Real-Life Stock Cars

These are real-life handling stock cars for all those real-life style tracks (e.g. Hilaire’s tracks).
+ Distinguishable from RC stocks by lack of aerials and wind-up spinners.
+ Not for RC style tracks (PetroVolt, etc.), as their handling seems as much out of place there as the original stocks are out of place in RL tracks.
+ Made according to the newest and proper RL tutorial (http://z3.invisionfree.com/Revolt_Live/index.php?showtopic=1275) (http://z3.invisionfree.com/Our_ReVolt_Pub/index.php?showtopic=1474).
+ The handling quirks of each stock car are still there and even a bit more pronounced in these RL versions.
+ In-car camera recommended.
+ Compatible with the bonnet view effect of WolfR4.
+ Replacement pack for all stock cars, with originals included.

Installation notes:
* Unpack this into the main Re-Volt folder as usual. It overwrites the original stocks (only parameter files and some bits for Panga), but includes the original files for restoring them again.
* To restore, unpack the file “original_stocks.zip” in the “cars” folder.

Handling notes:
Well, nothing much to say here. Imagine that the stock cars are life-sized, and you have the right mindset, because most all real-life racing (and ramming :) ) techniques work now. Acceleration is realistic, not high-g rocket-powered like RC stocks make it seem, and these cars feel to weigh in tons, not kilograms. This means realistic racing strategies, as RC speeding just won’t cut it anymore. Also, not all reposition points on all tracks are good anymore – some require RC rocket acceleration to get over the nearest jump, so you sometimes need to reverse a bit to get good jump speed. And, as you probably guessed ;) , ResMod is set to 1.0 (for realistic roll-and-tumble behaviour). All in all, a set of ordinary everyday sports cars (even if they would look weird on a motor show :) ).

Technical notes:
The idea for this pack came from the Carmageddon conversion packs (those vehicles have the RL feel quite well in place). Technically, the only physics parameters (apart from ResMod) that I changed here are EngineRate (this means acceleration) and the Inertia matrix (to give a weighty feel). The EngineRate was simply divided by 25 (4.5 became 0.18, etc.) to get realistic acceleration. And the Inertia matrix was simply multiplied by 3.
(The RL Stocks pack originally had a complex formula for calculating the inertias, but it’s of no use for RL transition anymore. I’ll still leave it here in a shortened form, because it’s a good way to get RC inertia for any weight so that it feels right in Re-Volt. See at the end of the readme for this.)
The cars still have their original AIs, because with 3 x inertias the AI can still cope decently. Of course, what was bad in RC is a bit worse in RL, but mostly they run okay.

Deep technical notes:
The Inertia formula for RC. Here it is, just so that it doesn’t disappear from the Internet.
For the mathematics buffs and otherwise interested people:
Re-Volt uses quaternions or somesuch for inertia calculations (ugh!), so the formula that I finally determined is somewhat empirical. But it works reasonably well.

The actual formula for calculating inertias is this:
• Inertia=ref_inertia*weight+(weight-1)*inertia_coeff*weight,
Where:
ref_inertia is 700 (the inertia at weight 1 kg),
inertia_coeff is 350 (an empirical coefficient to get the calculated inertias to spread out evenly according to car weight),
weight is the car’s weight in kg (the parameter Mass under the section “Car Body details”).

Calculate the first Inertia value with this formula (X_Inertia).
The second Inertia value (Y_Inertia) = X_Inertia multiplied by 1.5.
The third Inertia value (Z_Inertia) = X_Inertia divided by 2.

You can play around with the ratios (1.5 and 2) for an individual handling.
And you can play around with the ref_inertia (700) for different effects. For example, 2100 (i.e. 3 x 700) gives the RL inertias and 400 (almost halved) gives Hot Wheels like inertia.

Credits:
* Harmalarm and Halogaland for helping me get the Carmageddon packs out, because the idea for this pack came from there.
* Halogaland, again, for help with the RL Panga visual effect and for the Pack picture.
* Jigebren for his immensely helpful WolfR4 tool, because once you start using it, you won’t know how you made cars without it ;)
* Huki for showing me that I have no hope of making sense of the actual internal Re-Volt calculations for inertia :) , so I perfected my own formula a bit.
* UrbanRocker for testing the EngineRate value and kindly letting me use his experience.
* Burner94 for testing the Inertia part, and kindly telling me how it sucked initially :)
* Any others I have forgotten. (Let me know!)
* And Acclaim, of course, for making their cars with plain-text parameters. Yay!
* And not to forget LaserBeams for his Parameters 6.0 explanation. All my creations are ultimately indebted to this.

Endnote:
You can use these vehicles and the calculation info for anything you want, as long as you give credit.

See you at Our Revolt Pub and Re-Volt Live!
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Citywalker

2021-06-01, Edit Mayen: Re-packed zip