
AC is the worst of all IMO.
Dirt Rally I'm absolutely agree with @fufsgfen about realism/feelings on dirt and snow (not on asphalt), It makes you feel like a pro when you're not like in my case.
Automobilista is also a underrated gem, I do like the handle a lot of most of the cars.

I have been almost 6 months without playing Raceroom, at that time I didn't like the handle, to me was too arcadeish. But I most give it a try if they improved physics, but I don't like pay per item policy.

 

With Raceroom, if someone wants to buy their stuff, then best is to go to their other store, buy Vrp there during the sale, then during big sale use that VRP ingame store to buy pack. It still is quite expensive if you want all content.

It is worth to test drive cars from their store so one can be sure it is for him/her, it's bit different in feel than rF2 or AC.

 

I think more realistic. I've never drifted in real life (and I doubt I will ever) so I don't have a side by side comparison.

 

the difference is that, while games like Forza, AC, project cars, Rfacotr, raceroom, etc. tend to be tuned to feel realistic, whereas beamng is tuned to function realistically.

 

BeamNG is realistic because it simulate vehicle part by part. Thus spring and tire can affect handling a lot.

Arcade racing game have unrealisticly high tire grip, some racing sim also have too much grip which IRL will flip the car over. I don't have DIRT but after watching some video I believe it's not realistic since you just turn the steering wheel to powerslide through corner, it don't simulate weight transfer correctly.

Grip driving is the easiest, then rallying, and drifting on tarmac, IMO, is the most difficult.
Grip through the corner is simply maximizing tire grip. As slip angle increase, friction increase then decrease. So grip is faster than drift.
Gravel driving is a little bit different. First the moment of inertia is significant, forcing the driver to initiate steering before the corner or use inertia drift(scandinavian flick), increasing car angular velocity. And friction between gravel and tire is conbined sliding, rolling and viscous friction, so sliding is faster.
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And people after played these games then play BeamNG will say "BeamNG has good 'crash physics' but the handling is terrible"
XDDDD

 

This is usually what I hear/see from all those sim racers from AC, RR etc. after trying out BeamNG... Seems like the game feels unrealistic for them after playing overly grippy sims

 

I bet DiRT 4 is a bad example of this, but I tried doing the whole "Brake into a corner to gain more of a slide" and that never happened. It simply shut off or kept turning for like, a few inches. I always guessed this wasn't realistic ever since buying DiRT 4, but I still like Rallying in BeamNG better because of...the freedom I guess, and the feel of the car. BeamNG takes much more skill to rally well then I bet every other Rally game.

I do have one question though. A lot of people say that Richard Burns Rally is the best rally game. It would never compare with BeamNG well, but I wonder how far off RBR is from real life/BeamNG physics.

 

It is better than dirt rally, but not really too comparable to real world. However when you are in that narrow area where it works, it is quite convincing, but it still is kinda scripted. It is too many years since I played that one though, I wonder if my copy might still work.

Here is a thing though, turning FFB off and then seeing if game behaves realistic manner or not is much better way to check if game is realistic than falling under impressions and illusions.

That right there is then where we must ask, is the realism so important or is it better to have best possible illusions for a racing game?

For vehicle simulator like BeamNG, realism is very important, but for racing game, I think having bit too grippy tires, having little too forgiving handling, that is what makes online racing more enjoyable for larger group of customers and definitely better way to go than ultra realistic behavior.

Even going straight line with some cars at 100mph is a challenge IRL, trying to drive near limit bumper to bumper just is not going to work, after all only a few are really capable race drivers.

Rallying especially is not so easy, people doing that crash all the time and even experienced pros, while I don't think BeamNG gravel is quite perfect yet, I think that most if not all rally games do make it bit easier than it really is.

Grip on gravel surfaces is really difficult to model, it is highly complex and quite variable thing, by digging tires in you can reach some insane grip levels while lot of wheelspin, but then if tire does not manage to dig in that is where grip is lot less all of sudden. Then how rocky or sandy road surface is, how soft or packed etc. even moisture level affects grip, so absolute limit is somewhat hard to tell.

Gravel in 0.15 is surely improvement, but I'm not sure how close to reality it is even possible to get. Same for winter conditions, lowering grip by XX percent does not really cut it.

RBR had lot of great things that made it feel good though, environment was a big thing in it of course. RBR with updated graphics and sounds would probably still be the king in rallying, at least what comes to AWD machines.

What I like though is that there are lot of different options these days, people use their senses different ways, for some touch is more important, for some other what they see, so different kind of stimulus from games is needed for different people for them to get good experience.

Scientific testing of car behavior would be only way to tell how realistic game is, how mass accelerates and slows down, how it reacts to exact same inputs etc. Analyzing super slow motion frame by frame and checking possible datalogged streams etc. Nobody does this really, how it feels is very subjective but much easier and if you have perfectly realistic sim that does not feel like it, is it realistic?