Car performance on a track

[taoistlumberjak]

Thanks to the "23 hours plus competition cautions of Daytona", I've been wondering if we could translate car performance from the car performance screen into actual track performance. My quick and dirty way was, using Daytona as an example, break the track down into sections and correlate those to the various given speeds. Windy bits wre given the cornering speed, shorter straights were given the 1/4 mile speed, and long straights were given the maximum speed. Amazingly, I was able to get a car I made similar to a Daytona Prototype to have comparative speed on the track.

Other tracks...did not work well. I tried St. Petersburg and Miami, and it was a mess. Now, that may have been error in partitioning off those two tracks, but the speeds weren't even reasonable (I used the most recent P2 speeds at each track, or IndyCar times modified). Has anyone been working on a project like this? My reason is that I would love to translate our car designs into a sort of IMSA GTP series, but I'm having some difficulty in putting this together. Any ideas?

[Killrob]

Sure! That is both possible and planned to be added to the game. A track time can be computed from the performance figures that we calculate.

[Dareios90]

I could agree with that idea, but then not USA tracks! XD

The most "logical" and "real-life"track could be the Nürburgring or, "to be right" the Nordschleife, infact, quoting en.wikipedia:

One of the original purposes of the Nordschleife was as a test track for auto manufacturers, and its demanding layout had been traditionally used as a proving ground. Weekdays are often booked for so-called Industriefahrten for auto makers and the media. With the advent of the Internet, awareness of the Nordschleife has risen in Germany and abroad, in addition to publicity in print media. In 1999, Porsche reported that their new 996 GT3 had lapped the Nürburgring in under eight minutes, and in subsequent years, manufacturers from overseas also showed up to test cars. Some high-performance models are promoted with videotaped laps published on the web, and the claimed lap times are generating discussion. Few of these supercars are actually entered in racing where the claims could be backed up.

This is because of the road materials and conditions that recreate a real life situations of "driving" (there are concrete sections, corners with different height sides ecc).

I don't need a test on a perfect road if my customers will drive on a road full of holes (you know, I live in Italy! )!

So I agree with your idea only if the devs will insert a circuit very similar to all day roads!

[Der Bayer]

I think it will be more like the "perfect" road, with flat tarmac. A test track then will consist of straights of various lenghts and corners with various (constant) radii, without hills. Lap time calculations based on such a track can be done with the current simulations. Anything more complex would require a huge effort.

The Nürburging could of course be approximated by a 2D-projection and approximizations of the corner radii. The question is if such a long track needs a very long time to calculate.

[RoninGT21]

Well it takes a long time to get around it..

[taoistlumberjak]

I know it's being planned to add it later on, and I'm not in a real rush to get it, as I'm pretty sure the devs have more pressing issues. That said, I would love to see the ability to plug in a track and use that to figure out how a car would perform there, and even plug in how long the car would drive that track for, how long before it needed to refuel, etc.
Basically, set a car we design up as a race car and let it go. I know that's well outside of the game's scope, so I was wondering if anyone else had a system for doing this. My system works only for Daytona, so it seems.

[Dareios90]

I know it's being planned to add it later on, and I'm not in a real rush to get it, as I'm pretty sure the devs have more pressing issues. That said, I would love to see the ability to plug in a track and use that to figure out how a car would perform there, and even plug in how long the car would drive that track for, how long before it needed to refuel, etc.
Basically, set a car we design up as a race car and let it go. I know that's well outside of the game's scope, so I was wondering if anyone else had a system for doing this. My system works only for Daytona, so it seems.

I don't know if in USA motor companies and magazines test their car on oval circuit ( ), but in Italy Fiat Group and many magazines use the "Langhe" Circuit, the "old" Alfa Romeo Test Track at Balocco.
And in Europe, in my humble knowledge, motor companies and magazines use Nürburgring (Nordschleife).

Italian links on it.Wikipedia and fiatspace.com (the english version doesn't exist, sorry ):

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centro_Sperimentale_Balocco
http://www.fiatspace.com/it/prove_in_pista