[HO] Project CARS

PreAlpha: (37 mandays)
- LODX meshes finished (exterior + interior)
- Collision export
- Placeholder physics
- Placeholder sound
- Export: no LODs, LODX as LODA meshes, placeholder materials/textures

Alpha1: (20 mandays)
- Tyres + wheels finished (textures, tyre deformations, wheelblur, all LODs)
- Chassis textures/materials finished (incl. brakes + lightglows)
- 1stP cockpit textures/materials finished
- Paint material UVs finished
- Physics 1st draft
- Sound 1st draft
- Export: no LODs, LODX as LODA meshes, finished materials/textures

Alpha2: (16 mandays)
- LODA/LODB/LODC setup complete
- 1stP cockpit meshes finished
- 3rdP cockpit textures finished
- Ambient shadow added
- Export: full LOD setup

Beta1: (13 mandays)
- 20 AI liveries finished
- Gearstick animations finished (if required)
- Windscreen reflection added (if required)
- Cockpit display added (if required)

Beta2: (6 mandays)
- Damage setup (crumple damage, scratches/dents, detachables)
- 1stP cockpit ambient occlusion added
- External ambient occlusion added
- Cockpit animations finished (if required)
- Suspension animations finished (if required)
- Body animations finished (if required)
- Physics finished
- Sound finished

Hi Doug - hope you're very well and here's my latest thoughts; hope we can throw some ideas around to see if we can process some of this!

Feedback Feb 19 2012

Version 154

Formula A (F1)

Graphics: superb. Steering wheel & seat position feel perfect.

One thing that seems OTT is the reflections on the horse-shoe surrounding the drivers head (the side impact protection bodywork). The reflections are distracting in your peripheral vision and in real life you wouldn’t see such beautifully detailed flashing images of clouds & trees!

Another suggestion is regarding the sense of bumps. In F1 the shake can be severe and at Bumpy tracks like Imola (see link with Jenson Button) the jarring is really aggressive. Could this be reflected more in the sense of movement from the F1 body? (this occurs in other cars too per below)

Handling: the F1 really has too much understeer / resistance to turn, and lack of initial turn in. In real life it really darts into the corner and you have an instant sensation of the cars balance from then on. Currently I turn the wheel as far is it will go on turn in, which should spin the car, and it still resists turn.

The change of direction feels lazy in the F1. IE as you go from left steering to right steering, there seems to be a delay in the turn and a sense of rolling in the body. In reality the weight transfer is almost immediate and the steering is 100% direct. Is there a way to make the steering more reactive?

On steering I can feel a kick back at play a lot of the time, almost like self centering. This isn’t just the steering wheel itself but a real handling feature, so something in the software is trying to alter the direction of the car. It usually happens after initial turn or exiting a corner. Do you know what is causing this? There is certainly some link between this characteristic and the above handling comments.

Engine response / throttle control: it feels like the power only kicks in at the mid range when really the F1 should have the driveable power and response to spin the wheels from much lower in the rev band. When the power does kick in it seems to dump and the snap oversteer is hard to control. My feeling is that there should be more progression and the handling, ideally, would allow the car to slip into oversteer more. Currently there is plenty of understeer as mentioned above, then snap o/steer when you try to break through the u/steer on power. I have crash tested this one thoroughly.

Would love to get the F1 car much closer with a crisp turn in and greater throttle control. Again I hate to refer to it but more like the sense of handling on GP3.

Braking: so impressed with the graphics on wheel lock ups and the sense of feel.

And: at about 170 mph I dropped a wheel off on the pit straight and the car spun – With that much downforce I felt this was a bit harsh!

Gumpert APOLLO
Handling: there’s far too much u/steer into fast corners especially. I like the way the car kind of floats around under braking and tells you to reign in your intentions, but the lack of high speed front grip is too much and it give you little forgiveness if you try and recover front grip by reducing speed.

There should be more mid-range engine response – the gumpert has quite a punchy torque (more like the current F1 acceleration in terms of feeling a whallop in mid range torque)

L4-RS (Radical)

This is one of my favourites. Partly the graphics are awesome but the handling is twitchy and responsive which is what makes the driving experience so accurate.

