I'm not sure about any one else, but I'm struggling so much with Racer recently.
For example, the changes to static behaviour so cars didn't drift around as much when left idle, seemed to introduce more fudging factors and damping factors etc, which has actually cost us in dynamic accuracy.
The behaviour there was never an issue in past versions of Racer, but it's there now.
Then we have the differential issues that seems apparent, and perhaps even pacejka mixing issues.
With racer.ini dbg_car max_slip_len=6, ALL my cars can be driven through bends with the wheels pointing forwards and just drift. Keep turned in and floor it, and the car just drives through the bend perfectly well once the car assumes a certain drift angle.
If I try catch the slide, then I can add lots of opposite lock on, but when it corrects the result is a spin-out that is impossible to catch in the other direction. The car will never slide out with the max_slip_len near 6.
Increasing that value to 8 or 10 improves the behaviour of slides, but that background pushing 'understeer' is always there after a certain angle of slide is met.
I'm not sure if this is pacejka or differential related.
We also get the odd behaviour when doing a donut that we can draw a spirograph pattern from above with our skidmarks. A repeating surging then stopping pattern that may happen in real life in some rare cases, but it just seems the wrong behaviour (hard to explain)
Many cars now can't even do a donut, instead they just push the nose of the car around as if the front has zero grip, or the differentials generate more grip than is possible, and so overcome the front grip and push the car around.
Even if I apply some front brakes to try stop the front wheels rolling, they push over the floor and allow the car to move, rather than stay tied into the road forcing the back to spin about them.
I'm not an expert, I've not delved into the physics and maths and stuff. It's just not correct behaviour when the physics falls down on such simple tests as in the video above.
If these simple static tests fail, then it makes you have to question the dynamic reliability of Racer too, where it also feels to be a bit wrong.
In my view this is a recent thing. LOTS of physics things seem to have been changed recently and we are starting to see big holes appearing in Racers reliability.
Personally I'd rather have a car that floated about a bit when stood still, than the new and much more concerning issue exhibited in that video (and the others I posted on YouTube relatively recently)
Just worrying that coming up to v0.9, graphics are getting really good, but physics are being kinda broken as we move forward and we either will have to wait longer for v0.9 to refine the new physics changes, or get v0.9 coming out with bad physics.
The risk is we have something like the old 0.49 issue where roll centres are all out by about 50cm because of a bug, so all our v0.9 content is just wrong in a years time and needs re-working.
Hmmmmm...
Clearly not easy to program this stuff, but maybe we need to roll back a bit physics wise in some areas to what feels more solid and reliable, for v0.9 at least?
Dave
For example, the changes to static behaviour so cars didn't drift around as much when left idle, seemed to introduce more fudging factors and damping factors etc, which has actually cost us in dynamic accuracy.
The behaviour there was never an issue in past versions of Racer, but it's there now.
Then we have the differential issues that seems apparent, and perhaps even pacejka mixing issues.
With racer.ini dbg_car max_slip_len=6, ALL my cars can be driven through bends with the wheels pointing forwards and just drift. Keep turned in and floor it, and the car just drives through the bend perfectly well once the car assumes a certain drift angle.
If I try catch the slide, then I can add lots of opposite lock on, but when it corrects the result is a spin-out that is impossible to catch in the other direction. The car will never slide out with the max_slip_len near 6.
Increasing that value to 8 or 10 improves the behaviour of slides, but that background pushing 'understeer' is always there after a certain angle of slide is met.
I'm not sure if this is pacejka or differential related.
We also get the odd behaviour when doing a donut that we can draw a spirograph pattern from above with our skidmarks. A repeating surging then stopping pattern that may happen in real life in some rare cases, but it just seems the wrong behaviour (hard to explain)
Many cars now can't even do a donut, instead they just push the nose of the car around as if the front has zero grip, or the differentials generate more grip than is possible, and so overcome the front grip and push the car around.
Even if I apply some front brakes to try stop the front wheels rolling, they push over the floor and allow the car to move, rather than stay tied into the road forcing the back to spin about them.
I'm not an expert, I've not delved into the physics and maths and stuff. It's just not correct behaviour when the physics falls down on such simple tests as in the video above.
If these simple static tests fail, then it makes you have to question the dynamic reliability of Racer too, where it also feels to be a bit wrong.
In my view this is a recent thing. LOTS of physics things seem to have been changed recently and we are starting to see big holes appearing in Racers reliability.
Personally I'd rather have a car that floated about a bit when stood still, than the new and much more concerning issue exhibited in that video (and the others I posted on YouTube relatively recently)
Just worrying that coming up to v0.9, graphics are getting really good, but physics are being kinda broken as we move forward and we either will have to wait longer for v0.9 to refine the new physics changes, or get v0.9 coming out with bad physics.
The risk is we have something like the old 0.49 issue where roll centres are all out by about 50cm because of a bug, so all our v0.9 content is just wrong in a years time and needs re-working.
Hmmmmm...
Clearly not easy to program this stuff, but maybe we need to roll back a bit physics wise in some areas to what feels more solid and reliable, for v0.9 at least?
Dave