Well... that's actually something I was surprised about. On road surfaces where the tracks can't dig into anything, they have about the same grip as a normal tire. I actually had to look this up and do the math to make sure that this is correct, but it turns out it is. See, on a solid surface like pavement, frictional force is calculated as F = μ*N where N is the normal force (in this case just the weight of the vehicle) and μ is the Coefficient of friction. The interesting thing to note here is that nowhere in there is surface area taken into equation. So basically, bicycle tires and tank tracks on a solid surface with the same weight and the same coefficient of friction will act pretty much the same. The difference comes in in how strong the material is for each system at the meting point. When a tire breaks loose, usually its from the rubber physically starting to get pulled apart and break as rubber gets its extraordinary traction by being able to conform to the roads surface... thus increasing its grip somewhat beyond the normal maximum Coeff of Friction of 1.0. This is where tracks have their advantage. If both the bicycle tire and tracks use the same rubber, naturally when you start putting a force parallels to the surface against both of them, the bicycle tire will break away first because the rubber at the contact point physically fails first. Where as on the tracks, since it is distributed across a much larger area, can take a much larger force before it gives in. Interestingly though, since each part of the track has much less pressure, since it is spread out over a much larger surface area, that means that that area isn't pressed into the ground as hard, and thus can't hold up as much force... so in the end... it all equals out. Honestly, when I was driving it around for the first time, even in the D Series, you can slide the thing around just like its on tires... infact, since it doesn't have any sidewall give to slow the loading of forces on the nodes, on perfectly flat surfaces it will actually break loose and slide a bit easier than normal tires in corners. (Incase your wondering... yes, this is the same reason that things like the "Tweel" haven't taken off) Its when you get into the gooey stuff that these things come into their own. Much the same as a runner running on gravel starting with just flat ground vs a runner who gets to start with his feet in those little starting blocks for them to push off of, naturally, the starting blocks are gonna help the runner launch to an early lead while the other runner will still be struggling to get their footing. That is exactly how these tracks work. They dig into the surface, and just claw through anything with way more teeth at the contact area than any tire can provide. So yeah, anyways, point being that on pavement its actually surprising the lack of traction that these actually provide... but in sand or dirt... it more than makes up for it.
They do... and they are actually pretty competitive... There is a local guy that used to bring his sled down to the airport drag races near me. I don't have a clue how much power that thing was putting down, but he was in the low 9's with that thing, so he definitely had the speed and he definitely had the traction. As for if we can do something like that... ehhhh... maybe. I will absolutely NOT make any promises on that one as the current way that I am doing tracks makes them kinda prone to really high forces at speed. Almost equivalent to running a 44" tire with 1psi in it. At low speeds the vehicle can move it along fairly easily, but at higher speeds it struggles to get much above 40. These tracks are not designed for speed... nothing about their geometry is designed for speed. I could probably make some for speed? But they would look nothing like the Mattracks style tracks that you are seeing here. They would have to use much larger rollers to get that change of direction to be much more gradual so that the forces could be reduced massively.
very cool. regular tracks are already amazing to see ingame, so slicks is kinda not needed, but if it ever is put in, they would be the cherry on top!
I'm pretty new to all of this stuff and probably just don't understand it but how do I download this mod or is it private?
hey. i dont feel like looking through 130 pages of stuff but will this mod be on the REPO? i would like to try this (when it releases) but i can only use the repository because i use geforce now and my pc is a family pc from 2011
idk, but its not releasing soon, it literally has a lore name, but idk if that means its coming onto the repo or not
