Experimental Kagoni’s Tyre Simulation 1.5.0-HOTFIX 2

Kagoni's Tyre Simulation

A research-guided dynamic tyre simulation for BeamNG.drive adding temperature, pressure, structural behaviour, contact-patch dynamics and physical tread wear.

The current resource page has been simplified for users uninterested in the technical side and get straight to the point of how to use the app.
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→ READ THE FULL KTS TECHNICAL DOCUMENTATION ←
→ DEVELOPMENT THREAD & FEEDBACK/BUG REPORT ←
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An easy car should be easy for physical reasons.

A difficult car should be difficult for physical reasons.

And when the behaviour changes, the tyre should be able to tell us why.
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HOW TO USE

1. Download / subscribe, enable KTS, then add the Kagoni Tyre Simulation HUD from the UI Apps menu.
   
2. Spawn the vehicle or reload it with Ctrl + R.
   
3. Click the HUD graphics to open the tyre menu.
   
4. Choose REALISTIC for the full model or ARCADE for a more forgiving version of the same tyre simulation.
   
5. Leave the tyre preset on AUTO for normal use. KTS will classify the installed tyre and apply the matching construction / temperature behaviour.
   
6. Use PREHEAT when you want prepared tyres, detailed description below.
7. Front / Rear PSI can be adjusted from the tyre menu.
   • In normal mode, pressure changes apply immediately.
   • In RACING MODE, the entered PSI is treated as the cold / tune PSI for the next pit stop.
8. For a pit stop, enable RACING MODE, stage the tyre / compound / PSI you want, then stop the car. PIT MANAGER performs a 15-second tyre service and applies the staged setup.
   
9. Single-click WEAR to switch between physical tread wear and infinite-rubber regeneration.
   
10. Double-click WEAR to temporarily disable KTS until the vehicle is reloaded or changed.
    
11. Triple-click anywhere on the HUD to enable Debug.
12. Double-click the Debug HUD to open the full-screen detailed telemetry view.
    
13. Very unusual / lightweight vehicles may occasionally need manual Struct PSI correction in Debug if the automatic structural-pressure estimate is clearly wrong.

PREHEAT & ADVANCED PREHEAT:

• QUICK heats mainly the tyre's outer working layers, useful for quickly preparing a tyre without fully heat-soaking the complete tyre structure.
  
• SOAKED brings the tread, core, sidewalls, rim and cavity air toward the selected temperature, similar to a fully heat-soaked tyre / tyre-warmer state.
  
• For normal use, leave Advanced Preheat closed. The main PREHEAT temperature applies to all four tyres.
  
• Open Advanced Preheat when you want different temperatures around the car.
  • No links — set FL / FR / RL / RR independently.
    
  • Link Left / Right — both tyres on each axle are linked, giving separate Front and Rear temperatures.
    
  • Link Front / Rear — both tyres on each side are linked, giving separate Left and Right temperatures.
• Only one link direction can be active at a time.
  
• Closing the Advanced Preheat dropdown immediately returns PREHEAT to the normal global temperature target.
  
• Advanced Preheat also works with RACING MODE + PIT MANAGER, allowing different tyre temperatures to be staged for the next pit stop.

IMPORTANT
ONLY ENABLE ONE VERSION OF A LUUK-BASED
TYRE MOD AT A TIME.
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Older KTS builds and other mods derived from Luuk's Tyre Thermals and Wear framework can share extension paths and conflict with one another.

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FEATURES

• Live temperature-dependent physical tyre stiffness that changes the actual BeamNG tread structure, with automatic precompression compensation.
  
• Separate construction / temperature calibration for Standard / Road, Sport / Performance Road, Semi-Slick / Sport Plus 2R, Race Slick, Drift and Rally tyre families.
  
• Wheel-local slip, saturation, contact-patch and friction-work behaviour for braking, acceleration, cornering and combined slip.
  
• Microscopic flash temperature, fast road-facing surface temperature and slower tread / carcass heat soak.
  
• 12 through-depth tread thermal cells across Outer / Middle / Inner zones.
  
• Independent core, inner sidewall, outer sidewall, cavity-air and rim thermal states.
  
• Rotating circumferential HOTSPOTS and COLDSPOTS with localized heat / cooling memory through multiple tread depths.
  
