ESC gets stuck in turns

At low speeds and at moderate steering angles, the ESC grinds the car to a halt and completely cancels the throttle. I have reported this numerous times. It occurs ON A CLEAN INSTALL OF BEAMNG, ON A CLEAN INSTALL OF WINDOWS, NO MODS, SAFE MODE, CACHE CLEARED TWICE, STOCK CONFIGS despite having been told otherwise. Here is a video, since nobody seems to believe me.

 

I believe you, because it's happened to me as well. I find that driving up mountain in the Automation Test Track map with an ESC equipped vehicle will easily reproduce the issues that you're having right now. Not sure what causes it, but it'll burn up the brakes pretty easily, and it makes me want to turn it off.

 

THANK

YOU

 

Not a problem. I can also provide a supplemental video as to provide some visual element as for what I was saying. It's an extremely inherent issue that absolutely nobody has pointed out for some odd reason.

 

> Location: Male

Epic

 

happens all the time to me.

 

The complexity of the new DSE is too much, the ESC is currently bugged and the TCS in DSE still compares diagonal wheelspeed(unrealistic) and the devs remedied the problem by introducing an additional logic called eDiff. Vehicles IRL don't compare diagonal wheelspeed in their TCS, and the TCS can reduce throttle and brake the slipping wheel or only brake the slipping wheel(ESC-OFF mode).
The complexity of the new DSE really made bugfix difficult

The older ESC logic is also very easy to mod and tune by players. Watch the video in the attachment, I actually tuned the ESC on the Sunburst to brake very aggressively upon understeer, effectively making the vehicle an electronic-assisted powerslider(feels like Burnout or Need for Speed) without defying any law of physics(note I still did use open diffs in the video).
In the newer DSE, I can't even remedy this problem(and possible make a mod about it)

Spoiler: This Problem

IMO, the devs should have fixed the diagonal wheelspeed TCS problem

Spoiler: This

And continue to use the older, simpler ESC.

 

This is actually the most confusing, that means they are two channel but use four sensors. IIRC ABS appears before TCS, and TCS uses the wheel sensors used in ABS(no additional sensor is required), and in the Wiki there is a "Two-channel, four-sensor ABS", but "the control module pulses the valve for both wheels on that end of the car." not specify diagonal. But if you put that on the Pickup/Sunburst 2WD is somewhat better than AWD. Anyway if that TCS does exist in many vehicle IRL I won't complain about that again.
BTW is there anyway to "separate" brake control and throttle control? When the wheel starts to spin, the TCS cuts throttle and brakes the slipping wheel at the same time, according to the rate in the jbeam. How to(in an FWD)tune the TCS to only brake when FL & FR wheel speed difference too much, and only cut throttle when FL & RL wheel speed difference too much?
--- Post updated ---

Thanks for your clarification, I won't spread that misinformation again.

 

You can actually set these things up in the JBeam for the traction control rather easily. Granted I am only 2 days into playing with it... but from what I currently understand, it goes like this.

You have a .stat.jason file that defines which wheels will be monitored and have systems applied to them that simply looks like this.

Code:

{
"vehicleData":{
  "skewStiffnessRear":156000,
  "cornerWheels":[
    "FR",
    "FL",
    "RR",
    "RL"
  ],
  "skewStiffnessFront":145000
}
}

You could probably just have the front left and front right only definer in this file, and that would probably limit the system to only monitor those two wheels... for example.

Next, you hop down into the _dse_drivemodes.jbeam file which has each drive mode laid out similarly to this:

Code:

"offroad": {
                    "name": "Offroad",
                    "order": 40,
                    "settings": [
                        ["type"]
                        ["controller", {"controllerName":"electronicSplitShaftLock", "minimumLock":1.0}]

                        ["controller", {"controllerName":"adaptiveFrontDamper", "damperMode":"soft"}]
                        ["controller", {"controllerName":"adaptiveRearDamper", "damperMode":"soft"}]

                        ["controller", {"controllerName":"tractionControl", "isEnabled":false}]
                        ["controller", {"controllerName":"motorTorqueControl", "tractionControl.isEnabled":false}]
                        ["controller", {"controllerName":"brakeControl", "tractionControl.isEnabled":false}]

                        ["controller", {"controllerName":"gauge", "modeName": "OFFROAD", "modeColor": "#EC6B00"}]
                        ["controller", {"controllerName":"CMU", "uiDisplayData.simplePowertrainApp.activeColor": "EC6B00"}]
                    ],
                },                

I stole the offroad one as the example here... but just bear with me.

So as you can see, you have several different sections here... the ones we are interested in though are these three...

Code:

                        ["controller", {"controllerName":"tractionControl", "isEnabled":false}]
                        ["controller", {"controllerName":"motorTorqueControl", "tractionControl.isEnabled":false}]
                        ["controller", {"controllerName":"brakeControl", "tractionControl.isEnabled":false}]

as you can see here, in the offroad section the traction control, torque control, and brake control is all disabled by them just setting "isEnabled" to false. Simply switching any one of these to true will enable this controller for this particular driving mode.

Naturally, you can go a bit further... lets look at sport mode to see some of our options.

