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Old 08-10-2002, 22:09     View Warnings    #1
Bathrone
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Thumbs Up My Constructive Feedback about LFS

Hi everyone, joined the forum just now

This game is great! Wow, such a good time Im having on an NVIDIA sys Ive got that can play this game.

I contacted the good folks at LFS, because I felt I could give them some insights. Im an engineer, Im a motorsport nut and I like playing car sims now and then when Im supposed to be working heh

Anyway I thought I would offer my comments here to see what people think.

Cheers

************

When we start considering ground vehicles, the kinetmatics of motion and the mechanical engineering issues of ground motion, this is a large area. Honestly 99.9% of car enthusiasts have no clue how the car actually works. Thats no criticism of eager people, its just often ehthusiasts talk about cars and modifications without understanding the basis from which they work. Please understand I dont know where you guys are at in terms of understanding motorsport so could I please offer some books that I humbly think are a good platform to get the knowledge of whats really going on, and my apologies if you think youre allready ok, but if you atleast havent read Carroll Smiths stuff you would get alot out of just those!

If you guys are serious and want to get into the mind of a professional motorsport team manager, you simply must buy Carroll Smiths books. Especially "Tune to Win" and "Prepare to Win". http://www.racerpartswholesale.com/book1.htm Ive got them all, its all top shelf info.

Also, there is the Physics of Racing series, an internet thing. http://www.miata.net/sport/Physics/

There is also two books dedicated to modelling physics in computer games I think is a must have (Ive only got the first the second is pre order);

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...989530?v=glance

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...989530?v=glance

Please understand I think the game is just great, and any comments below I think are just suggestions. I realise the project is in development, which is why I thought my time spent giving my feedback might be useful to your project.

On my NVIDIA sys that can play the game, the takeoff seemed ok. I did however notice something right away though that so far no computer game has ever managed to pull off. Guys, if you could model car physics properly, your game will be hot hot hot! Im 100% confident it would be like a new ID Software, and go on to lead the whole genre. ID Software are a bit like you guys I think. If you model cars properly in the game, there is no current competitor with that feature.

When I took off, yer sure, the tires have traction modelling. Good stuff. But where is the weight transfer and the simulation of suspension changes during the acceleration? It isnt there. For a detailed explanation you really need to have read the books above, but heres a quick and ditry method.

Imagine the car as being a body with mass in space. There are various forces being applied to the car, even when at rest. These include the coefficient of friction of the tire, where, the tire has a certain amount of grip. The coefficient of friction is an engineering term used to relate grip against force required to break that grip. The coefficient of friction will change depending on the surface the tire is on, from grass, to mud to bitumen. But it will also change due to differences within the surface as its not perfect - cracks in the tracks, puddles of water and so on. This would be a good feature, a tree for example overhanging the track means that part is cold and wet, and that corner doesnt have the grip of the dry corners.

Ok, so the coefficient of friction is entirely dependant upon the tire and road surface. Here is another major point. The amount of tire on the road doesnt effect grip! All wider tires will do is give more heat conduction to control temperature, and it will slow the vehicle due to rolling resistance. Here is a point - the vehicles modelled do not have correct rolling resistance in the game. Rolling resistance is tires and coefficient of drag, an aerodyanic measure. It does not include the drivetrain, because rolling resistance is only for nuetral not compression braking in gear,

The coefficient of friction will change to the temperature of the road surface and the tire temperature - something your game doesnt appear to do. Also the coefficient of friction will not be even across the tires whole width, especially if the geometry of the tire from the suspension is wrong or the incorrect inflation pressures are wrong. Your game does not appear to model tire temperatures, or tire pressures relating to heat.

Another point, good COF tires wear quickly. Your game doesnt model wear. And the driving style of the driver will also influence heat and tire wear.

Ok, but here is the main point. Sorry, there is alot to this area and alot of things to mention why the game isnt accurate. Ok, so at takeoff, your tires are set, with temps, coefficient of friction, the road surface. At takeoff, its obvious the suspension isnt modelled right.

