How to get good handling in BeamNG?

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Inspired by the “First Impression” review thread, I decided to try making my own supercar.

I think i know my way around engines. As for styling /detailing, i’m hopeless, but so long as the car works you can forgive a bit of ugly. Yes, i can min/max the spring settings all day long to get a campaign mode car with a good desirability setting, but actually make one you can export to BeamNG that is easy and fun to drive? Mystery.

meridien
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If the UK motoring press are to be believed, top of the list is the ability to adjust the car’s cornering attitude with the throttle, meaning a car that is quite close to neutral handling, and which can easily pushed towards understeer or oversteer via the gas pedal.

However, I only seem able to make cars that understeer, and are safe but boring, or that spin out and crash.

When I tune the car to be as neutral as possible while still ultimately understeering at the limit, the car simply understeers unless wheelspin causes the back end to break away, in which case i’m almost certain to crash. I don’t play many driving games, I haven’t owned a high performance car IRL, and i’m just using an XBOX 360 analog controller not a wheel, so it could be my lack of driving skill contributing to these oversteer events being uncorrectable.

suspension-min
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steerage
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The above vehicle does not have lift off oversteer and usually understeers under braking, despite trying to shift brake balance to the rear. Accelerating just makes the nose push wide too, unless you’re in first gear, the back end can break away near peak torque and usually i’m not quick enough to catch it.

An early version of the car did not have the massive rear wing, it would experience wheelspin above 120mph going in a straight line.

In the current build, the only time we get something other than terminal understeer is when braking from high speed on certain (bumpy) parts of the track, i’ve lost the car a few times under braking, but it’s always the same corners - smoother parts of the circuit are fine.

Has anyone got any tips, or got any good handling Beam caes i can download to learn what i should emulate?
Are the motoring press just talking a load of nonsense ?

Does the simulation differentiate between grip that comes from tyre width versus suspension setting ?
For example, take two neutral cars

a) one has similar tyre widths front and back, similar suspension settings

b) the other has wider rear tyres, but stiff rear sway bar and lots of front camber to bring the handling back to neutral

is b) going to be more progressive when he rear tyres start to slip, because the back tyres are larger but less efficiently utilized?

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First, lower the spring rates and have it lower by at least 10% in the front
Second, lower the damping to be around 0.35 - 0.40
Third, up the ride hight to about 100 - 150 mms
And Forth, see that you have some roll in the car. I’d suggest somewhere around 3-4 degrees.

On MAWD cars i usually have around 2 degrees camber in front and about the same in the rear, on MR cars i have about 1 degree camber in front and 2 in the rear.

Wider tires (staggered) in the rear are a must on most MR and MAWD cars and following the suggestions made by the game is a good starting point.

I usually put the wheels out as long as possible both in the rear and in the front and then dial them back two steps each, sometimes more, depending on the amount of over or understeer you want.

Swaybars are somewhat more up to you, but remember to leave some body roll left both in the front ans rear.

Aero (especially on fast cars as this one) i usually dial the rear aero to 100 and then up the front til it oversteers, and dial it back one or three notches until its not pointing upwards.

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What range exactly do you mean?

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The low speed handling graph kind of captures what the car will do in an extremely limited circumstance not replicated by actual real driving conditions. But it can serve as a guide as to what kind of response to expect from a car.

The high speed graph has sweet fuck all correlation. It depends on the size of the wing (and ONLY the wing) fixtures you use because Beam ignores everything else. The “aero” simulation in both games are crude approximations but they’re also fundamentally different the way you go about it. You’ll have to spend a lot of time doing trial and error I’m afraid.

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Interesting car…

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Right now (from the screens) he has 1.97 Hz Front springrate and 1.99 Hz Rear springrate, I’d suggest he lower this to 1.65 front and 1.80 (rear may be a little higher bcs MR) in the rear and has a damper-rate around 0.35 - 0.40 both front and rear.

And then, as strop says, high speed is another ballgame, but having a big wing helps.

But If you want an easy to drive, fun car to start and fool around with in BeamNG, i suggest you make a small, lowpowered FR car to start with, and then work your way up to a MR super/hyper car. Super/Hyper Cars are hard to tune.

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