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Getting a car to drive nicely is really quite a hard task.

This is where I will give advise on common physics problems. When you did your own car model, it's probably hard to get it to feel like the car you had in minds. You must understand some of the physics to build a top-class car.

FIRST ADVICE

Ofcourse, the first advise is always to start with a car.ini from a car you think matches closely to the new one you're making. After that, here are a few pointers.

TIPS TO CHECK YOUR CAR

To view the car's bounding box, set debug.ini's gfx.show_car_bbox to 1. This will let you see the collision box that is used, and you can reduce it in car.ini's body.width/height/depth (be sure to set body.manual_box to 1).

General problems

• Q: I'm trying to make a front wheel drive car, but it seems like it's 4WD?
  A: Check that you explicitly set the rear wheel's 'powered' to 0. Also check that your Pacejka curves go through the origin (0,0) in the Pacejka Player. If not, they'll start rotating with idle throttle & brakes (!). A cause for this may be the b12 variable.
• Q: My new car doesn't drive off when I push the throttle.
  A: It may be that your torque.crv file starts at (0,0). As Racer (v0.4.7) has no idle engine state, it is at 0 rpm when you start. If your curve starts at 0 torque, this means the engine will never generate power to start rotating! Fix it by start the torque curve at some torque>0.

More later...

(last updated November 13, 2012 )