To understand this, you have to know about roll centers, and tire slip angles. You have to know about the different suspension designs. You have to know about anti squat, anti dive, camber change, castor change, roll center changes in mcpherson strut assemblies and lots of other things. The engineering of a chassis is a detailed subject and non trivial. No computer game on earth properly simulates a cars chassis on the track. I have lots of books on suspension design - Alan Stainforth is one who is great with suspensions. I have won offroad competitions with a slower vehicle, but because the chassis was excellent I have been far more stable and tractable than anyone else, and simply out cornered the competition.

So the coefficient of friction of a tire is fixed to the tire and road surface. But here is the real key to it all. That is not traction! Traction comes from the combination of a coefficient of friction at any one point in time, but also the amount of *FORCE* being applied at any given time. You have to know what the forces are and where they are coming from. And this is why you must read Carrolls books. Also the physics of racing. The suspension *TOTALLY* changes the way forces get applied to a tire. Its more than just calculating weight transfer. For example, in a McPherson strut car, the more the suspension rolls into a corner in response to the forces applied by inertia / roll center / tires slip angle the more the car wants to slide because the *ROLL CENTER CHANGES* when the suspesion cycles under the forces.

This is why within 10 seconds of gameplay I could see the modelling was all wrong. The launch, should have had weight transfer, rapidly decreasing amount of front traction as a result, and it should have gotten worse because that hatchback has McPerson strut suspension. Then when I had accelerated, I swerved from side to side aggressively, and again saw how the modelling of the chassis was not correct but also how the aerodyanimcs was wrong, where at higher speed the laminar and non laminar flow of fluid over the chassis was not modelled either. There is lots of finite details here, Im sorry, to explain it all would take a book and books are allready out there on this subject guys. I cant write a book in this email.

The high speed handling is not correct, both from the chassis problems in your model but also because aerodyanics are not modelled like the real world. However, your going to have problems modelling sub supersonic fluid flow because even supercomputers cant accurately predict the results - the theory isnt workable 100% Car manufactures spend millions of dollars on wind tunnel testing, because they simply cant model it on their engineering CAD systems. However, you can get "CLOSE" and this might be an appropriate objective for your game.

Acceleration, braking, cornering is modelled wrong in the game, as well as high speed involving aerodynamics.

If you guys read atleast Carolls books, and are serious about producing a true realistic simulation Im happy to talk with you further. I have barerly scratched the surface here. I guess you need to make a call about wether the game is going to be "arcade fun" or "realistic". Honestly every game that reckons they are "realistic" either dont understand whats involved or are kidding themselves in marketing the game to the public.

i reckon there is lots of people, who would take crap graphics in a proper racing game, but who could drive cars with proper chassis modelling, aerodyanic modelling and physics modelling. No one has done it yet in the x86 world in real time. Imagine, starting with a live axle chassis ol 60s car, then progressing your "driving career" in the game right up to an open wheeler style high tech racer. And imagine being able to more or less get the simulation to be on the money with real life. I reckon there is plenty of money for someone who can do that!
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Old 08-10-2002, 23:10     View Warnings    #2
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Nice to see you like the game...but one thing...

I'm also a car enthousiast and take that as an insult.
The worst thing you can do is underestimate others.
Do yourself a favor and get down from there.
You obviously can't see real life from your point of
view

While it is true some young 'enthousiasts' today know
RELATIVELY little, they're just starting. Like you were
one day ... we all have very different backgrounds here
and anyone can slap a title on his name. I'm an industrial
designer myself but don't go around saying 99% of people
not like me are ignorants. What you talk about is PHYSICS.
We All learned that in high school. Some of us are just
better at it than others.

I'm not flaming you, i don't know you enough to judge you,
but i'm simply trying to pour some realism into your 'facts'.

