Racer 0.5.2 beta8.9 review

Racer is a free car simulation project, using real car physics to get a realistic feeling

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: Ruud van Gaal

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Racer is a free car simulation project, using real car physics to get a realistic feeling. Cars, tracks, scenes and such can be created with relative simplicity in mind (compared to other driving simulations).

The 3D and other file formats are, or should be, documented. Editors and support programs are also available to get a very flexible and expandable simulator. It uses OpenGL for rendering.

It attempts to do well at the physics section, trying to create life-like cars to emphasize car control and doesn't cut back on realism in the interest of fun. If you've played Grand Prix Legends from Papyrus, you'll know what I'm talking about.

Here are some key features of "Racer":
It's totally free! (for non-commercial use)
Available for multiple platforms; Windows 2000/XP (95/98/ME may work but have some trouble with fonts), Linux and Mac OS X.
6 DOF models used (the car can move around freely)
Uses motion formulae from actual engineering documents from SAE for example.
Total flexibility; almost everything is customizable through ASCII files.
Commercial-quality rendering engine (with smoke, skidmarks, sparks, sun, flares, vertex-color lit tracks).
Support for Matrox' Surround Gaming. See the corresponding page on Matrox' site.
Lots of addon cars and tracks available on the web.
Easy integration of your own cars and tracks that you create in ZModeler, 3D Studio Max(tm), Maya etc.
At least 15 degrees of freedom for a regular car (6 DOF for the car body, 1 for each wheel's vertical motion and 1 for each wheel spinning, and 1 for the engine, several more for the driveline). Depending actually on how many wheels you put on the car.
Real-time internal clock; no physical dependency on framerate. Controller updates are also done independently of the framerate.
Not limited to 4 wheels; anything from 2 to 8 wheel vehicles are currently supported (but mostly untested, and some problems with hardcoded differentials for example may exist (v0.5.0)).
Not much constraints on the track data; surface info is taken from polygon data (VRML tracks), and splines are used to smooth out the track surface (polygons are too harsh for driving on just like that).
Tools to modify the cars & tracks are freely available on this site (though external utilities are recommended for best results).
Some used algorithms are explained on this site. Also, references are available. If you are programming a carsim, you might find something useful here.
Save game present!

Here are some key features of "Racer":
PHYSICS FEATURES

Full 6 degree of freedom motion of the car chassis.
Independent suspension for all wheels.
Suspension features: springs, dampers, anti-rollbar, rollcenter, anti-pitch.
Wheel features: camber, wheel hop (the wheels have mass), toe.
Tires: Pacejka tire model, relaxation length.

GRAPHICS FEATURES

View frustum culling for increased framerate.
Shader system for Quake-style rendering.
Fog definable per track.
Environment mapping for shiny materials.
Live track environment mapping.