• Live tyre pressure that preserves BeamNG's native pressure / volume behaviour while adding cavity-air thermal pressure change.
  
• No KTS upper PSI cap — high-pressure truck / bus tyres are no longer clipped by passenger-car pressure limits inside KTS.
  
• Physical tread-depth wear with independent Outer / Middle / Inner condition, uneven wear and localized tread scars.
  
• Wear-dependent rubber mass, groove depth, groove taper, cooling, dry-grip behaviour and physical stiffness.
  
• Tyre-family-dependent dry grip versus wear, so worn road tyres do not lose dry grip like an exhausted racing slick.
  
• Final road-family temperature calibration plus Cup 2 R-style Sport Plus 2R / Semi-Slick warm-up and overheat behaviour.
  
• QUICK / SOAKED PREHEAT, editable Front / Rear PSI and RACING MODE + PIT MANAGER.
  
• REALISTIC and ARCADE modes using the same modern physical tyre framework.
  
• Multi-rate thermal / wear updates, cached slow-changing values and reduced Debug overhead for better performance.
  
• Detailed HUD and full-screen Debug telemetry for temperature, pressure, tread depth, wear, load distribution and structural state.

HUD



The HUD shows the live tyre state at a glance:

• remaining tyre condition and physical tread depth
• live PSI
• Outer / Middle / Inner tread condition
• surface / tread / core / sidewall / cavity thermal state
• localized temperature / wear behaviour
• live structural / load information

REALISTIC

The full research-guided KTS tyre model and its intended handling calibration.


ARCADE

A more forgiving version of the same modern tyre model, with reduced temperature-related grip / stiffness severity.

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CURRENT LIMITATIONS

KTS is an experimental reduced-order tyre simulation built on top of BeamNG's existing vehicle physics. It is not a commercial finite-element tyre model.

• Exact construction still has to be inferred from the geometry and structural information exposed by BeamNG / JBeam.
  
• Some unusual third-party tyres, very small tyres and heavily modified pressure-wheel structures can produce inaccurate structural estimates.
  
• Manufacturer compound data is usually proprietary, so many curves are research-guided normalized calibrations rather than reproductions of a specific commercial tyre.
  
• Actual rim width / tyre stretch is not yet independently modeled, so extreme stretched or pinched fitments may be estimated incorrectly.
  
• Circumferential heat / wear is represented with a sparse reduced-order rotating state, not a full three-dimensional per-millimetre tyre mesh.
  
• Detailed sidewall abrasion and sidewall structural damage are not yet simulated.
  
• Full aquaplaning / water-film dynamics are not yet implemented.
  
• Loose-surface behaviour still relies heavily on BeamNG's native ground physics underneath KTS's Rally thermal / wear model, so unusual custom materials can require fallback classification.
  
• Some specialist areas — including slick wear-rate refinement, longitudinal B-slip calibration, drift-specific calibration and very small / kart tyres — are still being developed further.
  
• Very unusual lightweight vehicles may still need manual structural-pressure correction.
  
• Future BeamNG tyre-physics changes may require KTS compatibility updates.

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CHANGELOGS

v1.5.0 PUBLIC

• Added live temperature-dependent physical tread stiffness with automatic precompression compensation.
  
• Rebuilt the tyre thermal network around separate tread, core, sidewall, cavity-air and rim states.
  
• Moved heating / wear toward more wheel-local slip, load, force and BeamNG-native friction-work behaviour.
  
• Expanded circumferential state with rotating HOTSPOTS and COLDSPOTS through multiple tread depths.
  
• Changed wear-related behaviour to use physical tread depth, including wear-dependent rubber mass, grooves, cooling and stiffness.
  
• Recalibrated dry grip versus tread wear so road tyres retain more realistic dry grip while race tyres can lose more performance near end-of-life.
  
• Finalized Standard / Sport road-temperature behaviour and Cup 2 R-style Sport Plus 2R / Semi-Slick warm-up / overheat calibration.
  
• Improved destructive wear energy accounting so removed rubber consumes mechanical energy instead of creating an artificial heat / wear feedback loop.
  
• Unified normal and Race Mode PREHEAT behaviour.
  
• Race Mode PSI is now cold / tune PSI: the fresh tyre is set cold, PSI is applied, then QUICK / SOAKED preheat raises hot pressure naturally.
  