Code:

                "sport": {
                    "name": "Sport",
                    "order": 20,
                    "settings": [
                        ["type"]
                        ["exhaust", {"name": "mainEngine", "mufflingOffset": -0.15, "gainOffset": 0}],
                        ["transmission", {"defaultForwardMode": "S"}],

                        ["controller", {"controllerName":"electronicSplitShaftLock", "isEnabled":true, "minimumLock":0.25}]

                        ["controller", {"controllerName":"adaptiveFrontDamper", "damperMode":"hard"}]
                        ["controller", {"controllerName":"adaptiveRearDamper", "damperMode":"hard"}]

                        ["controller", {"controllerName":"motorTorqueControl",
                            "tractionControl.isEnabled":true,
                            "tractionControl.wheelGroupSettings.mainEngine.slipThreshold": 0.3,
                            "yawControl.isEnabled":true,
                        }]
                        ["controller", {"controllerName":"brakeControl",
                            "tractionControl.isEnabled":true,
                            "tractionControl.wheelGroupSettings.mainEngine.slipThreshold": 0.2,
                            "yawControl.isEnabled":true,
                            "yawControl.slipAngleThreshold": 0.1,
                            "yawControl.yawAvThreshold": 0.6
                        }]

                        ["controller", {"controllerName":"CMU", "uiDisplayData.simplePowertrainApp.activeColor": "DA0C0C"}]
                    ],
                },

as can be seen here, the motor control and the brake control are split into 2 different sections with some options enabled to allow for some tunability. I don't know how many options there are, or how in depth this goes, but as you can see in sport mode, we now can set yaw control individually under not just the motor controller, but the brake controller as well. So if you set "yawControl.isEnabled":true, to false under the motor controller, I would assume that it would then disable throttle cut from pitching the car sideways (granted the traction control would still but in when it sees wheel slippage, but you get my point.)

So yeah, messing around with the driving modes and building your own really isn't that difficult... the hard part is figuring out what your options are, and what actually works and how to implement it correctly.

 

Spoiler: outdated

Looks like Offroad mode disables traction control brake control, thus you cannot offroad effectively without eDiff
My guess is the eDiff(braking, active locking and torque vectoring) use the functions in the eDiff library and the TCS uses the modern ESC library and the modern ESC & eDiff are in the DSE, thus this is simpler than "brake-only TCS"(which requires different ESC with different diffs).

Absolutely no offense to BeamNG developers(including but not limited to DSE devs), but I'm really concerned about some modern vehicles safety IRL. We know that ESC is not a performance enhancement and aggressive driving is not encouraged on public roads. However, the driver may inadvertently encounters dangerous situations

Spoiler: slip angle or yaw

I actually crashed numerous time on tarmac, only have used gravel to screenshot because it was easier to replicate

Thus if the ESC prioritizes slip angle over yaw, then the handling in some situation might become much worse.

Anyway I won't rant again either way because I no longer interpret it as a bug after Diamondback's explanation.

Edit: Updated explanation

 

After digging into the LUA files, I finally discovered the understeer cause.

↓↓↓This is not the cause↓↓↓​

In the "\BeamNG.drive\lua\vehicle\controller\drivingDynamics\supervisors\components\brakeControl.lua" line 93 to 127

Spoiler: code NOT the cause of understeer

Code:

  local avBrakeFactor = yawControlAVBrakingPID:get(-abs(yawDifference), -controlParameters.yawControl.yawAvThreshold, dt)
  local slipAngleBrakeFactor = yawControlSlipAngleBrakingPID:get(-abs(bodySlipAngle), -controlParameters.yawControl.slipAngleThreshold, dt)

  local wheelToBrake
  if avBrakeFactor > slipAngleBrakeFactor then
    if yawDifference > 0 then --Oversteer
      if measuredYaw > 0 then
        wheelToBrake = wheelAccess.frontLeft
      else
        wheelToBrake = wheelAccess.frontRight
      end
    else --Understeer
      if measuredYaw > 0 then
        wheelToBrake = wheelAccess.rearRight
      else
        wheelToBrake = wheelAccess.rearLeft
      end
    end
  else
    local bsaControlSign = sign(measuredYaw) * sign(bodySlipAngle)
    if bsaControlSign < 0 then --Oversteer
      if measuredYaw < 0 then
        wheelToBrake = wheelAccess.frontRight
      else
        wheelToBrake = wheelAccess.frontLeft
      end
    else
      -- if measuredYaw < 0 then
      --   wheelToBrake = wheelAccess.rearLeft
      -- else
      --   wheelToBrake = wheelAccess.rearRight
      -- end
      return false
    end
  end

To elaborate. The ESC compare the slip angle and required yaw/angular velocity correction. If the slip angle is too large compared to yaw difference, the ESC will interpret as oversteer to straighten the car. For example, if the car is sliding sideways but not turning, both the yaw rate and the steering wheel is zero but the slip is significant, the ESC will try to straighten the car. If the vehicle's actual yaw and driver's intended yaw differs too much, more than slip. The ESC will try to correct understeering/oversteering first.

↑↑↑This is not the cause↑↑↑​

Thus, if the driver desperately tries to turn the vehicle(large between desired yaw and actual yaw), the ESC should still interprets this as understeer instead of mistaken this as oversteer. The reason of the ESC misinterpretation lies within another file.

↓↓↓This is probably the cause↓↓↓​

The "\BeamNG.drive\lua\vehicle\controller\drivingDynamics\supervisors\yawProviders\STMEstimate.lua" line 75

Code:

  controlParameters.maxLateralAcceleration = jbeamData.maxLateralAcceleration or 12

This is the whole reason why ESC often mistaken large steering input as oversteer.

Spoiler: reply

@atv_123 As you can see, non of the BeamNG-offical car with DSE defines the "jbeamData.maxLateralAcceleration", non of them, so they use 12 as default. This means if the lateral acceleration caused by driver's input reaches 12m/s^2, the ESC will simply ignore further steering input.

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This game simulates ESC realistically since there are few games that demonstrate the actual limitations of ESC.