Graphics: the bumps seem to register faster on the bodywork and this makes you feel more in tune with ‘reality’. (better compared to the F1) I would enhance this even more because the Radical is like a terrier.

Handling: the turn in on the radical is good and it seems to swing towards the apex with less feeling of self centering from the steering. You also have a better chance of holding the balance on the throttle. The change of direction is better on the Radical than the F1 as well.

There is some over/steer caused by braking which was quite manageable and a benefit entering some corners. Mostly this was manifest when braking from high speed (see note on Atom)

Radical V8

Handling

The V8 has good throttle control but I found the additional speed created too much high speed under/steer in certain corners, with little forgiveness or progression – just a big slide. The dynamic handling should respond more to inputs of steering / throttle.

250 Kart

Handling

The kart had minimal turn in power and too much under/steer - it should really dart towards a corner like an F1 car. The body movement felt quite lazy as well. Comments on the kart closely mirror my impression of the F1 so will try not repeat myself!

Under braking I felt the kart should be far more aggressive to reflect reality, with rear locking up and then fronts etc. The brake pedal effect is instant in a kart and you should have to feather your foot on it to avoid spinning because it has so much bite.

Ditto accleration – this should be wild with more reactive power.

Atom V8

Handling

Under initial braking from high speed the Atom goes into over/steer as if it lacks downforce, which felt a little odd. I think it’s a good trait but this should only really happen under braking as you start steering ie later in the braking area once the downforce has peeled off (the radical is the same on this).

After the braking area the car has too much under/steer. Sorry I’m a broken record. Ironically the o/steer under braking effect doesn’t seem to occur a low speed corners which is a shame because you could use this to turn the car into the corner more with a flick of the tail. Is it possible to adjust this “brake / steer” into the handling dynamic?

Graphics – the data recording dash is just amazing! I noticed the RPM gauge when I was spinning the wheels and felt it could move faster to reflect the rapid changes in revs.

I really liked seeing the drivers arms in the Atom! During one of my heavy steering maneuvers however I noticed that as the graphic arms turned the wheel it suddenly skipped around ie I clearly turned my wheel beyond the range of the graphics. What you might expect is to see a fully turned arm leading over the wheel and the underside of the other hand coming up the other side which is what I was doing in my console – I’m sure you know this but thought I should note it.

DTM Touring Car

This is one of the most natural cars to drive.

Handling: good initial turn-in, then I feel the self centering effect wash out the steering with understeer but it’s not too bad in the DTM for some reason. I felt I could balance this one better over kerbs and with the throttle. Is there a reason for that?

Braking: realistic and very late with good bite and feel.

For some reason the DTM was changing gear automatically which was a bit weird. The internal graphics were superb with the air ducts, steering and gear lever. I felt a little crowded though and the view of the track was a little compromised / distant when using the cockpit view. Outside the cockpit in the higher view it would be good to have gear and speed indicators – I’m sure that’s in the works.

LMP
Love this one!

Handling: My main bug with the LMP is the “end of heavy braking under/steer”. You slam the brakes, get close to locking or maybe lock a tad and when you release the brakes the car refuses to turn.

Ideally the LMP would still turn even if the speed is too high on turn in. At worst it would skid sideways or scrabble offline a tad on turn in, warning you to avoid the throttle until you fix the mess. Currently the major front skid seems too punitive and terminal - the threshold between getting it right or flying into the gravel is too slim and difficult to control. Is there a way to enhance this a bit?

In general I would still like even more front grip and high speed turn in power for the LMP if that is possible.


IN GENERAL

I can feel general handling characteristics across the board as you might expect. The main considerations overall therefore are:

1. What is the self-steering effect and can it be eliminated to improve turning power?
2. Can we make turn in more aggressive?
3. Can we make u/steer & o/steer handling conditions more progressive (to help the u/steer as you bleed off braking; snap o/steer as you apply power; general cornering)
4. Can we move certain handling states into specific areas? IE move high speed o/steer under braking into the low speed corners?