I've been there, finding new stuff and boring my friends and girlfriends with my ideologies and theories. It's a normal
phase. I think it was Socrates who said "the smartest man
is the one who knows he doesn't know much !"

Let's trust these guys to do the right thing. I think they
know what they're doing. They also read the forums, so constructive critism in the 'improvement' section is sure
to get to them !

Peace out man
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Old 08-10-2002, 23:20     View Warnings    #3
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Hi

Im not insulting anyone. I race in my club, people there know heaps and have alot of experience. The people who actually compete in motorsport, against those who are enthusiasts but dont have an in depth understanding are 99.9% as I said.

Its not an insult to say that most dont understand whats involved. I wouldnt be insulted if someone said to me I didnt understand about knitting, because I simply dont, and thats a fact.

Its becoming increasingly popular for car enthusiasts to trick up their rides. Three inch exhaust pipes on small capacity four cylinders is a good example of "performance" tuning gone wrong by people who dont understand.

If your going to say Im on a high horse for demonstrating why loosing back pressure in an internal combustion engine is a problem, and the person who designed that modification doesnt understand what hes doing, then Im not going to consider your statement seriously. That is the difference between empirical fact and emotion.

I stand by my statement that 99.9% of people into cars dont understand the issues, and if you are an engineer or physict or similar then you are in the minority.

However I woudlnt be offended, cos you dont have to understand a vehicle and its motion to drive it, do ya? You dont have to be qualified to design and build a car, to be able to drive it. You dont have to have an indepth knowledge of kinematics to drive it either.
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Old 09-10-2002, 00:23     View Warnings    #4
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Welcome Bathrone. Great to have yet another member who will be able to participate in discussions about the more complex aspects of Simracing.
Me, I just race the things

We actually host "The Physics of Racing" by Brian Beckman right here at RSC, so I'm very familiar with it

We have a section here at the forum dedicated to the discussion of "hardcore math & physics" but so far not to many people have found it... or not to many people have been interested in it. Feel free to invite likeminded enthusiasts there and make it a good place to search for knowledge.

Anyways.. good to see so many posts here in the "LFS improvements" section, some of them are bound to affect the continued development of the sim
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Old 09-10-2002, 00:56     View Warnings    #5
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Wow!

Just about everything with this sim is modelled incorrectly. Still it is huge fun.
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Old 09-10-2002, 01:03     View Warnings    #6
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Re: My Constructive Feedback about LFS

Quote:
Originally posted by Bathrone

When I took off, yer sure, the tires have traction modelling. Good stuff. But where is the weight transfer and the simulation of suspension changes during the acceleration? It isnt there. For a detailed explanation you really need to have read the books above, but heres a quick and ditry method.


If I'm not completely mistaken the weight transfer is there "F" for forces view.
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Old 09-10-2002, 01:22     View Warnings    #7
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Thanks guys

Yes, it has to have some sort of weight transfer. However, its the type and depth of weight transfer modelling in the game Im talking about.

My example, where the McPherson strut hatchback, McPherson struts have an achillies heel - the falling away of the roll center under load.

This is not modelled in the game, as I said, the way the suspenion works has the biggest impact on the forces for each tire. My sport is offroad racing, and oddly enough live axles are best for low speed stuff. Why? Because the live axle directly exerts leverage force on opposite ends of the axles, where the wheels are. And hence, one load on one side of the axle is trannsfered by the lever effect (although only a proportion) to the other side. The increase in unsprung mass and the sprung mass to unsprung mass ratio is not relevant when your going slow offroad, so its a winner for my application.

What would be *REALLY* trick, is for a game to entirely model the whole suspension of the chassis. That way, things like camber change could be dialled in to real life. And youd see direct things like driving a live axle rear against a live axle independant, on the same car otherwise.

Other things, like being able to adjust the control rod link points to the chassis, this will change anti dive and anti squat charcacteristics in the suspension.

