Working on the steering made me realize that props are for squares! I changed out the kart steering props for physics based meshes, which makes is a lot easier to sync with the steering since I no longer have to do math to figure out the ratio between the wheel and the actual steering. This will also free up the steering wheel lock to be whatever you want it to be without causing the handlebars to spin around. Other than that, I've been working on stability for various parts and further simplifying some of the meshes. I still need to finish the tweaks to the steering and make the standard suspension steering more robust, but its coming along!
I have the new steering to the point that I want to release an update very soon. The changes have been challenging to implement on the non-welded suspension, so this update will be primarily focused on the welded front configurations. Even the big engine variants now handle significantly better! As far as changes to expect, that I can remember: Improved stability of most tires Improved stability of front suspensions Improved stability of independent rear suspension Changed steering geometry on all suspensions Welded Front Suspension: Added simplified steering to the welded front suspension Previously, I used a steering rack like those found in larger vehicles, which was stable, but about twice as heavy Adjusted all welded front configurations to perform well with the new steering Changed the handlebars from props to meshes so they are independent of the steeringWheelLock variable Added a slider for steeringWheelLock so that steering wheel users can change how sensitive the steering is for them I do not have a wheel to test this, so please let me know if it doesn't work as intended Changed the values of the front arm stiffness There is now a noticeable difference in handling with even a 10% change on this Updated all welded front meshes to match the new steering geometry Simplified a few of the engine meshes further Altogether probably around 50-75k faces taken off of the I4, I3, and 250cc engines, but primarily the I4 Also improved the exports so they look less like playdough Updated all thumbnails
With the welded front update finally released, I am getting to work on fixing the steering for the non-welded suspensions. Due to the way the frame reacts and deforms under caster adjustments, I will be using the same system I implemented with the welded front in that there will be 4 selectable caster settings (0, 5, 10 , 15). This will increase the front end's stability and end up being easier to run since it isn't using dozens of precompressed beams. The other significant change is that for the non-welded suspensions, the steering knuckle will be behind the hub. After reviewing more images of the front suspension in order to finally match the hub and tierod locations to real life, I discovered that the steering knuckle and tierod started out in front of the hub, but was swapped to the rear when tire sizes made ackerman steering impossible on the front while keeping the steering relatively light. The changes so far have significantly improved handling overall for the base configurations (150, 250, 350cc) and I have been able to better tune the race configs, although I am still very bad at this and longitudinal weight transfer is a huge problem with this setup. Here's a couple pictures of the steering setup before and after the change In Front: Spoiler In the rear: Spoiler
Over the past week, I got the desire to add the final version of the frame before it was discarded for a shortened truck frame. This meant a much more sturdy frame and a new component: the front loader bucket! The version I chose for the mod (so far) was the second bucket design, which was a modified bathtub. This was actuated vertically via a hand pumped engine hoist and tilted using a hand cranked winch that was mounted near the driving position. The bucket was only ever held in position using tension, so it can and will flop around if you go over bumps. So far I have the bucket, hoist, and most of the chains modelled and implemented as seen in the videos below. I have also finally made the effort to ensure that the tires on the rear match real life rather than a close approximation. On the independent rear setup, I have further refined the front steering geometry, but the vast majority of my time was spent adding the new frame. Here is the bucket and the way it moves: And here is a short-ish drive with it towing the 2100kg large box trailer:
I have made a bit of progress with the new configuration. I have added a few new meshes and updated others. One of those meshes is the crank for the bucket tilt! It is a combination of the spool and a prop crank that spins when you raise and lower the tilt. On that note, the bucket is now tilted using tension as well! instead of being a single beam connecting the bucket to the crank, it is a series of them. this means that there is now a visible "cable" connecting the bucket to the crank. I am deciding if I want to introduce a coltri for the cable or just be lazy and let it fall through the frame as I do not have good node placement for a triangle that wont interfere with other parts. Otherwise, I have been tweaking the IRS rear and the articulated wishbone suspensions and have implemented front/rear independently tunable brake forces! The brake force change alone makes a huge difference in handling, especially for trail braking. There is still a lot of weird shaking in the independent rear, which has been the bane of that suspension setup and I am taking a closer look at what I can do to fight it.
