Great picture, Gunn!
For those who want to read some more about the Brooklands track, here is a really nice article about it from the Octane Magazine.
Lol @ the white text
Wicked work, Mr. Phonso! One of my favourite cars, done extraordinarily well! Do keep us posted on the progress.
That'd be great, if frustrating. But I think we should get at least a half-decent damage model in place.
One Lap of Blackwood
First time making a video. Just a bit of driving around the Bl GP track.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOymOe5Pcg4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOymOe5Pcg4
Hey Dan,
I had the same exact problem that you did about 2 weeks ago. Your post made me download the latest fraps version, and it seems to work just fine now - i have video and audio. Try it out.
I don't mean for this to sound as an excuse, but anyway...I absolutely LOVE this game, I'm completely hooked on it, and I will definitely get a license in not so distant future. It's clear to me that it's worth the asking price and all that. Money isn't the issue. The reason I'm still demoing it out, is that I don't think I'm "good enough" for better cars/better racing just yet. Yes, I'm decently quick and more often than not can hang near the top of the pack, but I feel like there's still room for me to grow as a "driver", even in an XFG. But as I've said, I will get a full version with time.
Glad to help. If it's no secret, what are you planning to do with these design principles? Just curious. 
I wouldn't make it that dramatic (i.e. red lights/spectate), but I would like to enforce proper pit lane exit. I don't know how it is on other tracks, but in Blackwood, after you exit the pits and are past the tire barriers, there is still a dividing line and cones. Now, some people just cut this line and cones to get on track quicker. But consider F1 - they have a white dividing line on pit exit, and if you cross it, you get a drive through or stop&go, or something like that. So perhaps, this could be done in LFS too.
Overall though, at least in my experience, it hasn't been a major problem so far.
Overall though, at least in my experience, it hasn't been a major problem so far.
Haven't tried RBR, but I used to play GTR2, which does include "damage". The wheels/bodywork fall off, engines blow (either from downshifting too fast, or due to overheat, AFAIK), tires get punctured, etc.
While it didn't feel 100% authentic, it still made me watch where I was going and how I was going. Starting back from the pits all over again, should I have a crash, didn't feel compelling enough. So, perhaps, I pushed the car less than I do in LFS (of course, can't compare the vehicles, but still), and when I was driving with AIs I also made sure I kept some room for error.
Again, to each his own. Some people don't want to see anything short of stellar damage, on par with LFS's chassis/tire physics. But for some, like me, even a small step in what we think is the right direction would be much appreciated.
While it didn't feel 100% authentic, it still made me watch where I was going and how I was going. Starting back from the pits all over again, should I have a crash, didn't feel compelling enough. So, perhaps, I pushed the car less than I do in LFS (of course, can't compare the vehicles, but still), and when I was driving with AIs I also made sure I kept some room for error.
Again, to each his own. Some people don't want to see anything short of stellar damage, on par with LFS's chassis/tire physics. But for some, like me, even a small step in what we think is the right direction would be much appreciated.
Actually, looking at your scans, and seeing that they use lines through tire contact patches (and I've seen it done before, so no arguement here), the roll centre for the body of a car using parallel control arms would be at the ground surface, in the centre of the car's track.
The reason for this is that ICRs for both wheels are now essentially at infinity. So if you try to draw a line from the tire contact patch to a point at infinity, this line will, practically, have zero slope, which means it's horizontal and located at H=0.
But of course, to be absolutely precise, the line's slope will be just above (and just below) zero, so the two of them will intersect in the middle of the vehicle's track.
This sort of places a cap on where your RC will be positioned. With the right angling of the wishbones, you can get the RC below, or above the ground, as desired.
The key parameters to be modeled in a part-to-track collision would be mass of the parts and the elasticity of the impact (=1 - elastic and the part rebounds perfectly; =0 - inelastic and it stays attached to the track). To be completely accurate, you'd need to mesh every part and use a finite element code to determine its spring constant, natural frequency, etc. This will determine how the part impacts the ground, how it deforms, etc. In other words, one heck of a computing mess.
In any case, both of the videos show better crash damage than what we currently have. But the key aspect is that after the crash, the cars are left stranded on track or in the gravel trap, whether it is by means of a damaged engine, or because the wheels fell off. If the Devs could just accommodate that aspect into the game, I'd be pretty happy.
It's hard to imagine that you could just transform the existing (crappy) damage model into something rivaling reality in one step. You have to take small steps to get there, and IMO, this is one of those steps.
Clever, especially with the turn around
BuddhaBing,
I used to read about what happens in these cases, but I can't recall it right now (I don't have that book on me either), so I probably won't answer your question directly.
However, what I can offer (I think) some insight on, is the kinematics in general. So here goes...
When you calculate the instant/instantaneous centre of rotation (ICR), what you do is the following. Suppose you have a rigid body (here, wheel/rim) with two links attached to it (UCA & LCA, say at points U and L, respectively), both having some kind of angular velocity. The IRC would then be the intersection of the lines, perpendicular to the linear velocity vectors of the rigid body at points U and L. Which is what you have in your first two cases, essentially.