Awesome feedback Ben!!. Love reading it. Alot i'm well aware of of course.
I'll try to answer some of you general feedback below:

IN GENERAL

I can feel general handling characteristics across the board as you might expect. The main considerations overall therefore are:

1. What is the self-steering effect and can it be eliminated to improve turning power?

I'm not sure on this one. But i would guess it the increase in sliding grip once we get past the peak that was done after your last comments. It seemed to turn the physics around for everyone, but this might be a slight side effect from it. It ain't easy .

2. Can we make turn in more aggressive?

Yes, but general stabilty will suffer. This is a balancing act i spend so much time with it isn't even funny. I could make the tyres turn in so well it would make your head spin, but the car would also spin endlessly and throttle control will suffer... But seriously as you've proably already figured out asking for a specific change in one area will cause problems elsehwere. Like there's alot of people complaining about straight line stabilty, which will get hurt if i make the tyres turn in crisper. There's something in the tyre model that we are working on right now that might help with all this, so be patient. The physics model is never complete

3. Can we make u/steer & o/steer handling conditions more progressive (to help the u/steer as you bleed off braking; snap o/steer as you apply power; general cornering)

Goes against what your asking in #2 so you see the difficulty i have. Actually the stiffer tyres to fix the crisp turn in will help u/steer bleed, but hurts the snap oversteer, but i have some ideas.

4. Can we move certain handling states into specific areas? IE move high speed o/steer under braking into the low speed corners?

This to me would be setup change for that car to suit your driving style. As a simple change i would add some rear wing or remove front on that particular car. If its a no downforce car then it's probably lifting the rear slightly at high speed making it dancy and not much to do about it other than adjusting swaybars and brake bias for your best compromise.

All this said, we are working on some ideas now to try and improve on some of the compromises we have to deal with. Again give us some time. For now i won't be making any big changes to the general physics as i feel the balance of most car in general is pretty good with the current model. I'll look at the Formula A sometime during the week with an eye towards your feedback and see where that leads me. Thanks

stage 1
get all these working and manipulating in the weather settings.
(aquí hay un montón de variables en un listado bastaaante largo)

stage 2.
change texture loading so we can load several different texture setups.
write the sky dome so we can blend between several textures (sky) , write a texture packet structure so this can be dynamic.

- Separate moon light required with same dynamic settings as the current key (sun) light
- New HDR sun and moon sprites added. Test lensflare xmls created already for both c:\SMS\Aries\trunk\Aries\Effects\LensFlare\Sun.xml and lensflare_Moon_Full.xml
- HDR moon and sun need to be drawn in front of dome but behind all geo and cloud layers
- HDR moon and sun should not be shrunk at the edge of the screen like the lens flares
- HDR moon and sun should be drawn in emap and IBL
- HDR moon and sun need dynamic inputs for Element colour (x2), Element Intensity (x2), Overall scale (x1)
- Moon type input required ( 6 stages new to full which we can possibly mirror also)


stage 3
apply similar concepts for cloud layers. (may even revise cloud shadows) (uv manipulation or simple cloud dome layer rotation too)


Cloud layers:

Cloud layers need to blend using a threshold based on the thickness map so that they appear to shrink or grow rather than just change opacity.

Horizon dome - a single full dome texture. Rotate Dome or uvs. Speed of dome rotation needs to be dynamic and editable.
Overhead lower layer - tilable texture. Ideally scroll uvs as dome may not be hemispherical. Dynamic editable inputs for speed, direction, scale (texture tile amount).
Overhead upper layer - tilable texture. Ideally scroll uvs as dome may not be hemispherical. Dynamic editable inputs for speed, direction, scale (texture tile amount).

stage 4.
look at weather time time graphing.. i.e setup to plot weather changing through out the day..

Preference would be to release builds here.

stage 5
once all in place
start looking at ground effects etc

wet ground (needs masking in tunnels), wet car, wet windscreen, windscreen wipers, moving trees in wind, moving grass in wind, lightning effects, water splash particles, rain particles (needs masking in tunnels).

stage 6.
look at manipulation for localised weather settings. , eg rain one end of a track , sunny other end.


stage 7.
revise usage for long / lat system.
Apply new Feedback.

Ya,ya, ni es un EVO, ni es la decoración real real, digamos que es algo "inspirado en"