Been silent for a while as most of the work has been very incremental. However, it seems that the new update has improved the race kart tires even further! I am still testing values, but I am finally able to use vanilla friction coefficients for the first time while getting g-forces that expected from racing karts. What this means is that grip will be even more consistent, slides will be even less fatal, and axle hop will be significantly reduced. I will still keep the higher friction coefficients in the Super and Ultra tires, but the configs will all use the udpated values.
Sorry to bump this thread, but has there been any progress or any updates? --- Post updated --- Mostly just talking about the tractor config of it.
Unfortunately, college is taking a huge chunk of my time and energy. I am occasionally making minor tweaks here and there, but progress is glacial at the moment.
hello, i'm playing with a steering wheel. I have this bug with every cart : when i spawn them, there in game steering is or in far right or in far left. and force feedback is really strong. i nearly can't turn. i can only have my steering in right or left.
I think a cool kart engine to add to the mix of engines would be a Honda GX270. Other cool features I think you could add when you aren't busy with college would be speed governors, left hand "normal" kart engine(s), fuel tank on top "normal" kart engine(s), more engines (GX270, DR leaf vaccum engine, more Honda less CC engines etc), a funny config that uses an engine from a leaf blower to power the kart, a belt drive system for the clutch, broken engine (Engines that are from old karts and have gotten hit multiple times by other karts), and backfire tunes for broken engines. I went to a go-kart place where the karts where from 2006 and '05 and one kept backfiring over and over again.
I apologize for that! I no longer have a wheel myself, so I am unable to test the force feedback. I may add additional engines some day, but as of right now I feel there are enough options to choose from until I finalize the mod as I feel it has become complex enough for now. But I will say the leaf blower motor paired with a cvt sounds funny and feasible. If there is something you want to add to the kart, I would fully endorse whatever you wish to publish, or if you'd rather make it and pass it to me, like bitelaserkhalif did, I will ensure that you are credited for it.
Ok! Sounds like a plan! I can try but i'm kinda lazy. Also, some engine models like the Predator model could be updated. I really don't have any mod making expirence but I will try to learn with AI. P.S, this mod is one of the best go-kart mods out there! I'm also very glad you said about working on it because with some members of the community, we can make this the best go-kart mod out there! Some other moders like DrownseaSam and kirbyguy22 (Both go-kart modders) can possibly if they want add onto this mod.
Really hate to bump, but is it still in progress of being updated? I really wish to try out the tractor config.
You're good! I took time off from working on this kart to focus on school and other projects. I also wanted to wait until 0.39 in case the update broke anything. Since I started working on the kart again in earnest, I was debating bumping the thread for a status update. My main PC, the one I am using to work on this mod, has died. The drive with the WIP files is unaffected, and I am waiting for a week or two so I can afford the replacement parts I need to fix it. Unfortunately, this laptop doesn't have a slot to add the drive with the mod files on it, so progress is halted until then. I have a massive changelog on that drive, but the basics of the changes so far are: Frame Made the frame less rigid while also improving deformation under crashing Reduced total beam count Suspension Welded Front Removed most torsion beams Improved stability under braking Reworked steering geometry Moved the steering connector from the front of the wheels to the rear, which allows for a much longer steering arm that ends up being stronger, more resistant to forces from the wheels, and allows for a much larger steering angle. Fixed the Ackermann angle Might make this adjustable since it is adjustable on race karts. Added kingpin angle adjustment This can go from something you'd expect to see on a racing kart (5-9 degrees) all the way up to 25 for the fun of it Improved the rigidity of the front arms I originally intended to use the front arms as a kind of torsion bar adjustment as you'd see on a racing kart, but it ended up being way too soft to provide the jacking effect Improved meshes and textures Standard Reworked steering This is still WIP, as the way I need to set up the anti-inversion is finicky If all goes well, the steering will only minimally affect the suspension movement. Engines 350cc Corrected torque values to more closely match the real-world bike Fixed extremely low inertia values that caused the clutch assist to freak out while in