rec.autos.simulators

- Engine
- Gearbox
- Longitudnal Force generated by SlipRatio. I.e. the acceleration force is
coming from the tyres rather than a mystical force in the Centre of Grav.
- Sound (its horrible I know )
- Joystick support - should do split axis ok, but only one controller at the
minute.

Requirements: -

A wheel or joystick
A reasonably fast processor / gfx card
Directx 8.1

Installation

- unzip to a directory of your choice
- run calibrate.exe
- try and drive - be very careful :)
- if the calibrate program doesn't work (Its a little too sensitive at the
minute), to to manipulate the data manually in the /data/joystick.dat text
file.

Enjoy
Ash
http://www.racesimcentral.net/

Way cool Ash... as with all homespun efforts I'm very impressed.

The handling is.... how shall I put it?? -Challenging, yeah, that's it.
Challenging. ;-)

BTW, developers take note: if Ash can do a calibration routine which works
and supports split axes in his first public effort, there really is no
excuse for you lot.

Jan.
=---

Challenging, how polite :).  ***i'd say :D

Well try putting iron rods in your suspension rather than springs and taking
out your diff and tell me how your car drives :)

Glad you got your wheel to work, I think a few people have had problems,
Mikkel for one.  I think that the calibration is a little too sensitive,
pehaps I'll widen the threshhold values a little.  Also I would like to
change what I currently have now (turn left / right etc) to a GPL style -
shake the controller all about :).  Then have a seperate "assign to a
function" section.

I am not too worried that the car is "challenging at the minute", I am more
concerned about the tyre model, as it is pretty much all implemented (for
flat tarmac roads anyway), how do you like the way the tyres react?  I guess
its hard to tell before the whole car is complete, but I can see the
decrease in force as i accelerate hard and if I steer too much there is good
understeer (can understeer be good) and as you have probably seen lots of
times, it oversteers wildly under power :)

Thanks for the kind words :)

Ash
http://www.racesimcentral.net/

Worked first time. Personally, I don't mind the "Geoff Crammond style"
controller calibration, but the "Papyrus style" is quicker, so it would be
nice. Allowing control axis to reside on more than on controller (i.e. wheel
on controller 1 and gas/brake on controller 2 or vise versa) would be good
for the 3rd party/homespun pedal and***pit users as well.

Well, considering I'm driving a high powered car with nothing in the way of
suspension in a world which is absolutely flat, has one single grip level
regardless of surface and where weight transfer doesn't occur, as far as I
can tell, without the benifit(?) of force feedback, I'd say it's pretty
good. Driving from the chase cam it seemed as though the sliding tyre didn't
have enough "bite", but in***pit view it "feels" ok.

Is aero/rolling/mechanical drag supposed to be implemented? -Because it
coasts *extremely* well, especially in gear, but also in neutral.

Don't mention it. Looking forward to seeing you taking it forward. If I may
be as bold to make a suggestion... how about making the next test stage
(when you get weight transfer and pitch/roll done) into a kart sim? -Still
no real suspension/clutch/diff to worry about and you could get some
meaningfull feedback on how it "feels" (even without FF) from those who kart
regularly. Put it this way: with the possible exception of Tom Pabst, nobody
here has ever driven a Le Mans Prototype, with or without suspension, while
most will have driven karts. And, if I may drop my benign facade for a sec,
I hold karts would suit your size track better as well. <g>

Jan.
=---

Yeah, thats my home setup, so there is no problem with that :)

There are alot of "considering's" there, I hope I can reduce them in future
releases :).  It does feel a little like driving on ice, I will add some
suspension (I think I have the theory sorted out in my head - thanks to
Gregor!) and see how it feels after that, perhaps it will feel a little more
grippy, if not I will have to revisit my tyre force code (although from the
graphs that I produced it looks very consistant with real tyre data).

I have implemented rolling resistance, no aero as yet, although it does seem
to coast quite a while.

This will be the next step (after I find the horrible memory leak!), I will
be implementing tyres as springs and adding a little weight transfer, after
that I will add some full blown suspension  / dampers.

I was karting last wednesday and probably next saturday so I will try to
remember how it feels :)

Thanks for the suggestions and feedback!
Ash
http://www.racesimcentral.net/

Hmm, perhaps there is something fundamentally different about the Ferrari
wheel.

Can someone else with a Ferrari FF give it a go please?

Thanks!
Ash
http://www.siroccoracing.com

Cheers,

uwe

--
Uwe Schuerkamp //////////////////////////// http://www.schuerkamp.de/
Herford, Germany \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ (52.0N/8.5E)
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