While I can’t comment on most things the host said, I will point out that in forum challenges cars are generally not driven in BeamNG (unless they specify otherwise). Imperfections in the exporter and differences in how the games calculate physics means that the 2 games aren’t exactly 1:1 comparable in terms of car performance. Also, how a car feels when using a controller might not equate to how it would feel to actually be inside.
And just because a car lost doesn’t at all mean it was bad; sometimes an entry just gets outperformed by others, and sometimes it just misses the mark of what a host was looking for. When 20 very-good cars get submitted to one challenge, the host has to find something to whittle the pack down with.
All good points. It stings when your car gets binned because you put a lot of work into it but, at the end of the day, the way the challenge goes is up to the host. Best thing we can do is make mental notes, ask better questions next time if we’re unsure about something (I know I will be doing just that), and learn from our mistakes.
No, I did not. Cars in challenges like these are generally not tested in beamng unless the host says that they will. What Edsel said.
MPEFI is indeed not ITB, but the “per cylinder” intakes are ITBs in this game.
From my experience, cars tend to have around 0-1 degrees camber, with sporting models probably exceeding the 1 degree mark. As such, I thought that 1.8 degrees would be rather excessive. Even if it were realistic, that much camber would probably be bad for tyre wear and such
The long gears weren’t too bad I suppose, but I would normally see Automation cars have their gears tuned closer to their predicted top speed. Your car’s performance doesn’t seem to be deterred much by the long gears but I still stand by my judgement.
I believe it is good as well, but it isn’t the best either. Not in this context, at least.
Ok so…if you don’t drive a car, this means we’rer engineering it on “paper” alone and you might as well have a bean counter do that.
I work as a field engineer in real life. So my whole job is taking theoretical and proposed things and bringing them to life in the real world. Beam is our real world equivalent until further notice, the way I see it. It’s a flawed world but so is our real one…ha.
The exterior is another matter. I think my biggest fault with the SportFam model exterior is paying too much attention to the baked-in shutlines of the morph. I let that force my hand on my brake light choices and in a few other places. I’ll ignore that in the future as I see the other entries did just that.
To the OP… Think about this like a real life situation. Would you grab a degree caliper and measure the camber or would you drive it and review the competition’s suspension geometry? Would you complain of long gears before taking the car out on the highway and around town? And so on.
Earlier someone made a comment about Japanese cars having bad steel for the era. I know the saltly air on the islands was not kind to the 80’s Jap cars but the better ones in the 90’s got a corrosion treatment that helped a bit. I’ve owned plenty of Supras, 240’s, Acuras, etc and the panel and chassis longevity is all over the map. Of course Japan itself has very strict requirements on older cars, and many are just crushed early or cut in half for parts (the fun ones).
Well, you do have to cut corners somewhere.
Longitudinal fwd gives better drivability than rwd, while keeping service costs down against transverse fwd.
My two Ford Flex wagons had almost 2 degrees negative camber stock in the rear. There are many examples of some camber on sporting SUV’s and wagons, like the BMW wagons and SUV’s all sitting with the rear tires cambered in for a planted feel. Tire wear must be mitigated by regular rotation. In the real world, it isnt camber that roasts tires…it is toe. We have zero control over toe in automation and beam though.
Anyway to those on the forum, reviewing a dish without tasting it is kinda pointless. Take care,
You don’t find billet crankshafts in the typical 90s sports wagons. Moreover, you combined the billet crank with cast Conrods and pistons, and the engine revved nowhere near the limits of the billet crank, meaning that it’s a useless expense. As for weight distribution/savings, there are sliders you can use in the trim designer to make your car lighter/heavier and to manipulate weight distribution
The thing is that you used DAOHC, which is not as good as SOHC in most ways. There are entries with SOHC that are very well engineered and can compare to DOHC rivals, but yours isn’t one of them
But the thing is, most of your competitors did not cut corners. And again, I don’t have anything against longitudinal fwd, just the 11% wheelspin that your car suffers from
Listen, your points are not bad, but you have to come to terms with reality. And the reality is that not everyone here has BeamNG in the first place, nor does the host have the time to thoroughly test every single entry in BeamNG if they even had it in the first place. Most forum challenges are run this way including many racing challenges like BRC and ARL, both of which are highly complex racing simulations that are run purely off LUA and other in-game parameters, going entirely off in-game stats, because those actually do tell you a lot about how a car drives (there are also slow and high speed steering graphs, test track times with throttle and brake position monitoring, 20m and 200m cornering G values, suspension and damper rates, etc etc). This game tells you so much about a car’s handling without you needing to take it out for a drive in BeamNG, which again, not everyone has the money to buy or the time to spend testing 20 or even 50 entries in.
