Mod structure it ready. It's time to start making base car physics
Sorry for my english in advance. I'm still learning...
Let's begin with 2004 season regulations:
Base weight (driver included) - 1040 kg
Tweaking cars physics
Firstly we should change cars' weight. From 1140 kg to 1040 kg for FWD with 6spd sequential gearboxes and RWD with 5spd H-boxes
Easy peasy. Let's test our cars on tracks...
WTF?!
Now AI going sideways in fast corners
and sometimes even spun
First of all: we should think about how cars lose 100 kg
- replacing stock doors with plastic ones
- replacing trunk lid with plastic one
- replacing all windows with plexiglass (afaik they did that in 2004)
Second: we should understand how weight reduction affects on car physics.
IRL 100 kg weight reduction usually affects car body inertia and also center of mass
I didn't take this into account... but we'll fix it
Simbin's default physics are pretty good so we shouldn't change those parameters drastically. What I need - is to
find values that wouldn't affect handling too much, but makes AI faster on tracks
Here they are:
CGHeight - is the height of the center of mass (relative to the road surface)
CGRearRange - is the center of mass rear offset (relative to the center of the bottom)
ETCC/WTCC cars usually do 60% of mass on the front axle and 40% on the rear axle. But I'm sure Simbin guys made 50/50 (Alfa 156, BMW e46) for gameplay reasons and also to make cars handling as close as it is possible to it's real counterparts
Let's change CGHeight from 0.35 to 0.34 (not too much, but enough to stabilize AI)
and CGRearRange from 0.50 to 0.49 (for a less skidding in the corners)
Testing:
Alfa is stable like train on a railroad, and BMW...
Nah... AI is still not stable enough. But i can't make lower values of CGHeight and CGRearRange because it's affects handling a lot, and e46 become as stable as BMW e90 320si... I need another solution...
Strangely enough, BMW e46 320i in Magny Cours' first long righthand downhill corner locks up its front wheels (and going sideways), whereas BMW e90 320si locks its rear right wheel but keep stable
Conclusion: we should work on AI track settings. I found out that in that particular corner BMW AI should lock their rear wheel just before the apex to keep themselves stable and accelerate faster
Let's change brake balance but keep rear wing angle's default value
Don't worry, this brake balance won't affect AI laptimes, because they won't brake earlier in other corners.
And now:
VOILA! AI now locking it's rear right wheel for a short period of time and then shoots out of the corner!
Lets compare AI laptimes on Monza with real ones
Yeah, i should tweak talent files a bit, but it's already a good evidence of correct physics settings
That's it for today. I hope this will be interesting for somebody except me.
Next time we'll talk about 2004 season participants, their cars' performance and how we can imitate it in the game