In the third case, since such lines would be parallel to one another, as you've promptly noticed, no IRC can be defined. What this means, is that the wheel can't rotate about the axis coming out of the page. In essence, its camber will stay fixed. Another way to think of it is a rectangular sign suspended from above by two equal length, parallel cables. It can swing sideways, but its centreline will remain horizontal...i.e. it won't tilt.
Same thing happens here - the wheel (in theory) can move up and down, but its upper and lower ends can't go left and right (as viewed from the front of the car).
Of course, this doesn't mean that the car's body won't roll, as it's attached to the wheels by means of compressible springs.
As a guess, I would say that the RC is in the middle of the track, halfway up between the LCA and UCA. At least, common sense would suggest so.
At the same time, if the above hypothesis is correct, it is another reason why equal length, parallel control arms are not very popular - high RC.
Hope the above was halfway cohesive.
Cheers,
I used to read about what happens in these cases, but I can't recall it right now (I don't have that book on me either), so I probably won't answer your question directly.
However, what I can offer (I think) some insight on, is the kinematics in general. So here goes...
When you calculate the instant/instantaneous centre of rotation (ICR), what you do is the following. Suppose you have a rigid body (here, wheel/rim) with two links attached to it (UCA & LCA, say at points U and L, respectively), both having some kind of angular velocity. The IRC would then be the intersection of the lines, perpendicular to the linear velocity vectors of the rigid body at points U and L. Which is what you have in your first two cases, essentially.
In the third case, since such lines would be parallel to one another, as you've promptly noticed, no IRC can be defined. What this means, is that the wheel can't rotate about the axis coming out of the page. In essence, its camber will stay fixed. Another way to think of it is a rectangular sign suspended from above by two equal length, parallel cables. It can swing sideways, but its centreline will remain horizontal...i.e. it won't tilt.
Same thing happens here - the wheel (in theory) can move up and down, but its upper and lower ends can't go left and right (as viewed from the front of the car).
Of course, this doesn't mean that the car's body won't roll, as it's attached to the wheels by means of compressible springs.
As a guess, I would say that the RC is in the middle of the track, halfway up between the LCA and UCA. At least, common sense would suggest so.
At the same time, if the above hypothesis is correct, it is another reason why equal length, parallel control arms are not very popular - high RC.
Hope the above was halfway cohesive.
Cheers,
Your points are all valid. In fact, I would very much prefer that something like that is done. But the whole idea of this thread is to suggest something very basic, that's simple to implement in the short term, before the proper damage model is complete (and that, I understand, will take quite a while).
You don't necessarily have to count the number of hits. You can do with just one, for all I care, above a certain threshold speed, as Boris has suggested. The point is, even something basic like this could be better IMHO than nothing (current suspension damage doesn't really count).
Oh wow...the tetris suggestion was good though. 
Very simple damage idea
Disclaimer: found nothing by searching.
As I was driving around yesterday, it occurred to me that most cars have the engine upfront (what a revelation, eh?), and when you have a crash that visually damages your front bodywork in LFS, it will most likely affect the engine in some way or another.
So what I want to suggest is that whenever you get, say, 2 or 3 hits on the front end resulting in bodywork damage (since LFS can already "detect" that), your race is over. Same could apply to the roof damage, or if you flip.
The idea/advantage here is that you don't need to calculate the effects of the crash on the entire car and each individual component. You just get screwed, plain and simple.
I realize that this type of approach could make for some frustrating racing, particularly on demo servers, but hopefully this will make people drive more carefully.
I also want to mention that I see this as a temporary "fix" and would wholeheartedly welcome an accurate damage model. But as the latter is no easy feat, I'd be willing to stick it with a simplified one for the time being.
Cheers for reading
As I was driving around yesterday, it occurred to me that most cars have the engine upfront (what a revelation, eh?), and when you have a crash that visually damages your front bodywork in LFS, it will most likely affect the engine in some way or another.
So what I want to suggest is that whenever you get, say, 2 or 3 hits on the front end resulting in bodywork damage (since LFS can already "detect" that), your race is over. Same could apply to the roof damage, or if you flip.
The idea/advantage here is that you don't need to calculate the effects of the crash on the entire car and each individual component. You just get screwed, plain and simple.
I realize that this type of approach could make for some frustrating racing, particularly on demo servers, but hopefully this will make people drive more carefully.
I also want to mention that I see this as a temporary "fix" and would wholeheartedly welcome an accurate damage model. But as the latter is no easy feat, I'd be willing to stick it with a simplified one for the time being.
Cheers for reading
I will one day (honest), I just haven't gotten enough out of demo. I'm still too slow
That's great work! I'd love to race at BL in a big pack like that.
What about Blackwood on the exit out of T1/T2 (the last right turn just before the main straight)? All the quick guys run the 2 left wheels on the kerb, while the right wheels are in the air. When taken "right", they almost don't lose any speed at all doing this jumping. Though F10 shows a little bit of suspension damage every time you do this manouvre. Maybe it's just me, but it really bugs me how the cars remain intact while doing this lap after lap. I always try to take the clean line (right wheels on the edge of the kerb), but I realize that I'm scrubbing a bit of exit speed doing this.
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG