Tuning

[7driv3r7]

How in-depth will any sort of tuning be?

For example, a tuner decides to buy cars from a company, and plans to tune them and resell to the public.
Would it be possible for that tuner to do things like advancing/retarding the timing, adjusting the air/fuel ratio, reprogramming the ECU, etc.?

Can you also tune the suspension by adjusting ride height, toe, camber, and so forth?

Also, would you be able to make a branch of your company to sell aftermarket performance parts (kinda like Mopar or GM Performance Parts), or would this screw with the current economy system?

[Deus_ex_Machina]

[quote=“7driv3r7”]How in-depth will any sort of tuning be?

For example, a tuner decides to buy cars from a company, and plans to tune them and resell to the public.
Would it be possible for that tuner to do things like advancing/retarding the timing, adjusting the air/fuel ratio, reprogramming the ECU, etc.?

Can you also tune the suspension by adjusting ride height, toe, camber, and so forth?

Also, would you be able to make a branch of your company to sell aftermarket performance parts (kinda like Mopar or GM Performance Parts), or would this screw with the current economy system?[/quote]

at least the last part can be found here with the search.

[Drake]

Well I can tell you what I know for sure… First of all, any tuning will be within the limits of the engine designer as it would be silly to design a completely different system for that…

Timing you can adjust, Atleast on engines without VVT. Also you can adjust Cam profiles. There is no Air/Fuel ratio, nor is there programable ECU. However, There is a Power/Emissions(and Economy) Slider that basically covers that sort of thing.

We have yet to actually test the car designer and suspension bit, but from that Developers previous comments we can assume there will not be that amount of detail like Toe camber and all that. It will probably be something much simpler like a Stiffness setting.

But, We can buy cars and rebadge them. We can buy Engines and Chassis and stuff like that. But what Is not quite clear is how much we will be able to tune these parts…

I imagine there must be some kind of system, I have some thoughts myself on the matter. In the case of Engines for example, I think there could be 3 stages of tuning. Each stage has a certain amount of man hours allocated for dissasembly and reassembly. Then material costs and other costs could be calculated depending on how many Parts are changed.

My Idea:

Stage1: This is just fuel system and Exhaust tuning. You could change the fuel system parts, Power/emission slider, Resonance, Exhaust parts and stuff like that. Aside from the base Man Hours cost, you would have to pay to manufacture any new parts and man hours to make them.

Stage2(+stage1): This is top end Tuning. You could change the Cam Profiles, Valve Timing, Head Material, Compression, Valvetrain and stuff like that. This is a bit more tricky. For example you could adjust the Cam profile which Require new cams and the cost/hours associated with that. However, If you wish to change from SOHC to DOHC for example, you would have to pay to manufacture a new Cylinder Head. Compression could be modified, but I think there should be a Limit. There is only so much of a change you could make by Thicker/Thiner head gaskets and Shaving the head.
**
Stage3(+stage1 &2)**: This is Bottom end tuning. You could change almost anything except for the Block size/Material. But there would have to be a limit to the adjustment to Bore & Stroke. You could bore it out within the limits of the block, and put a bit longer stroke in, But You couldn’t really De-Bore an engine… Well, I guess if you put sleaves in maybe, but then you’d need to change the Cylinder head too, Doesn’t seem worth it IMO. Also you couldn’t de-stroke an engine without greatly lowering the compression ratio. And since theres no way for the designer to simulate that change, Thats best left out.(and Im not sure giving your workers a hacksaw and telling them you want Xcm off the top of that block is such a good idea )You could however change the Internals to better quality ones, and increase/decrease the compression more than the Stage 2.

Edits: I forgot about increasing the conrod length to make up for the loss in compression (Do’h) So I guess de-stroking would work.

Just my ideas anyways, Im not sure how it will be handled in the game, but I would love to hear the Devs opinions on this.

[zeussy]

Have not really given the idea of tuning much thought, just the occasional what if’s but nothing hard documented.

Drake’s ideas seem pretty good, to be honest there could be no limit to how much of the engine you modify, the costs would go up to the point of just building the engine yourself.

[dread_darven]

Is the ecu actually being put in? because with modern engines this is where you can do alot to the engine, especially turbocharged engines. maybe you can “unlock” different sliders with the use of more advanced ecu’s and sensors, like a knock sensor. here is some info and history en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_control_unit and is compression also used in relation to boost from a turbo/supercharger? like high boost high compression is not advisable unless heavy block reinforcement is used.

[Daffyflyer]

The power and emissions slider represents either carby or ECU tuning styles - and the better the ECU/injection system the more power you can get with out losing as much econ.

The more boost you run the stronger the engine needs to be and the higher octane fuel you need to run it - so you can run high boost and high compression but you’ll need a strong engine and it might need race fuel. (also better fuel systems will help this)

[Daffyflyer]

Besides, we have been tuning all the timing and fuel maps on my MX5’s ECU - and even in real life its pretty fiddly and boring work, if I could have a power/econ slider in my real tuning software i’d be happy

[dread_darven]

sliders in real life, that would be much more fun indeed . Some modern sport cars do have something like that tho, the sport, race, comfort settings in a beemer for example . But its great to hear that the ecu and compression are also being used like you discribed, you guys realy think of almost everthing .

ps. this is the first game in years that i’m so hyped about because of stuff like this.

[Daffyflyer]

And actually, I tell a lie, tuning a real ECU is kind of interesting, but only because you can feel the results

[Deus_ex_Machina]

u mean like drowning engines?

[house2137]

@Deus ex Machina

u mean like drowning engines?

stuff like this would be handy. long-term development wise, i think it would be smart to at least introduce the element of tunable fuel tables for the very reason that getting it wrong results in some pretty drastic changes in the power production and temperature of the engine at different operating ranges. for instance, one might want to slightly enrichen the point where high-speed cruise RPM lands, and heavily enrichen the points where downshifts typically land the engine speed for an accel circuit.

the same goes for carburetors, we can always assume they are “balanced” for purposes of the game but be able to modify the point in manifold pressure where a power valve is actuated, or how heavy the accelerator pump shot is. obviously main jet sizing cannot be excluded, and depending on how deep you guys go this may affect company decisions to install mulitple different jet sizes for altitude calibration, i.e. sales to customers with a varying base-altitude.

since we are talking about tuning from a factory standpoint, i think more than a basic “mild” or “aggressive” spectrum is necessary for a cam. i dug for this after reading about 2D profiles but i am not finding anything very detailed.

the 2D profiles thing will indeed be important, but how far does it go? do we get to play with lobe separation angle? what about the ramps both before and after peak? these things will definitely toy with performance to a great degree. i also wonder how the design of the engines will utilize interference vs. non-interference head designs, and how this plays a part on the ability of the engine to deal with itself if the belts/chains used to time the cam(s) are an item that is affected by power output of the engine itself.

i am sure i’m asking too many questions, and perhaps i am not digging deep enough for answers already posted. i will continue to search for this information.

thanks,

-kyle

[Daffyflyer]

I see what you’re getting at, but honestly it would be a pretty huge learning curve to play if it was quite that complex, and a massive amount of work for us to get it working in that much detail

Also frankly, I’m in the process of tuning an actual ECU on my MX5, and its really not that much fun (although getting it right is kinda satisfying)

If you want THAT amount of detail, you’ll probably need to play with Engine Analyzer or similar