Beamng vs reality: Real world personal experiences

do you have any confirmed date for the next patch? sorry if i sound impatient

 

The new patch sounds promising.

For the record I never doupted the suspension model. That is a matter of tweaking, and is pretty basic geometry, really. The real issue is the contact patch, and simulation billions of molecules with a few nodes.

 

I think tdev said it's going to be released at the end of this month.

 

Thanks! This was kind of the reason for my initial post, I felt there were strong similarities but didn't want to pose an argument from that corner as it only invites the same kind of response and the same kind of thread as has been on this forum many times over.

saying that the tyre model is getting a review and that the games stated vehicle speed is not accurate to air speed is good news, it means we are driving faster than we think and as such a 40mph bump in beamng may differ from one in reality as the comparable speed may be 45 for instance.

I think the suspension model that has been implemented is pretty good, It would be great if there were a way to implement a McPherson strut system as many cars us this instead of the dual wishbone setup on all the beamng cars (I know there's also leaf spring) I also commented elsewhere about alterations to chassis/suspension geometry as this has an enormous effect in reality to a vehicles handling, but Gavril mentioned that its implemented through the .jbeam so not a straight forward tweeking of settings as I had hoped. In reality a 1/4 turn of my steering arm gives me x amount of 10ths of a degree of toe adjustment, simple, accurate and effective. But this seems harder to refine for the layman (im new to .jbeam etc) hopefully I can learn more.... or the devs may make it more accessible for users?

 

I for one Love it.

 

Yeah, I feel that overall there's a fairly solid Physics base under beamNG, and the main thing that throws it for me right now is general lack of grip - I have a Logitech G27 wheel and pretty much everything suffers from chronic loss of grip. - I speak as both an enthusiastic sim racer and an owner of an old FWD 'hot hatch' which despite it's poor handling (even for the time), would dance rings around the hatch in beamNG.

I don't want this to come across the wrong way, as I have every confidence based on the great work already done to beamNG that they will find a tyre model / etc that 'holds the road' better and that come it's eventual release - it'll be something special.

Keep up the good work folks

 

I've always said BeamNg is very close to realism. I think one thing that would help make it even better is if we could simulate sideways grip vs wheelspin-grip seperately. That Golf video for example, it has a lot of grip sideways, you can easily take corners at pretty high speed as demonstrated. But I'm sure that if you floor it in 1st gear, it'll spin its tires like any fwd car would. I think in BeamNg, cars can be made to take corners at the same speeds very easily, with like, an 0.2 increase in frictionCoef on the tires... However, then the wheelspin-nyness and braking distances(with locked brakes) will be less realistic. Another problem is, if we do increase the frictionCoef, the cars are much more likely to flip over. I've been working on a Caterham R500 Superlight thing as a fun little side project(modding someone else's n/b and a mesh that isn't even mine, don't bother asking), but to get decent grip in a 480kg car with 260hp, I've had to use about 3.00 frictionCoef for the rear tires(mind, they are only 255mm wide), which I doubt would be correct when you compare grip levels between a real street-legal race-tire compared to a normal street tire. On top of that, it tends to fly up and barrel roll if you're out of control, sliding sideways... Yet even with such an insane amount of traction to take corners properly, it's still super easy to spin the tires into 2nd gear...

Someone correct me if I'm wrong in thinking real tires have different amounts of grip for sideways and forward movement(and I think there's a big difference between race tires and street tires too? I mean, currently the values work fine for most passenger cars in the game, yet the little Caterham or any other high performance racecar with no downforce is bound to have trouble to get enough traction while accelerating compared to realistic cornering grip?)


That said, this thread was very interesting. Wish I noticed it when it was first posted, so I could've participated in the discussion.

 

you havent missed out as you are contributing to the conversation. I was looking at making more videos to further provide pesonal visual comparisons but im waiting for my new camera before taking on this project. So this is very much still an open subject, your input is appreciated

 

that's really great information, I had read before that using the physics data to implement force feedback could be an option and I think that will make a big impact on immersion. One thing I notice is even thought I know I only use about 30% throttle in real life I often plant my foot harder in game with about 60%-80% most of the time. Im sure force feed back would have a positive impact on how we integrate with the game......... not long before we can jack in like the matrix!

 

Dude I can stay in a BeamNG Road going 45Mph with my steering wheel in game...
in a lane

 

I feel this thread has some sort of relevance to the topic at hand.
http://www.beamng.com/threads/633-Developers-Challenge-you?highlight=challenge

 

So can I, but not while drinking coffee and talking to my passengers. The point is, in the game just staying on the track require alot more effort than real life.
Although the latest few builds have been ALOT better in this regard!

 

I have measured all the braking distances at 60 mph and they math perfectly the average value from real cars, grip is fine.

 

And again, we're not discussing "grip". The static and dynamic friction coefficients seem pretty accurate.

 

Interesting video and thoughts.

One thing I just want to say initially is that people can't judge the game or the reality without often being wrong. There are so many factors!

Many people expect much more, they expect more damage, higher speeds and so on. I have played many sim-racers, and it's very accurate. Although people wouldn't say it was, it often sound very good too. And the thing is that it would be much louder in a real world scenario. And I can tell you this, you wouldn't dare drive nearly as fast in real life as you do in-game.

Also, I have crashed before, I know how it is like. I know how the car can be very damaged in just one area, and look fine an arm length from it. Cars can handle a lot of force, a crash in 80 mph doesn't have to do much to the car or the person inside. It depends how and where the energy is absorbed. And while having this said a crash in less than 40 mph could kill you.


From what I've seen the driving physics look good. I haven't got to test this properly with my G27, so I don't want to comment too much on this.

One thing I noticed was how it auto-revs. It can be compared to how normal person drives the car. To get the car to spin you would have to loose traction, because the game doesn't rev the engine before letting of the clutch. Actually, it doesn't do this at all. And what you get then is a slow reacting car because the torque in a petrol engine is very low. At least when you're first starting of at low rpm! So yes, how the car react here looks realistic.

I wonder how I can push the car with my wheel, and how they have made the clutch, engine rpm and trottle to work together. Eg. Life For Speed is pretty realistic here. And I know many people would say it's not, but that's because they're expecting something else in their imagination. Maybe this is because hollywood have ruined the perception of realism? I look at action/car movies and I'm not satisfied, because it does not look real to me. The driving is not natural, it's not how a real racing driver would drive a car. It's just show off, and a lot of effects. The last example is in the latest Fast And Furious movie, where the driving is just mostly bad. Especially in the beginning. They didn't even follow the racing line, the broke the law of physics and exceeded the amount of grip they had. Like the cars had super powers.

I miss the movies where the stuntmen were actually driving as fast as it looked like, no effects, not editing, everything of the driving were real.

I will probably get back to this when I have tested the game better.

 

What about rollover on high speed?
For example www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOlcZC4C3f8#t=6m35s

I mean, when car starting rollover on that high speed, it wil do something like Barrel Roll. On the video it's like, wind blows very strong and the car little bit plane...

 

Oh goodness, please don't ever use anything I've made in an argument about real life physics. I don't want anyone to think I take my mods seriously or compare them to reality.

That Moonhawk was probably going over 200MPH, at that speed it tends to skip over the ground like a rock on water.