Computer game modelling seems to be based too much on physics text books. Yes, physics is important for sure. But, there is alot of engineering issues that arent considered by physicists. These are things like the control links, wether or not you use double wishbone parallel equal length control links, or you use double wishbon unequal length control links on unparallel planes of movement. Those two combinations, if you were to drive them in real life, it would be a totally different car. The computer games just seem to make load assumptions on each wheel without going to consider the chassis / suspension and its effect on the forces.
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Old 09-10-2002, 01:41     View Warnings    #8
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Quote:
What would be *REALLY* trick, is for a game to entirely model the whole suspension of the chassis


Yes I agree that would be sweet if every part would be modeled and calculated independently. However LFS is extremely heavy on the CPUs as it is so I think assumptions and generalizations are in fact needed to *some* extent.

But I hear you being almost mechanical engineer myself and all
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Old 09-10-2002, 02:37     View Warnings    #9
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Notepad

If the LFS team have got it so wrong, then maybe Bathrone could program a better vehicle dynamics system for us? I'd love to see a demo

As for me, the physics in LFS seem amazingly realistic, especially considering it's all done in "real time".
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Old 09-10-2002, 02:45     View Warnings    #10
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Fragm the intention of my email to the good folks at LFS was to provide feedback. Im busy with my company, making money in other directions. Ive left an open offer for LFS to get back to me on any items they might want to discuss. As I said, I think the game is cool and Im having fun with the demo.

Vari, yer, resources are sacred arent they. I wonder how many customers would be willing to ditch graphics quality for realisitic real time calculations?

Or, I wonder if any programmer is crazy enough to write the whole thing 100% optimised in assembler!

Hardware is advancing so fast. My latest AMD system in my test lab is doing 15 300 winmarks. Boyles law just keeps on coming, and with new semiconductor fab processes like .9 micron and silicon on insulator with copper connects no time soon are we going to slow down
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Old 09-10-2002, 04:03     View Warnings    #11
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Bathrone, you cannot call those ricers with coffee can exhausts car enthusiats. They are only monkey imitating what they saw in "The Fast and Furious". They don't even deserve to own a car.

I'm 15 and for some reason I know a truckload about cars. Enough to have read Physics of Racing series more than once and I even have a hard copy of it. Even someone like me has enough knowledge to comprehend cars, suspension geometry. This is the reason I disagree with your 99.9 percent statement, true most people may not know as much about you but many do know about basic things like weight transfer, pitch etc.

Oh and back pressure is always bad. You want as little backpressure as possible, what you want is a fast flowing exhaust stream. Imagine a straw, a big one will flow a lot of water but the problem is of course that you can't generate enough pressure to fill up the entire straw (I'm a bit fuzzy here). So you want a smaller diameter straw which will allow a faster flowing exhaust stream.

A ridiculously small diameter would start to back up the straw however and send some pressure backwards. You never want backpressure, you want a fast flowing exhaust stream. It's a common misconception
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Old 09-10-2002, 04:07     View Warnings    #12
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Also, you are right. Tire wear is not included in LFS, I don't knwo if it will be.

But the width of the tire does increase grip, although it may not lower lap times because of rolling resistance. More tire is more friction and more friction is always better in the corners, try driving through corners with an inch wide tire!

Bathrone, I hope I don't come off as insulting. I hold you in high regards because you are obviously very knowledgable in cars, more so than me. So please don't take offense to my posts. happy Racing.
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Old 09-10-2002, 04:22     View Warnings    #13
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Me too !

I just had to vent.

We ARE more than you think though...
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Old 09-10-2002, 04:43     View Warnings    #14
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Bathrone, you seem to be more aligned to the racer community here. Racer seems to mostly consist of physics "chats" in our IRC or on the message boards.

Ruud van Gaal is currently ironing some bugs out of the existing system before adventuring into the depths of a complete suspension model, right down to the watts linkage.