• Removed all KTS upper PSI caps, including the old hidden structural-pressure limits.
  
• Added / refined RACING MODE + PIT MANAGER staged tyre / compound / PSI service.
  
• Continued steering / tyre-feel calibration using real-car feedback from @tabz96 / @t4bzgregory and later direct-drive FFB refinement with comm-ander using a Simucube 2 Pro.
  
• Built independent Assetto Corsa and expanded BeamNG development telemetry for cross-simulator / full-lap validation.
  
• Optimized the simulation with multi-rate updates, cached slow-changing values and reduced Debug overhead.
  
• Removed the development recorder / automated calibration tools from the public package.
  
• Cleaned the HUD, wheel ordering, load indicator, public metadata and source package while retaining the research-reference comments used by code divers.

v1.5.0 Preview 1

• Added live temperature-dependent physical tread stiffness, allowing KTS to modify the actual BeamNG tyre structure as temperature changes.
  
• Added automatic tread-precompression compensation so stiffness changes do not unnecessarily alter tyre shape or loaded radius.
  
• Added separate Standard, Sport / Performance Road and Semi-Slick construction and temperature calibration.
  
• Fixed physical stiffness and B100 / cornering-stiffness double-counting so the same temperature effect is not applied twice.
  
• Rebuilt the tyre thermal network with separate core, inner sidewall, outer sidewall, cavity-air and rim temperatures.
  
• Added geometry-dependent sidewall rolling heat, conduction and external cooling.
  
• Changed thermal and wear calculations to use true per-wheel angular velocity.
  
• Replaced whole-car lateral-G heating with more accurate wheel-local slip-power heating.
  
• Recalibrated normal-driving wear versus wheelspin, lockups and destructive sliding.
  
• Added rotating circumferential heat and localized tread-wear scars.
  
• Added localized temperature influence on physical tread stiffness and wear vulnerability.
  
• Reworked tyre pressure so KTS adds thermal pressure changes while preserving BeamNG’s native pressure / volume behaviour.
  
• Added editable Front / Rear live PSI controls.
  
• Added RACING MODE and PIT MANAGER with staged tyre / compound / PSI selection and a 15-second tyre service.
  
  
• Updated Arcade mode to use the modern tyre model with reduced temperature penalties instead of a separate legacy handling path.
  
• Reorganized the HUD and tuning interface and removed obsolete / duplicated controls.
  
• Built a new automated calibration toolchain with a self-growing database of 200+ observed BeamNG tyre IDs.
  
• Between v1.4 and the v1.5.0 preview, development went through 113 confirmed internal builds, including more than 10 hours of controlled in-game data collection and calibration testing across multiple vehicles, tyre sizes and constructions.
  
• Added real-world tyre and steering-wheel feedback from @tabz96 / @t4bzgregory and friends as an additional calibration reference.

v1.4

• Added dedicated Rally Asphalt and Rally Gravel tyre families with Super Soft / Soft / Medium / Hard compounds.
  
• Added a new Road ↔ Dirt rally physics system, allowing the same physical tyre state to transition continuously between pavement, gravel, dirt, sand and mud.
  
• Added terrain-specific rally tyre heat generation and temperature behaviour while preserving BeamNG's native loose-surface ground physics.
  
• Added physical rally tread-block height wear and signed directional X+ / X− / Y+ / Y− block-edge wear.
  
• Added separate block-height and active-edge condition effects so rally tyres can lose different types of loose-surface performance depending on how they are driven.
  
• Added open-tread thermal behaviour for Rally Gravel tyres, including reduced tread rubber mass, reduced conduction area and additional groove-air cooling.
  
• Added wear-dependent groove depth and wheelspin-sensitive forced airflow through gravel tread grooves.
  
• Improved Rally AUTO tyre detection for vehicles using nested tyre / pressure-wheel part structures.
  
• Improved terrain detection and mixed-surface handling, including fallback classification for custom-map ground materials.
  
• Fixed premature downward grip correction before calculated tyre saturation. Downward correction now remains blocked until the model reaches its calculated peak.
  
• Prevented Rally road and dirt tyre corrections from operating simultaneously or double-counting tyre-condition losses.
  
• Recalibrated Rally Gravel dry-road behaviour while keeping loose-surface grip limited by BeamNG's native terrain physics.
  
