Have Your Say - Damage in Sim Racing

[Tonoppa]

Good damage was last seen in C64 or Amiga games. If you even slightly touched something you blew up. You do something wrong, you die. Only way to keep people in control. If someone of you remember scene from movie called "Top Secret" when they have bumber to bumber touch

 

[BlindDeadMacSlow]

So, if Codies spent as much time on damage physics as they did putting f*cking airplanes flying around in the background of a racing sim, the game itself would be much more immersive for a lot of us. Personally I could live without seeing Easyjet flying over Circuit de Catalunya when I'm on a hot lap. Sure, they are bound by all the stupid rules FOM & sponsors throw at them, but the tech to do it has been there for a good while now.
I'm sure Codies could implement it well into the F1 series, & keep their little airplanes. They seem to be going forward with development, as are many devs, whereas FOM is a dinosaur going backwards, stuck in a tar pit. I mean, official bodies strangling 'games'...what's that about, seriously? We could be leaps ahead in damage physics without them, just as society would arguably be better off without the vast majority of politicians.
There's to much bullsh*t getting in the way of progressive game architecture.

 

[DND]

Realistic damage in any of the ways folks have described here would be welcomed. But the AI really needs to get dialed in as with too many sims/games start and end by an AI break checking you, using you as a break marker or just rather run through you then avoid you makes the previous question of Do you use the restart button become unavoidable.

 

[Stig Bidstrup]

I guess damage in modern sims like AC ,rF2 have been toned down since it takes a lot of processer power to render these things , So they want to use that power on other things instead --that's my guess .
Historic GT & Touring Cars 1,96 ( rFactor ) is one of those Mods that really offers a lot of damage ,
Flying fenders , blowing engines , smokin engines, You cant look out of the car because you landed on the roof, taking off at race starts can be a challenge with some car models ( usually French cars ) throttle and clutch management is important with these-- or you blow the engine when you take off .....

 

[Steve Worrell]

rFactor1,extreme vert deformation View attachment 218976

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.

 

[Steve Worrell]

I just want to share an amazing experience I had back in 1997 with Grand Prix 2. I was doing a 50% race at Brazil with my mate, taking it in turns. We were 3 laps for the end of the race and we got a loose wheel and had to retire.

We were gutted to have retired from the race after doing x2 practice sessions Quali and 98% of a race.

But we were amazed at the realism. I remember talking about if this is how we felt about retiring from a computer game race imagine how you would feel getting a mechanical issue in a real race.

Sims have certainly taken steps backwards regarding damage and failures.

 

[Stig Bidstrup]

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.

In rFactor it wasn't important if the sun reflects correctly in a puddle of water on Spa for example.
In rFactor it wasn't important if there where a certain grip on the track after 5 laps ( rubber on track )
In rFactor it wasn't important if the rain drops where running in the correct direction on your windscreen..
Because it simply did not exist in that game --all these things require Power ,Ram ore Processor

 

[Steve Worrell]

In rFactor it wasn't important if the sun reflects correctly in a puddle of water on Spa for example.
In rFactor it wasn't important if there where a certain grip on the track after 5 laps ( rubber on track )
In rFactor it wasn't important if the rain drops where running in the correct direction on your windscreen..
Because it simply did not exist in that game --all these things require Power ,Ram ore Processor

I get you.

 

[KittX]

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.

From my experience precisely in rF1 the body deformation CPU load depended a LOT by the polycount of the car. If the car is HistorX level - then fine, you can crank up the body deformation and it'll be fine.
But if it's a high poly model imported from modern games - any hit and the game freezes for 2-3 seconds.

 

[KastaRules]

The more realism the better.

 

[JusTiCe-8]

Last sim with everything good at its time was F1GP, just incredible (tyre wear, damage, areo, "weather", AI), all these in... 1991 ! On Amiga.

Best damage system I've seen yet is in FlatOut Ultimate Carnage, unbeatable (+ AI is far far over most, or all, modern "sim" racing games), it's a shame BugBear have failed to make Next Car Game.

 

[JPL083]

More close to real life the better, in every aspect, no need to say much more. Just waiting that to happen. As now, damage modelling in racing game's/sim's are quite much a joke mostly.

 

[Boby Kim]

External damage as Studio whatever implements in rF2...why? The consequence of damage id much more interesting.

 

[James Egan]

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......

and this is what became beamng

 

[spaskis]

For sure damage is an important topic. In the same way tires and engine wear losing performance, car wears losing performance. Up to a certain level the car is either undriveable or doesn't move.

Let us be happy that pressing ESC ylu get a free new car for next stint race or whatever you were driving when you killed the car.

The only part where we don't want realism is getting hurt after a big one.

Even when an accident might not be our fault we need to understand that that's racing. For this reason, the more needed thing in today's racing sims is a good live penalty system punishing offending drivers.

 

[Tim Meuris]

Realistic damage would be awesome. Unfortunately it' s a matter of choice nowadays: or the driving physics or the crashphysics. Both would amp up immersion bigtime. Don' t think it will be for nextgensims either...

 

[aka2k]

Only BeamNG Drive have somewhat proper damage - a bit exaggerated though, but the engine is spot on. Next Car Game also have a very nice damage model. Don't feel as natural as Drive, but it's good enough.

Race Driver Grid was surprisingly very competent on that regard:

Hard to believe it's almost 10 years old now.

 

[Stereo]

I don't really care about visual body damage (no game does material deformation plausibly,even beamng)

Suspension damage for sims seems important though. Hit a curb too hard, nudge a wall.. bend the weakest link. Move the chassis mount points. iRacing does it, and it discourages nudging.


I can understand why some people don't care though... it's on the "feels right" side of simulation, not the "matches real world physics" side of simulation. There is no such thing as a realistic damage model in realtime sims,there's only "plausible consequences" and "this would make a good story". Like how My Summer Car's pretty much all the "feels" side of simulation, not the 'real physics' side. But still has things like "showed up at the store at 6am and broke in to turn on the gas pumps" storytelling.

 

[Steve Worrell]

I don't really care about visual body damage (no game does material deformation plausibly,even beamng)

Suspension damage for sims seems important though. Hit a curb too hard, nudge a wall.. bend the weakest link. Move the chassis mount points. iRacing does it, and it discourages nudging.


I can understand why some people don't care though... it's on the "feels right" side of simulation, not the "matches real world physics" side of simulation. There is no such thing as a realistic damage model in realtime sims,there's only "plausible consequences" and "this would make a good story". Like how My Summer Car's pretty much all the "feels" side of simulation, not the 'real physics' side. But still has things like "showed up at the store at 6am and broke in to turn on the gas pumps" storytelling.

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.

 

[apex11]

opps