I believe the current system of suspension in the LFS cars is only at a double equal length wishbone. The roll centres are most likely fixed, but at least the car responds to camber correctly, and the features such as KPI and scrub radius are applied correctly, and even influence the force feedback suitably.

We could use someone with your experience in the racer community

If you ever have some free time to discuss indeas we have the racer forum right here at RSC, or the chatroom on:
irc.enterthegame.com
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Old 09-10-2002, 09:49     View Warnings    #15
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"What would be *REALLY* trick, is for a game to entirely model the whole suspension of the chassis"

thats just what F1 2001 and F1 2002 from ISI does in realtime.

edit : look at the file susp.pm which holds all information about the suspension geometry etc.
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Old 09-10-2002, 11:01     View Warnings    #16
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Well...i was going to mention f1 2002 having dynamic roll centres.

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Old 09-10-2002, 11:02     View Warnings    #17
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Re: My Constructive Feedback about LFS

Quote:
Originally posted by Bathrone
When I took off, yer sure, the tires have traction modelling. Good stuff. But where is the weight transfer and the simulation of suspension changes during the acceleration? It isnt there.

....

Imagine the car as being a body with mass in space. There are various forces being applied to the car, even when at rest. These include the coefficient of friction of the tire, where, the tire has a certain amount of grip. The coefficient of friction is an engineering term used to relate grip against force required to break that grip. The coefficient of friction will change depending on the surface the tire is on, from grass, to mud to bitumen.


Hmph, weight transfer and suspension simulation "isnt there"? How much have you actually played this sim? Sure its wrong, as it doesnt model MCperson struts etc correctly etc, and sure it has its limitations, but dont ignore what it already does.

All "commercial" sims around do cheat quite a bit in the physics engine... Partly because of processor limitations, partly because the difficulties finding good data to work from, and partly because of the of complexities involved simulating it properly... (including testing, tweaking and fiddling to make it feel right)
Most all car sims worth their name models weight transfer with a primitive "fixed" suspension engine (including camber, toe and in some cases caster and kingpin inclination), they model tyre grip with slip angles, forces and friction (some is beginning to apply more detailed modelling such as flatspots etc), and also model some rotational and gyroscopical forces from axles and wheels.
I agree its time to go a step beyond that, but the way you've put all that weight on this poor three man team is disconcerting

....

Heh, the "F" key mustve been a surprise for you Its not that the LFS team has the basics all wrong in their application so far!


Sorry for the irritated tone... You are obviously knowledgeable in theese things, but the way you have understimated and paternalised the forum members and the sim/game developers did stick out some IMHO.

No, offence though: I love having people around knowing what theyre talking about, and I really think you can bring some weight to some of theese discussions! (and do take a look in the GPL setup forums too )


I dont buy that "The amount of tire on the road doesnt effect grip!" quote fully either though. Put bicycle tyres on a F1 if you will.
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Old 09-10-2002, 11:48     View Warnings    #18
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Quote:
Originally posted by nosispower
Also, you are right. Tire wear is not included in LFS, I don't knwo if it will be.

But the width of the tire does increase grip, although it may not lower lap times because of rolling resistance. More tire is more friction and more friction is always better in the corners, try driving through corners with an inch wide tire!


You're wrong. Contact area in itself has no effect on friction. So Bathrone is right, and so I doubt he will be insulted
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Old 09-10-2002, 13:03     View Warnings    #19
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Bathrone,

Read the interview here... it might clear up some things.

http://www.bhmotorsports.com/article/79

Take care,

Jure
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Old 09-10-2002, 13:19     View Warnings    #20
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Quote:
Originally posted by JohnMid1098


You're wrong. Contact area in itself has no effect on friction. So Bathrone is right, and so I doubt he will be insulted


Actually it has because the surface is never flat and smooth +the tyre is deformable material. That's why friction coefficients greater than 1 are possible and dragters (for example) seem to disobey laws of the physics.

