Timberwolf on Youtube has a series of great videos about car physics in games.<p>How it developed over the years: <a href="https://youtu.be/_IMN9XVYSiY" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/_IMN9XVYSiY</a><p>How a few games worked:
<a href="https://youtu.be/hcmSBwLKVOY" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/hcmSBwLKVOY</a>
<a href="https://youtu.be/p5s-zbXtDoo" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/p5s-zbXtDoo</a><p>Absolutely recommended!
That brings back memories. I remember using that article when creating a simple racing game for a school project in 2005. Using that game I found that the car I was using for a starter series in rallycross at the same time had higher top speed in 4th gear than 5th because of a lack of power
I’m just gonna leave this here …<p><a href="https://youtu.be/Tn04UwfKk9o?si=8V0kGMSVoBfkZaBT" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/Tn04UwfKk9o?si=8V0kGMSVoBfkZaBT</a><p>I’ve lost hours to this.<p>YMMV<p>Depending on the velocity settings of your reality
The torque curve per gear is so cool to see... Back in the days I did record my car's engine accelerating on a flat street (and I did it both ways) and then used a fast Fourier transform to find the engine RPM from the recorded sound.<p>I then plotted that torque curve (it requires knowing how many cylinders, gear ration, wheel size and a few other things and there are a few approximation [like tires deforming with speed, loss, ...] but it's doable) and, sure enough, the resulting curve was very close to the one given in the car's official book.<p>Yup, back in the eighties car manufacturers (at least some of them) would give you a book with the gear ration and torque curve nicely plotted.<p>IIRC you only need to record the acceleration over one speed (say the 2nd gear) and then with the gear ratio you can plot all the gears.<p>It was my first Java app with a GUI! I probably still have the code somewhere on obscure backups.