I'd like to see a game/sim, that has a realistic front wheel drive engine.

[Robert Marold]

No game I have tried, and I've tried dozens over the years, has a FWD, AWD, or 4WD feel. You need to have a FWD engine doing the front wheels, and a RWD engine doing the rear wheels, at the same time, to make a 4WD or AWD car work. I have been in a genuine Godzilla, as passenger, and the AWD with the four wheel steering is a distinct feeling that is simply not found in every game so far. Every car in every game, is a RWD live axle model, despite being skinned and touted as something else. The mid engine cars, with independant rear suspension, are also just Fiats (My term for RWD, live axle cars) with weight redistribution tricks trying to poorly replicate the feel of these cars. I saw the top gear show, where they did the Lotus Exige,

, and I jumped into AC thinking wow, this will be great, but it was just another Fiat. I jumped into many cars over the years, in many games, and likewise. Nothing seems to have changed about this since V8 Supercars was the game to have. The first time I noticed what it was that was missing, was when I drove a Mini, on Blackwoods, in X-Motor Racing, and when I went around the first right hand corner the back wheels skipped out, like a RWD, even though I was driving it like a FWD car. By that I mean drive into a corner way too fast, brake way too late, and then accelerate hard to drag the front end of the car the way the wheels are pointing. It just didn't happen, and now every car that isn't what it should be disappoints me. I keep hoping one day to get a real driving sim/game that I can get my Godzilla driving friend to try, but so far no-one has the goods. We have had many a good laugh over the years about the various games poor simulations of his car, and one day I would like to show him a game that gets it right.

 

[panjandrum]

and then accelerate hard to drag the front end of the car the way the wheels are pointing.

Except that's not the way FWD car actually work. I get it; It's intuitively obvious that they *should* work that way, right? Except they don't due to physics. There are examples of FWD cars that behave very well of course, but they are few and far between (it's why you always hear disclaimers like "Wow, the Mini really is a great handling car, for a front-wheel-drive.")

The vast over-simplification is that any given tire has "X" amount of grip that be distributed between acceleration, turning, and deceleration. Hence when you turn the wheels to point in the direction you want to go in a FWD, and then hit the gas to 'pull the car in that direction' you are doing exactly the opposite of what you want; all that will do is begin to induce understeer if you are already at the grip-potential of the front tires. That's why the primary dynamic of most FWD cars is understeer. Again that's a simplification because many other factors come into play (some FWD sporty-hatches use a really stiff rear to allow the rear to rotate off-throttle, for example), but you still can't get away from the fundamental physics of grip.

The easiest way to get a feel for this is to go to an autocross in the wet (or an ice-x if you are luck enough to live somewhere you get lakes frozen enough on-which to hold motorsports). It's a safe place to play with a variety of setups and learn how they handle. It's something you really can't fully-learn from books or videos; those can give you an understanding, but to really 'know it' you have to feel it from the driver's seat. Doing it in the wet greatly amplifies the handling characteristics, and let's you discover them at a lower speed.