PC car game with the best physics

Although they didn't go for ultra-realism, the physics in Rally Championship 2000 were very good. Something about them just felt really real and more fun compared to the likes of colin - (although RC did have something of an arcade slant compared)
took a very long time to really get into RC though.

colin mcrea always felt fake to me, oversteer always seemed to rotate around the centre of the car for example..

Colin McRae 4 has the best physics I think but Rallisport Challenge 2 for the XBox is sweet -- a little more arcade-ish but pretty good.

Quote:

Original post by beoch Colin McRae 4 has the best physics I think but Rallisport Challenge 2 for the XBox is sweet -- a little more arcade-ish but pretty good.

All the CMR games has arcade physics, they are not even trying to be simulators. I belive the game with best phsics are GTR demo. Racer and LFS has also good physics. Sportscar gt is also an game with good physics, iirc the physics engine in GTR is based on the one in Sportscar gt.

I'm not sure if you're asking from a coding point-of-view or not, but here are some things I found a couple of years ago when looking for some physics examples with Director.

http://oldsite.havok.com/xtra/demos/demo-cardemo.html
http://oldsite.havok.com/xtra/demos/demo-raycastcar.html
http://oldsite.havok.com/xtra/demos/demo-dashcar.html

The top one is the best one and is the one I immediately thought of when reading this post. [smile] There's also a jeep demo http://meqon.com/downloadarea/downloadarea.php along with some other examples.

If you want to see realistic physics demos, the best place to look for them, is on sites where developers are producing physics middleware libraries, such as Havok and Meqon above.

-hellz

I don't think you should be allowed to put 'Gran Tourismo' and 'realism' in the same sentence, but GTR is definitely at the top of my list.

And Trackmania :)

Quote:

Original post by oliii I don't think you should be allowed to put 'Gran Tourismo' and 'realism' in the same sentence, but GTR is definitely at the top of my list. And Trackmania :)

Oliii, what do you mean by that? Other than the undamagable cars, the game was very realistic. Hopefully that's all you meant by it.

As to the original poster, the buggy in Halo had nice suspention. You can tell I don't play many racing games :P.

Thanks for the comments so far.
I really recommend trying that Nissan game. It is very well configurable, there is a lot of parameters, so they have surely made a quite detailed physics model. The graphics is not that fantastic but it does not matter.
You can download the demo here. There is one Nissan and one track available in the demo.

I am disappointed about the Havok demos. I expected more. In every demo the car is accelerating to fast. Pressing the up and down buttons alternatively shows this. Tha car-demo is strange when at low speed I turn. It just spins out. This is abnormal. Extremly oversteered or just bug don't know. In the raycast demo I keep pressing only the right arrow and the car begins spinning. Very disappointing! And the third, dashpot-demo, I go forward, than release gas, and let roll the car, when it it not so fast I turn right, and when it stops, the rear wheels slip a lot. Every real car behaves far differently. So maybe Havok's physics engine is the best but car simulation is a special case, it requires more I think. These were done too simply and so they show a lot of big difference from reality. The main cause of the strange behaviour was the bad tyre model in each demos.

I found Meqon jeep demo a lot lot better than Havok's ones. One thing I noticed: the jeep jumped always longer than I expected, when climbed a hill.

I would try GT4 but there is no PC edition. :-(
So I just keep watching the trailer. Its physics seems really good based on this.

I will look at the games you mentioned.

Just keep posting comments. I am interested in your impressions about the Nissan game.

Yeah, I totally agree with you. Those demos are a few years old, mind. There are more demos on the current Havok site, but none which show off vehicle physics. There's only ragdoll ones and a description about what their SDK can do, which does mention some details for vehicle physics.

I'll download that Nissan game now and have a look. Sounds interesting. [smile]

-hellz

Quote:

Original post by vnillabrent Quote: Original post by oliii I don't think you should be allowed to put 'Gran Tourismo' and 'realism' in the same sentence, but GTR is definitely at the top of my list. And Trackmania :) Oliii, what do you mean by that? Other than the undamagable cars, the game was very realistic. Hopefully that's all you meant by it.

