> Interestingly, while the engine has the most moving parts in real life, in code, it's the simplest piece of the entire car simulation. Because at its core, the engine is just a torque calculator. It's concerned with producing a single output: rotational torque, from a set of inputs. It is essentially a blackbox.

This just reminded me of AngeTheGreat's incredible video series showing his engine simulator- absolutely worth checking out, considering it's optimized enough to run in real-time! The fact that he's simulating it well enough to generate realistic sound is absolutely mind-blowing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKT-sKtR970

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ehnto 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

The game Automation has quite an in depth engine builder/simulation aspect to it. It's very fun to mess around with, and the sound simulation uses some of the concepts AngeTheGreat has in his videos.

	▲	Joel_Mckay 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		In general, most simulations with rigid body physics are still baked-in animations, and often still use rudimentary collision conservation models. If people try something fancy... the clipping and weird physics glitches will ruin their day. Only somewhat depends on the game engine =3

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oofoe 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Classic of how to animate a cube in Houdini:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLiL0GLSvIw

(tldw: Real time internal combustion engine simulation something unexpected.)

	▲	Joel_Mckay 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		LOL, still looks better than my first attempt at a Dump-truck rig with a dual rear axle. Should have added Yakety Sax =3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAJB6HsYiNA

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bitwize 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What got me into programming was my father writing an engine simulator in BASIC. Albeit for different reasons: he was a mechanical engineer and wanted to compare the torque curves of various engine designs. He used CIRCLE and LINE statements to draw an animated (<1 fps) wireframe of the piston, crank assembly, and crankshaft in operation (though he only completed one engine type this way), and that was the real holy-crap moment for me: that you could use this machine to draw things and make them move.

The fact that this guy did the same thing, just to have better sounding racecars in his vidya, blows my mind.

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animal531 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Very cool! Quite some time ago I attempted to make a helicopter sim for a gamejam, but I didn't have nearly enough time to get anything decent out of it.

Ah, the quest for more time...

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seanmcdirmid 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Actually, aren't EV motors pretty simple? It is just the use of micro explosions in an engine to create torque that is expensive. I wonder if most cars in video games drive like EVs accordingly (if they aren't simulating more accurately how an ICE really works)?

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tayloramurphy 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

This was a great rabbit hole. Thanks for sharing.