gear Added 350cc-specific internals to match sport and race modifications using real-world dyno graphs 600cc Reduced poly count by 90% Improved textures Also corrected the low inertia Electric Motors I found torque curves for the motors I based these on, so now they are accurate to real life. They are still pretty underpowered for the weight (They are designed for a kart that weighs maybe 200 lbs, and this one is 420-ish) Crazy motor is unchanged Transmissions Sequential They now have an accompanying shifter lever on the left foot and a clutch lever on the left handlebar. They now have a clicking sound when shifting Tires Kart Tires I am currently working on these. Aiming for a slip angle between 9-12 degrees (hard to get a feel for this, so I am working on a ui app that will show this value The primary tires are now stable up to 80mph, but I want to push it to 100 without adding weight or using aero There are now tires that are larger and heavier, which are intended to be used by variants that exceed 150mph Bubble Tires The bubble tires on the base 350cc config now absorb much more shock while still retaining some level of bounciness Still unstable above 70mph. hope to be able to fix that without sacrificing the low-speed and jump behaviors Removed a ton of the extraneous tires from the list. It was too much to manage, and the huge selection didn't really add anything. Dummy Resolved an issue where triangle collision on the dummy itself caused the head to pop off if there wasn't an engine installed. No idea why that happened; maybe the bounded beams absorbed the vibrations? Significantly improved the efficiency of the dummy lean lua. On my system (Ryzen 5700G 3060Ti), I can now handle a dozen of these karts with the dummy lean with a small impact to framerate, whereas before 6 was the max I could get before the same map and kart would drop frames to sub-30. General Added new lighting system Simplified a lot of the meshes I made. Most have their poly counts reduced by half without sacrificing quality. Restructured mod folder so that the wheels/tires I made are unique to the kart. I may revert this for the larger tires, since they could work on the pigeon/wigeon. ToDo: Finish tire changes Updating kart tires and adjusting the remaining tires Finish steering changes Currently, only the 10 and 15 degree caster settings have the new kingpin angle adjustment. Also need to finish the steering inversion fix. Finish mesh updates The new changes to steering geometry will involve new meshes that more closely match the jbeam Finish engine changes Need to copy the changes to all 3 versions of each engine Finish Tractor At the very least, the front suspension geometry needs to change. I need to decide how I am going to handle the winch cable passing through the frame. It needs to be floppy in order to more accurately simulate how the bucket functioned. It was only held in tension, so any force pushing the bucket up was not resisted at all. I am adding another bucket that is just the wl40 bucket scaled down. Anything else I come across while testing
Found something rad and something you might find cool as well. There's people who make go karts out of lawn/garden tractors and lawn mowers, and I figured it would be cool if you made lawn tractor/lawn mower go kart configs, if it's possible. Just an idea I had.
PC is fixed now and running better than ever! As my classes are ramping up now, I don't have a ton of time to work on the kart, but I am still making progress. The tires continue to be my main obstacle since they have to be so light and are very small. In order to try to mitigate that issue for faster karts, I am introducing 11x8 rear tires and 10x5 front tires, which are much more stable so far. That might be possible. I could probably just use a smaller engine in the tractor frame since the rider position is in the rear, then stay with the smaller wheels. Also, I might be ditching the 8 inch tall tires altogether. They are just way too small and unstable at speeds above 50-ish and that can't be mitigated unless I sacrifice low speed performance. I am currently testing SKUSA required 11x8 rear and 10x5 front tires and without changing the beam values, they already perform much more stably although they have a tendency to lose grip more easily. I stuck them on the 1000cc kart and it went above 200mph without getting jittery and with minimal deformation on the front wheels. PC is back up and running better than before! Thanks to the new cpu (5800xt) and motherboard, I can finally use XMP and the gpu (3060ti) is now my bottleneck. At this point, progress is gonna become glacial for the next couple months as the projects I am assigned for school are ramping up in complexity. I'll still be putting in work here and there, but I can't say how much I'll be able to get done.
Would you be able to add the classic slot wheels as an option if it's possible? Mostly because I've seen it on most of the tractors and other go kart-sized machines.