• Normalized Rally compound-local peak multipliers so compound differences now come primarily from temperature, stiffness, B100, wear and overheat behaviour rather than additional static grip multipliers.
  
• Expanded rally, contact, thermal, wear and structural telemetry for development and calibration.
  
• Added a transparent fullscreen four-wheel diagnostic HUD with detailed per-tyre thermal, grip, pressure, wear and rally-surface information.
  
• Added HUD double/triple-click Debug controls without interfering with the existing Wear button behaviour.

v1.3

• Fixed the post-B100 minimum grip floor that could artificially add grip back during large slides.
  
• Added global model-owned full-slip behaviour for Standard, Sport, Race and Drift tyres.
  
• Improved cold Sport/UHP grip, stiffness and B100 behaviour.
  
• Fixed artificial high-angle self-stabilisation during large slides.
  
• Worn tyres now generate less tread-dependent rolling and deformation heat.
  
• Recalibrated Standard, Sport and Race Soft / Medium / Hard wear behaviour.
  
• Added improved crown/belt support for Sport and Race tyres under high load.
  
• Retains the v1.2 race-tyre core-temperature, rolling-heat and duplicate torque-heater fixes.
  
• Retains the dynamic wear-temperature model, PREHEAT pressure system and Advanced tuning cleanup.

v1.2

• Fixed excessive GT3/GT4 race tyre core overheating.
  
• Improved rolling-hysteresis heat distribution between tread and core.
  
• Removed the legacy duplicate torque/braking tyre heater.
  
• Added dynamic slip-dependent wear-temperature weighting.
  
• Improved separation between near-peak driving and heavy-sliding wear.
  
• Further calibrated race-tyre post-peak behaviour using GT4 reference testing.
  
• PREHEAT now calculates and applies hot cavity-air, rim-temperature and operating-pressure states.
  
• Added per-tyre cold → hot-target → overpressure PSI colour indication.
  
• Advanced tuning values are now normalized to 100% = native.
  
• Removed legacy duplicate tuning multipliers and obsolete Advanced controls.
  
• General code cleanup and additional thermal / pressure telemetry improvements.

v1.1

• Fixed excessive brake heat being double-counted into the tyre core.
  
• Brake heat now propagates through the rim / cavity-air / carcass thermal network instead of directly heating the core.
  
• Recalibrated Sport / semi-slick wear.
  
• Reaching B100 no longer immediately applies full abrasion wear; wear progressively increases with contact-patch saturation and actual sliding velocity.
  
• Target Sport wear recalibrated toward approximately 2–4% for a clean aggressive lap and 3–5% when regularly driving around peak grip.
  
• Added improved smooth-gradient PREHEAT behaviour.
  
• No changes to the Sport grip-handling calibration.

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CREDITS & PROJECT LINEAGE

Zesty_Maple98 — Tyre Wear and Thermals Redux

Kagoni Tyre Simulation originally grew from:

Tyre Wear and Thermals Redux

by Zesty_Maple98, itself a continuation and expansion of Luuk's original Tyre Thermals and Wear Mod.

Huge thanks to Zesty_Maple98 for the substantial Redux work on thermal, wear, camber/load and cooling behaviour that formed the immediate starting point from which KTS evolved.

lucky4luuk / Luuk — Tyre Thermals and Wear Mod

Zesty's Redux ultimately originates from:

Luuk's Tyre Thermals and Wear Mod

Original project by lucky4luuk / Luuk.

Huge thanks to Luuk for creating the original project and making the groundwork available for the community to continue developing.

BeamNG.drive

All underlying vehicle, node/beam, wheel, contact and driving physics are provided by BeamNG.drive.

Kagoni Tyre Simulation is an independent community modification and is not affiliated with or endorsed by BeamNG GmbH.

Research Authors & Facilities

KTS has been developed with the help of publicly available tyre, rubber, friction, thermal, structural and wear research produced by researchers, universities, laboratories and testing organisations around the world.

The complete research bibliography, individual source links and acknowledgements are documented in the KTS Technical Documentation & Research thread.

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Kagoni Tyre Simulation is intended for simulation, entertainment and experimentation.

It must not be used for real vehicle engineering, motorsport safety decisions, real-world tyre setup recommendations or vehicle safety analysis.

If you find a bug, an unusual tyre, a compatibility problem or something that simply does not make physical sense, feedback is always appreciated.

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