Physics Using other games as a template for physics

[ltcars]

I ask the question if I could use Raceroom or PCars or even Forza as a reference for physics.
Not in terms of legal questions but accuracy wise.
Obviously I'm not able to crack the games open but would it be possible to take information from the setup screens?

 

[Fat-Alfie]

I did this with my BAC Mono, using some of the info on the pCars setup screen to fill in some blanks I had - it worked quite well, but I had to assume that the pCars devs didn't just make that info up

 

[Ghoults]

Personally I would not do that for the same reason I'd avoid using someone else's model as guide or blueprint. You never know how accurate it is and where the data comes from. Also you can never know if the other sim had to change the values to go around a weakness or missing feature in their sim (and for ac you may need to do this as well so you may end up using double edited values with no idea if it was accurate even in the first place).

Other sims also use the same numbers in different places so unless you know both physics engines really well you may end up copying the wrong values or miss something that crucially changes the values. For example if you want to copy spring values you need to know if the car had helper springs, what was the spring angle, motion ratio, linearity and the cam ratios of the pull/pushrod suspension... And how the game handles those parameters (or doesn't). And all those factors could be baked into the numbers in any way imaginable. Right or wrong.

If you have absolutely 0 info available, no good pictures then then maybe you could try those numbers but if you can not find anything chances are they could not find anything either.

 

[Nicecuppatea]

I was going to say use other sources to cross-check the info and see if they agree but of course the problem with that is that they may have done the same and the other sources (especially on the internet) may not be reliable, got a spreadsheet full of different sources and info for the Tank and half of it changes from one source to the next.