So I was just, y'know... scrolling through the vehicle tag... Downloading anything I think is cool (and doesn't fry the fuck out of my device), playing around with it... And I've quite noticed that most SP vehicles have something in common.
They can't quite handle well. Or they handle too well.
It's either they lose grip and rolls over, oversteers too much, or understeers in reasonably slow speeds.
Then I've noticed why was that. It was because they had no working axle differentials!
Example of an open differential. There's better examples than this, like the LSD (limited slip differential, and no it's not the funny drug) and torque vectoring.
And since there's no shaft differential in SP vehicles, their driven wheels always spin at the same rates even when the car is turning, which causes somewhat crappy handling and in real life, tyre wear.
A differential solves that problem by turning the drive wheels at different rates when turning!
In a straight line, a car's drive wheels will spin at the same rate.
Turning into a corner however, the outside drive wheels tend to cover more distance than the inside drive wheels. Without a differential, this could cause locking and tyre wear.
So my question is, has anyone tried their hands at making one of these? I can't do it myself because it's pretty much out of my skill level. Maybe it includes FT magic or something.
Also, please don't take this as a sort of insult to vehicles in SP.
I think they're great, and they could even be better without this problem!
Dude, @TRDdoestuff, you quite literally used a rotor to turn the wheels instead of using the fine tuner just to tilt them. You made a very jenkey build that cannot compare to trd’s builds.
This is your idea to solve the problem?:
https://www.simpleplanes.com/a/EsiL12/Steering-diff-test-passively-weight-shifting-car-2
Couldn’t you solve this by tilting the front wheels back a bit therefore changing the angle in which they steer which will lift of of the rear wheels when steering disconnecting it from the ground creating a (fake) differential? Cuz that’s what I did.
I dont understand any of this but its true
Lol just took one of these apart this week 😂. But i think with sp physics it wouldn't work well, collisions would get weird and all that if your making an actually fully detail dif, but maybe can simulate with ft.
Wheel traction is also weird in sp, it's not something many video games replicate. Wheels don't slide sideways unless the ground is basically oiled or if they lost traction at high speed, I don't really know why replicating that is impossible in sp, I would think it would be a simple force calculation by inputting a static friction value, but it just seems when you increase sideways traction it just slides less. There's not really a way to keep them from sliding at all
Checkmate
Spawn at gold prix.
@Johnnyynf I believe each wheel attached to the engine has an equal torque applied to it. The speed seems to be able to vary, but the torque supplied to each wheel is the same. This is why I don't think this is the cause of the grip problems in sp, but rather the awful tire model as you suggested (though this engine mechanic does cause some odd behavior). The easiest "remedy" to this is to lower the sideways traction asymptote so its value is closer to the extremum, but it is less of a fix to the problem and more of a patch.
I agree with this
As far as i know, the only ways of doing a differential without eating up parts is to assign each wheel to each engine, or the use of the F-AWC system Johnnyynf made or the F-TSC system i developed
maybe one day Brake FT is added and we can easily make a proper working diff, then that would save some parts
gotta say my LF02 handles much shittier than my old OWR-02E which featured F-TSC and has far less grip
@Johnnyynf Really detailed explanation! Also, nice Miata you got on your profile.
I believe the game has some sort of rootementary open differential. You can try it by assigning 2 wheels to the engine and only 1 has contact with the ground. One in air will will spin while the other won't.
As to the weird grip action, I believe it's more to the fact that SP's tire physics are just weird, as I elaborated in this post
We could kinda mimic how LSD works if we can assign FT to wheel brakes, but it's currently not doable because no FT for brakes for now.
As to how the wheel could react in different torque split, I made a rig with 4 wheel assign to each engine, and have some FT to make it react differently, feel free to play around with it
@Bellcat Oh, SimpleRockets2. Of course.. Tbh everything on the screen while playing overwhelmed me so much I was confused and stopped playing.
Also, the traction and weight transfer physics are garbage, and and the force that tyre exerts actually occurs at the centre of the wheel instead of the ground.
It is often very difficult and part consuming to implement said drive axles. Stock wheels do not rotate along with their axles either and fuselage wheels may have their own problems (like “jittering” as one user reported). I find it easier in Simplerockets2 than in Simpleplanes to make such drivetrains.