Have Your Say - Damage in Sim Racing

[axbu89]

Great article. I would love to see a full simulation of all important parts and damage anging from the very minor (with an appropriate impact on the performance and feel of the car) to the critical, race ending stuff.

A visual representation is very nice but that mechanical impact is much more important.

 

[apex11]

Has it ever been proven that the "well car manufactures don't allow damage on there cars" is a load of rubbish?
Most if not all driving games do damage so that renders that excuse obsolete, its in truth really, i think anyway, that some just do it really badly.
GRID is a great example where damage happens and that was on licenced cars..

If i were a car manufacture and a tyre manufacture i'd be far more concerned about GT and Forza making cars spin out on 60-80 mph corners like its ice tyres on glass... or PCars 2 making all road cars like sailing a boat.

 

[Stereo]

I get what you're saying but surely mechanical damage is on the physical side of sim racing though.

There is nothing "feels right" or "physical side" about smashing other cars or walls with no meaningful consequence.

Well, it's like skipping rain... in the absense of workable data, you can either make something up that looks about right, or not include it in your simulator. Either way's wrong but which is preferable depends on whether you prefer 'longer feature list' or 'everything present is correct'.

 

[St3fan]

Realistic damage in sim racing right now could only make online racing more chaotic and frustrating, and make offline racing with either racey AI or bad AI or AI with different physics very frustrating too. So it is very likely people will turn down damage multiplier or not use damage at all. All the dev hours put in the damage model is gonna only benefit a very small portion of the players.

 

[paul carter]

When i saw this video the first time, i thought: How great would it be to have a sim racing game with that physics. Maybe one day......

Awesome

 

[Steve Worrell]

Well, it's like skipping rain... in the absense of workable data, you can either make something up that looks about right, or not include it in your simulator. Either way's wrong but which is preferable depends on whether you prefer 'longer feature list' or 'everything present is correct'.

I understand. At the moment though it's frankly unrealistic, no?

 

[Steve Worrell]

Realistic damage in sim racing right now could only make online racing more chaotic and frustrating, and make offline racing with either racey AI or bad AI or AI with different physics very frustrating too. So it is very likely people will turn down damage multiplier or not use damage at all. All the dev hours put in the damage model is gonna only benefit a very small portion of the players.

I'm not sure if I agree on the point about making it more chaotic. iRacing does a good job of suspension damage and if anything it makes the racing more considerate towards fellow drivers.

I also think that development on damage etc was curtailed years ago due to the need to accelerate the driving physics. I agree that was the right thing to do at the time as we now have some incredible driving simulators, but surely it has evolved to the point where we need more realism in other areas now.

What do you think?

 

[Frietpan]

Is it needed for a sim? imho not really as your not supposed to crash anyhow, but it sure does feel / look more realistic when you get hit and you lose a bumper or in a open wheeler a nosewing or w/e and the car reacts to it, so not just static damage. (i think suspension wise Live for speed has a good model) but more important maybe is engine damage, im pretty sure i wouldnt have survived some races if there was decent engine damage in games. (misshifts, to long on the limiter,a messed up downshift / suicide engine braking ,overheating and whatnot)

 

[Ruy Horta]

Realistic as possible, but in single play that demands an AI that is up to the challenge and no cheating.

 

[M D Gourley]

Personally I would like to add some sort of damage model as this would be the icing on the cake for me by making the Sim more real and add another element of immersion....'Wreckfest'...would be the damage model I personally would go for, the game / Sim looks great at the moment, but with more real world consequenes in Sims when you hit something or another car hard enough...the race is over....rF2 is the closest in regards to the handling of the car but without to much on the visual side of damage.

Screen shots are cropped from my triple screen images from an older build of Wreckfest...and visually Wreckfest looks very acceptable....in fact I would say add rF2 / Reiza FFB / car handling, Raceroom Audio to this and there's your winner...how hard can it be...LOL...I know, there's more to it than that.....only my opinion and preference

Look at the Glass shattering effect...have not seen that in other Sims.

 

[Ghoults]

In the end I don't really care if the steering or suspension linkage is out of toe because the suspension bends or whether a carbon a-arm is shattered and toe is out of whack as a result. It doesn't really change anything whether the suspension is bent, shattered or whether the right part is broken. Of course it is nice if the game can simulate the difference between a full steel frame and carbon racer but in the end you won't be able to tell the difference when driving the car which part of the suspension has broken as long as the suspension is broken. After all you only need couple of degrees of rotation to bend the suspension to make the car unusable.

As long as there is suspension damage in a sim I think it is enough to do its job. Because if it is realistic game then suspension damage is not really easily fixable regardless what it is and it will still render the car undrivable even if it is not exactly the same way broken as it would in real life. Because the chances of bending the suspension and have it still be drivable are super small.