I liked GT4 from a physics standpoint, but the lack of damage does make it feel arcade like after a few good bumps.

Other than that, I would go with the GTR Demo.

Just checked out the Nissan demo. You know you're a geek when you can go through a setup program that's in Japanese. [wink] It does seem pretty good! The weight distribution feels about right and it certainly handles inertia drift quite well. Does anyone else think it spins a bit too easily on the gravel, though? Not a lot, just a tad. Feels a little over-exaggerated.

Anyway, thanks for the link. Gave me a break from studying for a few minutes. [smile]

-hellz

I played the GT4 rip-off demo (charging for a half assed demo, jeez...), and I wasn't too impressed, as far as realism go. was too 'easy', too easy to correct the trajectory and power-slidy, especially the 4 wheel drive rally cars. The braking seemed assisted as well. It wasn't that much fun either. Probably because of the lack of competition, and you could only do some lame license thing, and just qualification laps. I don't like the first person view as well, it's really hard to see the corners, where as in GTR, it's very clear. Dunno, it felt a lot more arcade, but nothing like Burnout2 of course. and the rally part was like driving an hovercraft. no feeling at all. And they should really do something about that third person camera, because it's the worse I've ever seen in a racing game. I don't criticise the game, but I don't think it's as realistic as they claim. I probably have to give it another go.

OK, I'm not a professional racing driver, I don't even own a Force feedback wheel anymore, but GTR had that extra hardcore edge. You could really feel the car, when the tires were starting to wear out, or when they were cold, or well cooked and grippy. YOu could almost feel the weight transfer from corners to corners, each corners had something special about it too, like some were really traitorous, slippery, while some felt a lot more forgiving. And if you stray off the racing line, then you were in trouble. And the curbs seems very accurate. If you get the inner front-wheel inside the curb, you can take some corners a lot faster, while on some other corners, the curbs feel very slippery and you don't want to go there. It's hard to hear the tires loosing grip though, with all that engine and transmission noises, but you can also tweak it in the files, and that helps a lot too. The collisions are rubbish though, just like in GT4 :)

my best time is a lame 2:17:30 on a PS2 joypad, but I intend to improve on that... :)

I dunno, Gran Turismo always felt pretty 'real' when driving at speeds that I actually drive at. I try not to make it a habit to drive over 150kph, though, as I'm fairly sure that's a felony.

Honestly, I did not think of car damage when I started this topic. I meant good vehicle dynamics, and realistic motion. But it does not matter.:)

Have somebody any experience about Richard Burns Rally console edition? It is out, isn't it? Its GFX is about 100%, but the physics? Is it as good as the previews describe?

has anyone else here played Rally Championship 2000 (also known as Mobil 1 Rally Championship)? (demo - I'm just interested, I loved that game)

The havok demos never really impressed me.. They never seemed to get suspension and grip right... Sure havok is rediculously fast, but it just didn't feel very solid.. Like you were driving a RC car not a big lugging off roader or something.

now. Time to get back to work on my own rally physics engine ;)

I have just tried Rally Championship 2000 Demo. It's not as good as LFS or the Nissan game IMO, I found the suspension's behaviour similar to CMR's, not too real. I encountered collision detection problems between car and other objects: the side of the car is not always tested :). But it's eventually fun to drive.
The terrain is good, not just linear track in the 2nd track but branches, shortcuts. Somtimes I was confused where I am.:) I just ran once on each track. I will yet play with it.

v8 supercars its an aussie game and i have never seen a car act so real

v8 supercars is toca race driver 2, isn't it?

This Rally Championship 2000 is very similar to NQR rally from the DOS era. I mean the track preview in first place. This cannot be accident. ?

I will check out that Papyrus' Nascar game. Grand Prix Legends is another one?

Quote:

Original post by rypskar All the CMR games has arcade physics, they are not even trying to be simulators.

hmm, I'd disagree. It is arcade-ish to a certain degree, but as far as the feel of driving, it seems very realistic to me. But you are probably right that they aren't trying to be a simulator, they are trying to be a game. I haven't played it that much but I'm pretty sure you can tweak your car to make it handle differently -- but it's probably not as robust as some of the other simulation games out there.