Back in 70's local Tech University tried to prove that the acceleration they claim to get isn't possible. It's a legend of some sort and they still get to be reminded of that horrible mistake
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Old 09-10-2002, 16:00     View Warnings    #21
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Suspension and Tyres

About suspension :

Real suspension systems are based on components linked together in various ways with carefully positioned linkages which end up changing the orientation of the wheels as they go up and down. The designs that are chosen for real cars are always a compromise - one type will behave better in one situation while another will behave better in another situation.

As a simple example let's briefly consider 2 different rear suspension systems:

An unequal length double wishbone system (used in single seater racing cars) can compensate somewhat for the lean of the car in cornering by making the outside wheel lean inwards relative to the car thereby keeping the outer wheel in a more desirable orientation.

Note : in cornering, the inner wheel will do this as well, leaning more outwards relative to the body. The design compromise would focus more on the outer wheel as that's where the main load and therefore cornering force would be coming from. However, now consider straight line driving and the wheel going over a hump, the wheel angle will change and this will cause a change in the lean of the wheel relative to the road surface. Like a different camber setting, the rolling of the tyre in this situation will cause a force to the side, so the car will experience a momentary side force while that wheel goes over the hump, causing the whole car to do a slight "wiggle" (in the yaw axis).

So... in the case of a wheel hitting a bump, it might be better to have a trailing arm suspension system (used in many front wheel drive road cars), which would keep the wheel's orientation the same as it was before it hit the bump, so the car would get less of a "wiggle" when hitting the bump. However, this trailing arm suspension would not be as good in the case of cornering because as the car body leans the wheel would lean with it, effectively leaning outwards relative to the road surface, like having positive camber on the outer wheel.

There are more compromises involved in road cars as well - cost, weight and how the car will handle when loaded up at the rear, to name just a few. Imagine again an unequal length double wishbone system fitted to the rear, with passengers in the rear and a loaded boot, the car would be driving along with extra camber on the rear wheels, undesirable for fuel economy, tyre wear and handling.


Suspension in Live for Speed :

Different suspension types are not yet modelled in Live for Speed. The current suspension allows the wheels to go vertically up and down while exactly preserving the orientation of the wheels relative to the car body. This is of course not available in real life, but is similar to having equal length double wishbone suspension with very long wishbones, or a trailing arm suspension with very long trailing arms. One way to think of this is that the camber and toe are always the same regardless of the position of the suspension, whereas in real suspension systems the linkages are usually designed to allow (in effect) the camber and toe to vary depending on the compression, and are designed so that these variations will usually be beneficial to the handling when the car is doing whatever it was designed to do.

Is this planned for Live for Speed? Yes! Don't worry about your CPU, I won't need to model each component as a separate physical object in realtime. The linkages will be modelled before the car goes out on the road and these will be used to generate in effect an animation (not a time based animation, of course) of the wheel's motion, so... over the travel from unloaded wheel all the way to the bump stops (one input - replacing the "time" line of a standard animation, just as your steering input replaces the "time" line of a driver steering animation), there will be an output of the changing relative position and orientation of the wheel and the spring force.


About Tyres :

In physics at school we all learned that friction is not affected by surface area, we learned a formula "F = kN" where the force (F) required to overcome static or dynamic friction is proportional to the coefficient of friction (k) times the contact force (N). This formula has no parameter of surface area, true.

But is this true for tyres? No! The friction of rubber on road is extremely complex. The "F = kN" formula does take you close to reality, but not all the way there. Here are some of the components stopping the car sliding down the road as if it were on ice :

Adhesion friction
- at a molecular level
- decreases as the speed of sliding increases
- this is increased with wider tyres

Deformation or hysteresis friction
- the rubber going up and down the tiny lumps in the road
- increases a little with some small amount of sliding

Viscous friction
- smaller effect

Tearing friction
- smaller effect created by the breaking of the bonds in the rubber

These effects are dramatically affected by sliding velocity and temperature (side note : this is not like the school-physics static friction which suddenly drops off to a dynamic friction, it's more like a curve that increases with a little motion then smoothly tails off to a dynamic friction value - this is of course simulated in LFS). The point here that because of these complex effects, with increased load comes increased pressure at the contact patch and this in fact results in a slight reduction in the coefficient of friction (or the peak of that friction curve).