 

[Steve Worrell]

Personally I would like to add some sort of damage model as this would be the icing on the cake for me by making the Sim more real and add another element of immersion....'Wreckfest'...would be the damage model I personally would go for, the game / Sim looks great at the moment, but with more real world consequenes in Sims when you hit something or another car hard enough...the race is over....rF2 is the closest in regards to the handling of the car but without to much on the visual side of damage.
...as I personally have always thought....Wreckfest, Beam type damage model with rF2, Reiza FFB / handling, pCars2 graphics, Raceroom Audio...how hard can it be...LOL...I know, it's more to it than that.
Dreams are free.....
Screen shots are cropped from my triple screen images from an older build of Wreckfest...and visually Wreckfest looks very acceptable....in fact I would say add rF2 / Reiza FFB / car handling, Raceroom Audio to this and there's your winner...only my opinion and preference
View attachment 219037
Look at the Glass shattering effect...have not seen that in other Sims.View attachment 219038View attachment 219039 View attachment 219040

Wow that looks awesome. So I say again to those saying it wouldn't be possible because of cpu power. If these guys can do it why couldn't we implement something like this in a sim?

 

[Rastas]

Can you give us an idea of what mod this is and how this came about. A lot of people talking about processor power being an issue. Well if RF1 can do this then i'm not sure what people are talking about.

Is a mod that i was making for RF1 a few years ago,never released.
Heres the scrip for the damage file
All exagerated values btw,it can cause some FPS drops hehe
[VERTEX]
DefaultLimit=5.20 // By default, all verts can move up to a meter
RestrictionLimit=5.10 // Restricted verts can only move this far
ForceFieldSphere=(60.40,60.60,60.90,60.45) // Protect driver's legs
ForceFieldSphere=(60.00,60.65,61.85,60.45) // Keep body verts out of radiator
ForceFieldSphere=(60.00,60.65,61.85,60.45)// Keep verts away from FL wheel
ForceFieldSphere=(60.74,60.65,61.62,60.47) // Keep verts away from FR wheel
ForceFieldSphere=(60.74,60.65,60.44,60.47) // Keep verts away from RL wheel
ForceFieldSphere=(60.74,60.65,60.44,60.47) // Keep verts away from RR wheel

 

[Durge Driven]

Yes but not at the expense of most everything else that needs improvement

Dynamic wind strength and direction, brake fade, decent clutches, dynamic water puddles so they actually cool tyres not just put there for show

 

[Craig Dunkley]

So so true, we all scream for a "proper" "realistic" sim...imo if you go off in a race at high speed one of two things should happen, just as they do in real life, either you are able to limp back to the pits or you are out, full stop, one or the other...eh you took the chance and it failed, so now you have to pay the consequences of that move and not just loose a few spots either. This reversing and rejoining the race after hitting something head on at high speed is crazy, we are able to get "sim" on the race track, but the "sim" will switch to arcade ",mode" we come of .

 

[SimdriveVXR]

for me mechanical damage is a must, cosmetic im not too fussed over

Not sure if its already been covered but I think damage simulation progression is severly slowed down due to llicensing issues, i remember reading an article back from when Forza 2 was released about how some manufacturers wont allow excessive damage to be shown to their cars and some will allow it but charge extra for the license, so i would imagine a compromise has to be made between all the licensed cars in the game as you cant have one car which you can smash into pieces and another which you can barely scratch

 

[Steve Worrell]

for me mechanical damage is a must, cosmetic im not too fussed over

Does it not annoy you when, for example, you hit a wall in a formula 1 car and your damage indicator flashes red on the front wing and your front wing just looks a bit scratched?

Are we meant to pretend that the wing fell off?

 

[Matt Y]

PS - Sorry for the slightly irrelevant picture, I struggled to lay my hands on a decent sim racing damage picture.. which is kinda relevant to the topic at hand actually...

I think BeamNG is a very relevant pic because it's a driving (NOT racing) sim that does damage right.

 

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

Personally I would like to add some sort of damage model as this would be the icing on the cake for me by making the Sim more real and add another element of immersion....'Wreckfest'...would be the damage model I personally would go for, the game / Sim looks great at the moment, but with more real world consequenes in Sims when you hit something or another car hard enough...the race is over....rF2 is the closest in regards to the handling of the car but without to much on the visual side of damage.

I agree that with the Wreckfest damage model, and how every item have weight, the tire stacks have weight, and there is some physics attached to them as well. But bloody me that drains power from your PC. The same goes for simulation games, the processing-power needed to calculate everything is quite high. If you are going to add both, it will be a very demanding game, which will lead to a huge backlash of people not quite understanding why the game performes worse, while it might look worse than the direct competitors.

I would love to have Wreckfest damages, trackside objects etc. with proper weight and physics. But I accept that it is a high risk of this being to demanding on a system for a proper sim.

 

[ShredatorFIN]

I think it's important part of simulator. Since there is no risk of death in sims, there should be at least risk of "death" of your car. Hope AC2 has better damage model, also visual. Doesn't need to be like Wreckfest, just few pre-determined parts and wheels coming off. AMS has pretty good damage

One thing rally games seem to get wrong, managing repairs/damage is part of rally, but they all seem to be too forgiving. Dirt Rally was, and now WRC 7 while otherwise nice rally game. Damage model is there, but it's not used because they're afraid it puts off the casual gamer

Also, sims need to stop putting glass windshields in modern racecars