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Author Topic: Playmaker car physics? [SOLVED]  (Read 7940 times)

bartleycollin

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Playmaker car physics? [SOLVED]
« on: November 03, 2012, 04:59:01 PM »
Hello friends! I'm in the process of planning an RC car game. Ive been planning for a game for a while now, and I felt good about it... until.... I thought about the physics engine. And how I would control my car. I thought maybe I'll use edy's physics engine, but I simply can't afford it at this time. So siply my question is... Would it be Possible, to control my car (some what realistically)  with playmaker. I just need some pointers. Like what actions to start with ect. I can do the rest. Thanks! :)
« Last Edit: November 07, 2012, 11:17:08 AM by bartleycollin »

SKaterSam

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Re: Playmaker car physics?
« Reply #1 on: November 04, 2012, 01:02:40 AM »
The best way I can think of to do this would be to just add a rigidbody, and set the weights just right. Nothing too hard.

jeanfabre

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Re: Playmaker car physics?
« Reply #2 on: November 07, 2012, 05:28:54 AM »
Hi,

Well, you'll likely have to go way further then simply adding a rigidbody :)  setting up a realistic car simulation is tuff, very tuff.

I would strongly recommend you get a ready made car physics framework from the asset store. If you want to mess around with physics, Unity and PlayMaker, by all mean, I will be happy to help you, and I am sure some descent results can be achieved, but I would personnaly invest in Edy's vehicle physics or UnityCar if you feel like spending :)

Speaking of RC :) being an addict myself, I would be very interesting to see what you have done indeed :) so if there is anything you can share, like screenshots or playable version, don't hesitate :) Back in the years I builded each and every parts of my RC car, it took me 3 years  :'( but it was my way to learn 3ds Max, everything was bones driven and constraint to have real suspensions movements and such... quite a beast, too bad I did not optimised it for real time rendering, at the time, I was only making it to work in max... oh well...

http://fabrejean.net/new/gallerie_viewer.php?section=mugen_A_dio6

bye,

 Jean

bartleycollin

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Re: Playmaker car physics?
« Reply #3 on: November 07, 2012, 11:15:12 AM »
Alright thanks Jean. Yeah I kind of figured I couldnt just use playmaker to control my car. And I d love to share screenshots, but I have to finish my other game first :) Im making an 8bit sports game! its going great! once I start production On the rc car game, ill make a thread on here.  Thank you for clearing this all up for me :)

derkoi

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Re: Playmaker car physics? [SOLVED]
« Reply #4 on: November 08, 2012, 05:14:29 AM »
I started an RC car simulation earlier in the year. I bought the two main packages Edy's Vehicle physics and UnityCar 1.2 (now 2.0).

I had so many issues with making everything the correct scale (copied the weight & dimensions from my Hoboa Hyper 7 1/8th Nitro buggy), the physics made the cars bounce around even when not being driven. I tried making the everything as thought they were real sized cars, this made it look odd as the cars were not moving like an RC car, so I increased the gravity, but it still didn't look right. In the end I put it on the shelf, hoping to come back to it one day.

So what I'm trying to say is... It's not as easy as a real sized car game (which is what I'm working on now).

Since I tried this, Unitycar 2.0 has been released, but I suspect it will still have issues with the smaller scale, even the developer couldn't suggest any settings to get it working. :(

Good luck!

jeanfabre

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Re: Playmaker car physics? [SOLVED]
« Reply #5 on: November 08, 2012, 05:26:43 AM »
Hi,

 The KEY to physics simulation may very well be not trying to set it up with realistic numbers... Some might be able to achieve this, but this is in my opinion too much trouble to get into that path. it's a general rule I feel for any real time application, not just the physics. We cheat with modeling and texturing to avoid too much details in the mesh, we cheat with internal structures to achieve the effects we want like parenting the moon to the earth and not having forces attracting the moon as it orbits around the earth... in the same spirit, let go on real physics numbers and experiment.

 you need to achieve a simulation that feels real, but that it is not necessarily using real numbers.

 So, your rc car will have the weight it needs so that it performs like you want, it might means a mass of 1... or 10, but certainly not the exact weight of the car itself. Same with every physics set up really.

I know few guys that can get it right with the real numbers... but man... you don't want to go down that road...

real size cars vs rc cars is not different at all really, it may seems so because all frameworks actually tend to be for real sized car. Any car or vehicle size is really about tweaking values.

So don't give up! When I created my excavator as a typical example, none of the values ar correct, my rig doesn't weight 4 tonnes... all arms weight 0 to begin with and do not react to gravity. only the under frame weight like 20... and the bucket around 2 if I recall properly... And the numbers are use for springs, damping, actuators forces are experiments, not real numbers. And to tell you the truth, this was the part I spent the most time, tweaking the physics so that it behaved like I wanted. The rest is nothing really...
http://www.fabrejean.net/projects/excavator/


bye,

 Jean

derkoi

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Re: Playmaker car physics? [SOLVED]
« Reply #6 on: November 08, 2012, 05:59:12 AM »
Good post Jean, I think the reason I lost interest in it not being to scale is because aside from the bouncing around of the cars they did actually perform really realistic, they rolled about and went over jumps very much like real RC cars. It was hard to move from that, where I was almost there to faking it all.

jeanfabre

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Re: Playmaker car physics? [SOLVED]
« Reply #7 on: November 08, 2012, 06:55:23 AM »
hi,

 yep, it is hardcore to get physics simulations behave like you want indeed.

bye,

 Jean