Good point! Another reason is that the BeamNG exporter is also known to be pretty buggy at times, with some cars outright failing to export.
@Lanson If you’re interested in a challenge that does drive in Beam, @Djadania’s and @TheTom’s challenges are primarily based around timed laps and tests in BeamNG, which they livestream via Twitch. TheTom is on hiatus right now, and I think you’ve already run into Djadania earlier. Also, in “AGC22: Nostalgic Revival,” the host has declared plans to test each car in Beam (though it’s a very minor part of that challenge’s scoring).
Just FYI, over here on the forums, if the host doesn’t specify that the car would be tested in beam
chances are, it would not be tested in beam, and instead be judged based on Automation stats
and in the original post, there are zero (0) mentions of beam testing
But then you’d be fighting a complaint about long gearing. Because wheelspin is omnipresent in non AWD Automation cars. I would have killed for 11% wheelspin. Automation assumes far too little to get these numbers. Nobody mashes the throttle from a stop with TSC off and judges a car’s excessive wheelspin. It’s not real-world. Because of this I’m happy if I can keep Automation’s spec below 40% in first gear. Even my little pipsqueak Field Mouse car with 105HP has wheelspin by Automation’s measure. It doesn’t pose a problem in Beam though.
If I use SOHC instead DAOHC, valve float will worse, and slightly less reliability make unable to meet minimal reliability I goal. What more, extra cost. What could go wrong with DAOHC?
Sign, I not want to being argue with that.
Still, my car make 232hp come out of 1850 cc make it fascinated. Thank to VVL and good width powerband of 8400 rpm redline yet 60 reliability and return fairly decent 26.8 mpg. It’s only 32000 MRSP.
If I can put my five cents in, Automation is not a tool for making Beam NG cars. For many years, it was said that there would never be a possibility to drive the Automation cars. Then came the Beam NG exporter, which was a welcome addition, but still is more of icing on the cake than a vital part of Automation IMO. Automation challenges were around long before the days of the Beam NG exporter, and most of them have kept being around like they always were, without Beam being a part of it. Some challenges instead added Beam as a part, or as the only tool for judging, and IMO, all of them are OK, as long as it is clear if Beam is going to be used or not.
I would even like to point out that a car that performs well in Automation does not have to do it in Beam, and vice versa. For example, I have experienced that many FWD cars seems to be understeery like hell in Beam while looking OK in the automation graphs (back when I had a PC that actually could run Beam, which I don’t have anymore). So, building a good car for Beam is not the same task as building a good one for Automation.
Finally, I would like to point out that we don’t have participating trophies in our challenges, and not everyone can win. If the competition is hard, the harsh reality is that building a good car does not mean that you will be in the top if enough people build cars that are better - and NGL, some people here are really skilled in that. And unfortunately, coming in as a fairly new member and then starting a shitstorm on what normally is a fairly nice and peaceful forum just because you didn’t get a top spot in a challenge is an excellent way of giving a not very good first impression.
Fair enough, though I never view critical debate and discussion as a “shitstorm”. I simply assumed the measure of a vehicle’s worth would be more than the numbers a program spits out.
Fyiw I never expected to “win” due to not having an interior. As the FNG I simply had unrealistic expectations based on an engineering background and the way I think about cars in this game. All is well.
Fyi for those having issues with extreme handling issues like excessive understeer in beam (assuming controller here), it helps a lot to look at those speed sensitive steering settings. With those off, the front will plow the tires and it ruins the drive. I took hours to tune this setting and some of my cars are still a handful with it, but most can whip around the tracks without plowing the fields.
At any rate, I apologize if I rubbed anybody the wrong way. It was not intentional, but I will not relinquish my passion for automotive excellence so beware…haha.
