Could we get a wind tunnel in the game, with graphs, and visuals of aerodynamics? Would make upgrading cars much cooler, and show off the simulation aspects more.
There is no actual airflow (fluid) simulation in the game. The aerodynamics are just dynamic values that change the downforce on different parts of the car depending on the speed of the car.
A visualization of that would certainly look cool, but won’t add anything useful to tuning or gameplay.
1 Like
Where did you get info about the aero modelling in the game?
Just a guess. I watched various videos about racing sims and other simulators in the past years and as far as I’ve learned, it is really hard to get a good fluid simulation while having good performance. Most racing games don’t simulate downforce at all, like all the arcade titles (nfs, tcm,…).
The sims, while still not having fluid dynamics, do simulate downforce realistically so that it matches the real car based on measurements the devs have taken of the real world cars. For example ACC has added realistic loss of downforce depending on the yaw or angle of attack of the car in corners:
The only game that I know about using actual airflow simulation is Microsoft Flight Simulator, it’s obviously nowhere near industrial grade fluid dynamic simulation, but that’s mainly due to performance. Their simulation is still extremely realistic though.
Here is a video showcasing their simulation:
In Forza they obviously also have some kind of dynamic downforce simulation, because you can feel the car having more grip the faster you go, so if you increase downforce you will only get more grip in fast corners but not in hairpins. You also have to increase the spring rate with higher downforce, which is realistic.
There are many ways to get realistic aerodynamics into a video game. Going full on airflow simulation like Microsoft Flight Simulator, doesn’t make sense for racing sims, as they also have to simulate various other things like springs and tires. Forza is no hardcore sim, they don’t even simulate brake temperature and the tire model is pretty simple, so I cannot imagine that they have some highly sophisticated fluid simulation running in the backround and their downforce simulation is definitely simpler than ACC or iRacing.