BeamNG Drive has certainly made great strides since it's release. The ability to race against other vehicles in scenarios is one of my top three favorite improvements. However, it has also become a source of frustration. The front suspension, in particular, is unrealistically weak for almost every car. A slight glance with a wall or other vehicle will render a car unable to steer or break the front wheel entirely. It is very difficult to get through a race where contact is expected unless you restrain making contact. Having participated in demo derbies, modified and street stock divisions, I can speak with a degree of knowledge when I say that the current suspension is not as realistic as it should be. But still, BeamNG is a great effort. It's been a lot of fun watching it evolve over the years.
Yeah suspension in this game breaks a lot easier than it should, wheel glances dont murder your tierod irl
well it kind of is realistic, i think you're used to wreckfest ramming cars 100 mph into each other and driving off fine..
I would be inclined to say this at first, but considering OP has experience with demolition derbies they probably have a good feel for how strong a car's suspension typically is.
Most peoples regularly vastly underestimate the enormous kinetic energy - and the resulting destructive potential - of moving cars.Your "slight" glance with a wall may easily equal a ton of impact force. It also applies force from an somewhat unexpected angle (road bumps attack from below, not the front) so suspension and track damage is more likely. Complex and comparable filigrane independent suspension for every wheel on most cars today also probably increase the likehood of at least something giving in when hit just hard enough. Still, your real life experience with Derbies certainly is highly valuable and of course, certain tire collisions that dont involve "major" impacts or rubber on metall (screws anyone?) would not burst a tire that fast. It might be related to basic game physics... for example to my knowledge tires are not really round and as such might be closer to a rotating blade compared to real life. Of course one also has to consider real life differences: Most cars that are used for Destruction derbies are probably not on the fragile side in the first place and to my knowledge all such derbies have rather strict rules about how fast and how you can hit your competition (which makes sense because otherwise it would swiftly become "See you all in hospital/cemetery derby). It also depends on chassis construction... the more metal you have in front of your suspension the less likely it is to be hit in the first place on a frontal impact. Although.... some - durable - empty space may also be useful because your own cars metal moving inside and destroying the suspension is just as bad as an other car. I would estimate that more modern cars are far more likely to suffer suspension and axle damage at frontal impacts due to the crumble zone doing its job. Not to mention things like ESC sensors going to hell once you are past a certain damage level....
If you do this IRL, the steering wheel will turn sharply and (probably) hurt your fingers, however in BeamNG, the steering angle is always according to your controller input. This makes the steering mechanism easier to break in game.
Honestly this is something i think needs to be looked at a bit more. I know it differs from which suspension we are talking about since not one handles the same. But i also know that doing an awd drift shouldnt completely mess up my steering wheel. Meanwhile with the rally sunburst... I honestly do feel as if sometimes the suspension is very weak. Some cars feels ok, the wheels dont fall off by just looking at it, and then theres the sunburst that i can barely go through a rally road without bending a wheel or something.
There absolutely might be some cases where it acts unnatural but to be honest, cars take damage easily. Pulled the front suspension off one of our daily drivers 2 days ago to change wheel bearing and for example the lower control arm on that particular vehicle is made out of thin pressed metal, lowering the hoist to quickly and have something stuck under it can bend that.Another example is steering/tie rods are made from either cast aluminum or metal pipes, same goes for them. My old r33 gtr had a quick visit in a ditch, a touch and go so to speak, and that bent the tie rod slightly making it pull to one side under load.
Modern vehicles' suspension is weaker than classic boats because of lowering the cost. We don't have to cross haundreds of potholes everyday driving on modern roads. Rally vehicles IRL use reinforced components in their suspension. However in BeamNG only the coilover is reinforced, this makes the rally car in Beam weaker than its IRL counterparts. Not to mention the use of low-profile tires on the Sunbrust Rally As shown in the picture. Street, rally and race Sunburst they all use the same Independent Front/Rear Suspension structures. The only difference is the coilovers and the sway bars.
It really feels exculsive to the 4WD/AWD vehicles (to me), which seems odd. FWD/RWD rally cars in-game are damn near unkillable.
