I read quite often that downforced cars could theoretically be driven on the ceiling, once they've reached a certain speed.
I was just wondering if the devs have tried this out with e.g. the FO8 on a special track or so
Could be great fun too in Multiplayer. It wouldn't even be unrealistic
theoretically its possible, but it would take a bit of effort! the pick ups from the fuel tanks/valves in the engine/many other things would need to be fixed to run upside down.
Dont have those probs in a sim though would be fun for a laugh.
2 stroke engines will run in any orientation.... we need an FO2!
Assuming it was otherwise identical to the FO8, running high wing angles you could drive it upside down from about 130mph. You would have so little grip though it'd would be near impossible not to spin (especially considering the power).
To get the same grip as being the right way up (without downforce) you'd have to stay above 180mph. Note that with the wing angles needed the FO8 will only do ~163mph, so infact you'd need even more power than it has.
So yeah, it's possible, but you need an equally mad car. Like an F1.
actually you wouldn't have to go NEARLY that fast. fluid friction varies with the square of speed. as you double your speed you quadrouple your wind resistance and therefore downforce. once you get above 200 kph/120 mph the wind resistance escalates RAPIDLY with speed. i've heard that professional racers call it "black magic".
if you've got a motorcycle or really fast car, try waving to your friend at 200 kph and then try at 250 kph. i did and hurt my shoulder as the wind tried to take my arm off!
i hadn't considered the effect on the fuel and oil system.
whatever system stunt planes and jet fights use could probably be implimented relativel easily.
HANGING in the seatbelts would be a strange sensation.
just try rolling your car! then you can hang in the seat belts all you like! :P
i think it would be great if the devs made is possible to at least try driving upside down, purely for demonstrative purposes! maybe a tunnel could be added to a stunt arena? ala herbie
Dry-sump system is used on piston stuntplanes. Very similar to what modern racecars use. I think you'd find a modern single seater type car would run for quite a good bit of time inverted without running out of fuel or oil. Simple mods could make it work indefinitely I would suppose. The fuel tank might need some additional baffling or another pickup, but those cells are already often really well baffled with multiple pressurized "accumulators" that can hold a good bit of fuel. 6.2 kilos in BAR's case. :lol:
The corkscrew seems really feasible, driving around an upside down track not so much. The upside down track would need LARGE radius curves, as you need enough speed to have the downforce offset one G, plus enough for the grip needed to overcome drag with forward force, plus the grip needed to do that while turning. Probably no turns at less than 250kph or so. Suppose it depends a lot on how meaty your wings are.
Renault traced their engine problems at last year's Belgian GP to the negative g-loading at the top of Eau Rouge. As the car crested the hill the negative vertical acceleration caused the oil in the sump to rise and interfere with the pistons, eventually causing failure. Doesn't mean they didn't fix it but it would seem that they don't use a dry sump system.
Really good info, hadn't heard that about that failure.
Can't seem to find anything saying so at the moment, but I'm 99.999 percent sure its a dry sump. For it not to be their engine would have to needlessly be raised several inches in the chassis, thats the primary disadvantage of wetsump in a racing car. Also, I don't think you could make any wetsump live through an F1 race. Its hard enough to make wetsump engines last in racing use with street tires. The dry sump uses vacuum to accumulate the oil, defroths it, then pressurizes it.
I can find various places mentioning other team's engines are dry sump.
The problem you mention doesn't automatically mean its a wet sump. Even in a "dry-sump" oil is constantly draining to the bottom of the engine. If its lifted by G-loads into the path of the crank, things could get very interesting. It'd be neat to know what part of that interaction made the engine fail....was it the 19000spm pistons bashing through liquid oil drops (which would be like little rocks at that speed) or was it through some other mechanism? "Interfere with the pistons" is a bit confusing, because I'm also reasonably sure they have oil-sprayers pointed at the bottom of the piston to keep it cool.
edit: another thread that makes passing mention of the oiling issues in eau rouge.
It would make more sense to me if it were as this gentleman suggests an issue of the oil actually in use, rather than an oil pressure problem as one would expect without a drysump. As noted, there is still a bunch of oil in an engine with a drysump.
Yeah, you're probably right. I misunderstood the term 'dry-sump'. I don't have any more info on the failures, it was mentioned by the ITV commentary team at this year's Belgian GP. All they said was that the problem was that the oil was causing problems as it rushed to the top of the engine over the top of the crest. Whether that's because the crank was starved of oil or whether the pistons were drowned in it I don't know. Interesting that Honda had the same problem a couple of years earlier though.
Does LFS even model downforce this way? I'd wager a guess that downforce is always computed as being toward the ground, no matter the orientation of the car. I would think that figuring actual downforce would take too many cpu cycles. Maybe Scawen could tell us for sure, but this may be a trade secret that he doesn't want to divulge.
We know that what you just said is similar to the aero simplications in at the moment that cause the high nose cheat. But taking it into account is hardly CPU intensive, you just need to know the orientation and direction of movement of the car. Not difficult stuff.
On the contrary, as we have seen from the aforementioned high nose exploit, downforce in LFS is always perpendicular to the longitudinal and lateral axes of the car (Z axis), and therefore does not take into account the angle of attack (anyone at all familiar with aviation will know what I'm talking about).
would be fun for a laugh.
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