New Guy Loves Engine Designer. Heres Some Feedback.

[Seikenfreak]

Hello,

I happened to come across Automation while going through every page of the Steam Greenlight stuff and boy am I glad I did because I found this gem of a game/sim. I spent about the first 3 hours messing with the demo Inline-4 trying to recreate real engines, which I'll say turned out pretty much identical to their real counter-parts. I told my friend about it as well and he messed around with the demo replicating the engine in his real car.

So I was eager to throw my money at you guys and dig into the other engine platforms and turbos. I spent about 8 hours yesterday messing with this software So I'll just jump right into what I guess is my feedback/observations and hopefully Killrob won't behead me.

First of all, I love it. This whole piece of software could just be the Engine Designer and I'd be happy. I was disappointed though upon purchasing that the Flat engines were not in yet as I thought I read somewhere that they were. I now know that I was wrong lol. But I was just so excited to try and recreate the built up motor in my Subaru Impreza and I could try matching the turbo sizing and boost settings etc etc that's on my real car to try and replicate it.

BTW that's all I've been doing in this so far. I'm just having lots of fun thinking of real engines to try and replicate and searching the internet to find the relevant specifications.

So no Flat 4 yet but I figured I'd try and just make it a Inline 4 with the same bore/stroke and see how that came out. This is where I started to feel like the turbo stuff didn't work quite right. And I know I've seen Killrob saying this isn't meant to be a ultra-realistic engine builder (even though its the closest, most functional thing I've ever used). But when inputting the specs for something like the Garrett GT3582R .83 A/R turbo, stuff didn't fit or work quite right. The turbo basically didn't work. But even after ignoring the physical specs, and just using a boost target and adjusting the curve via the graph, in the end the engine still only made 400hp when compared to the approximate 630hp crank output of my real engine. And in-general the in-game 400hp output is still low to what is capable on a 2.0 - 2.5 litre 4 Cylinder engine running larger amounts of boost.

It just felt a bit jarring. Again I don't expect this game to be used as a 100% accurate tool with the intent of building of real engine based off of this, but when I was able to pretty much perfectly recreate naturally aspirated engines with it, I got excited that the turbo stuff would work equally well.

I did attempt to recreate the 4.6L DOHC Ford V8 that is in my 2003 Mach 1 which turned out pretty good aside from the torque being much lower then the real thing. So naturally aspirated stuff seems to work well.

A question I did have that I'm not sure I saw on the forum was whether or not Twin Turbos would be added for larger Inline engines? Or just Inline engines in-general I guess. I tried to recreate an RB26DETT but that didn't work out. Would also be great to have similar exhaust manifold options with the turbo as you do without.

And I didn't have much luck trying to do a modern lower displacement Formula 1 engine. The stroke wouldn't go that low. I was able to do an Cosworth DFV which turned out pretty much like the real thing. Pretty awesome.

Oh I love the tutorial video stuff as well. Especially the opening one with the aussie accent and "yute" lol

That is about it though. I am thoroughly enjoying the Engine Designer and am very much looking forward to the Flat, V12, and Rotary engines as well as the Supercharger. Menu/Interface wise everything is functioning well enough and I only had it crash one time when I was closing the program. No idea why that was.

Keep up the great work guys. I'd be happy to spread the word about this game once theres more to it. Now I'll be in the Engine Designer for the next 8 hours again.

/wall-o-text

[Killrob]

Thank you very much for the extensive feedback! Turbos indeed have many more problems than NA engines, and this is in part due to them being a "magic black box" thingie IRL too... there is not nearly as much good and precise literature out on them as we'd like there to be. Probably because no one really has figured them out to 100% yet.

You could see it like this: for NA engines in Automation you have a (big) set of parameters that are fitted to real engine data such that you can to reasonable precision recreate most engines that were used in publicly available cars between the 1940s and now. This model is in no way precise though and has its flaws. A turbocharger basically acts (IRL and in game) as an amplifier of an NA engine. 1 Bar of boost means that you at that point have twice the NA engine, minus some inefficiencies. What happens if this base NA engine is flawed? The flaws get multiplied too, and thus, for forced induction engines they become much more visible!

We're not quite satisfied with the current state of turbos either, and will try to further improve them. On the other hand, the more accurate you want to have them, the more time it takes to get there - not in a linear fashion but in an exponential one. Considering how darn complex the whole turbo stuff is already, I'm not sure we can improve it to the point it is as accurate as the NA engines now. Also, this makes sense purely logically from my explanation above where flaws get amplified.

Cheers!

[xABSOLUTIONx]

twin turbos will be there at some point and i do believe that twinscrolls/variable vane turbos will be there too

[Juno8]

I would love to see Variable Vane Turbochargers it would be interesting to see how they actually worked in the game

[darkjedi]

VGTs are used on diesels and very few petrols got a hold of them and only recently when improvements in materials have been made to withstand the high EGT of petrols.
basically VGTs have variable A/R ratios and do not require wastegates. that's why diesels and some petrols have low turbo lag.

[09webbad]

VGTs are epic... defiantly want to see them in the game!

[quantexrox]

I did attempt to recreate the 4.6L DOHC Ford V8 that is in my 2003 Mach 1 which turned out pretty good aside from the torque being much lower then the real thing. So naturally aspirated stuff seems to work well.

See the attachment. 305HP, 320.5lb/ft torque, 100.2mm bore, 100mm stroke, 32 valves DOHC all aluminum.

To view the engine, download the attachment, put it in your C:\Users\XXX\Documents\Automation\Engines folder on your hard drive and fire up automation.