So the end result is that as you double the load force on a tyre, you get a little less than double the amount of friction. This effect is known as the grip-load characteristic of the tyre. Plotted on a graph, it is not a straight line.

Some effects of this :

- Sportier cars have wider tyres, resulting in better cornering grip while costing more in fuel consumption, due to the increase in rolling friction.

- A fuel-laden racing car cannot corner or brake as quickly as one that is running out of fuel (side note : the braking improvement is also helped by the ratio of the car's decreasing mass to its unchanging wind resistance)

- A lower centre of gravity helps a car to corner faster, because the weight transfer is reduced and one problem with weight transfer is you gain less grip from loading up the outer wheels than the grip you lose from unloading the inner wheels.

- Increasing the tyre pressure far above recommended pressure results in a smaller contact area with a higher pressure in the contact, resulting in less grip.

- Powerful rear wheel drive sports cars have wider rear tyres to stop the rear end sliding all over the place when on and off the throttle.


Tyres in Live for Speed :

At the current moment in time (9/10/02) the grip-load characteristic is not modelled correctly. At the moment, doubling the load does result in double the available grip (the peak of the friction curve). The changing coefficient of friction will be modelled very soon, resulting in subtle changes to the physics. For example, the ideal setups for cars will change slightly. Also the Turbo car will end up with very slightly more grip at the rear. This change will not be implemented in the next patch, because patch F is designed to be 100% video and multiplayer compatible with version E. A first stage of this will however be modelled in a full update demo test version 0.2 that is planned approximately 2 to 3 weeks after patch F.

Please note that the grip-load characteristic is only one aspect of the tyre model, and while important, is not an enormous effect compared with some other effects, that's why the tyre model is not too bad and is currently working as a reasonable approximation to reality. Further development of Live for Speed's physics and tyre models is always about producing slightly better approximations, step by step.


Why are different suspension systems and tyres not modelled already?

Answer : We have never advertised Live for Speed and the word of it spread faster than we had ever anticipated. So quite simply, many things are simply not done yet. The physics model of the current version of Live for Speed Demo Test does not represent my full knowledge of vehicles or ability to simulate them. Not only have I had to model all the physics, but I've had to make game editors, a multiplayer communication system, ai drivers who use the same physics model as the player, user interfaces, hardware support, sound systems, a font system, graphic and rendering systems with hidden object removal, physics for multiple objects, a collision system, an animation system, and so on. Each part takes a lot of time. As any programmer will tell you, you can't just say it and it's done, each tiny element brings up plenty to think about and problems to solve. Some tyre modelling has been slightly delayed because tyres are one of the most difficult things to gather statistics and data about.


Thanks to all for your testing, sorry for any bugs and deficiencies, you can rest assured of our continuing development, thanks too for your patience while we prioritise and gradually improve all elements of the game and simulation one by one. Right, that's enough chat, I must get on with that patch!
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Old 09-10-2002, 16:12     View Warnings    #22
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ok scawen. ive printed ya reply in a big A3 size portrait mode.

ill go to the bathroom now, test some phisics of friction.

oh and btw..tx very very much for all the insight information on the game and plans , and plz plz dont come back any time soon, coz we need u and ya skilled team to keep it pumping on the actual game code
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Old 09-10-2002, 16:20     View Warnings    #23
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Thanks for the reply, it was an interesting read and very much appreciated.
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Old 09-10-2002, 16:37     View Warnings    #24
Roger W
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Interesting read Scawen

Sounds reassuring too
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Old 09-10-2002, 16:38     View Warnings    #25
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Thanks for the info Robert
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