Glad to help. If it's no secret, what are you planning to do with these design principles? Just curious. 
I wouldn't make it that dramatic (i.e. red lights/spectate), but I would like to enforce proper pit lane exit. I don't know how it is on other tracks, but in Blackwood, after you exit the pits and are past the tire barriers, there is still a dividing line and cones. Now, some people just cut this line and cones to get on track quicker. But consider F1 - they have a white dividing line on pit exit, and if you cross it, you get a drive through or stop&go, or something like that. So perhaps, this could be done in LFS too.
Overall though, at least in my experience, it hasn't been a major problem so far.
Overall though, at least in my experience, it hasn't been a major problem so far.
Haven't tried RBR, but I used to play GTR2, which does include "damage". The wheels/bodywork fall off, engines blow (either from downshifting too fast, or due to overheat, AFAIK), tires get punctured, etc.
While it didn't feel 100% authentic, it still made me watch where I was going and how I was going. Starting back from the pits all over again, should I have a crash, didn't feel compelling enough. So, perhaps, I pushed the car less than I do in LFS (of course, can't compare the vehicles, but still), and when I was driving with AIs I also made sure I kept some room for error.
Again, to each his own. Some people don't want to see anything short of stellar damage, on par with LFS's chassis/tire physics. But for some, like me, even a small step in what we think is the right direction would be much appreciated.
While it didn't feel 100% authentic, it still made me watch where I was going and how I was going. Starting back from the pits all over again, should I have a crash, didn't feel compelling enough. So, perhaps, I pushed the car less than I do in LFS (of course, can't compare the vehicles, but still), and when I was driving with AIs I also made sure I kept some room for error.
Again, to each his own. Some people don't want to see anything short of stellar damage, on par with LFS's chassis/tire physics. But for some, like me, even a small step in what we think is the right direction would be much appreciated.
Actually, looking at your scans, and seeing that they use lines through tire contact patches (and I've seen it done before, so no arguement here), the roll centre for the body of a car using parallel control arms would be at the ground surface, in the centre of the car's track.
The reason for this is that ICRs for both wheels are now essentially at infinity. So if you try to draw a line from the tire contact patch to a point at infinity, this line will, practically, have zero slope, which means it's horizontal and located at H=0.
But of course, to be absolutely precise, the line's slope will be just above (and just below) zero, so the two of them will intersect in the middle of the vehicle's track.
This sort of places a cap on where your RC will be positioned. With the right angling of the wishbones, you can get the RC below, or above the ground, as desired.
The key parameters to be modeled in a part-to-track collision would be mass of the parts and the elasticity of the impact (=1 - elastic and the part rebounds perfectly; =0 - inelastic and it stays attached to the track). To be completely accurate, you'd need to mesh every part and use a finite element code to determine its spring constant, natural frequency, etc. This will determine how the part impacts the ground, how it deforms, etc. In other words, one heck of a computing mess.
In any case, both of the videos show better crash damage than what we currently have. But the key aspect is that after the crash, the cars are left stranded on track or in the gravel trap, whether it is by means of a damaged engine, or because the wheels fell off. If the Devs could just accommodate that aspect into the game, I'd be pretty happy.
It's hard to imagine that you could just transform the existing (crappy) damage model into something rivaling reality in one step. You have to take small steps to get there, and IMO, this is one of those steps.
Clever, especially with the turn around 
BuddhaBing,
I used to read about what happens in these cases, but I can't recall it right now (I don't have that book on me either), so I probably won't answer your question directly.
However, what I can offer (I think) some insight on, is the kinematics in general. So here goes...
When you calculate the instant/instantaneous centre of rotation (ICR), what you do is the following. Suppose you have a rigid body (here, wheel/rim) with two links attached to it (UCA & LCA, say at points U and L, respectively), both having some kind of angular velocity. The IRC would then be the intersection of the lines, perpendicular to the linear velocity vectors of the rigid body at points U and L. Which is what you have in your first two cases, essentially.
In the third case, since such lines would be parallel to one another, as you've promptly noticed, no IRC can be defined. What this means, is that the wheel can't rotate about the axis coming out of the page. In essence, its camber will stay fixed. Another way to think of it is a rectangular sign suspended from above by two equal length, parallel cables. It can swing sideways, but its centreline will remain horizontal...i.e. it won't tilt.
Same thing happens here - the wheel (in theory) can move up and down, but its upper and lower ends can't go left and right (as viewed from the front of the car).
Of course, this doesn't mean that the car's body won't roll, as it's attached to the wheels by means of compressible springs.
As a guess, I would say that the RC is in the middle of the track, halfway up between the LCA and UCA. At least, common sense would suggest so.
At the same time, if the above hypothesis is correct, it is another reason why equal length, parallel control arms are not very popular - high RC.
Hope the above was halfway cohesive.
Cheers,
I used to read about what happens in these cases, but I can't recall it right now (I don't have that book on me either), so I probably won't answer your question directly.
However, what I can offer (I think) some insight on, is the kinematics in general. So here goes...
When you calculate the instant/instantaneous centre of rotation (ICR), what you do is the following. Suppose you have a rigid body (here, wheel/rim) with two links attached to it (UCA & LCA, say at points U and L, respectively), both having some kind of angular velocity. The IRC would then be the intersection of the lines, perpendicular to the linear velocity vectors of the rigid body at points U and L. Which is what you have in your first two cases, essentially.
In the third case, since such lines would be parallel to one another, as you've promptly noticed, no IRC can be defined. What this means, is that the wheel can't rotate about the axis coming out of the page. In essence, its camber will stay fixed. Another way to think of it is a rectangular sign suspended from above by two equal length, parallel cables. It can swing sideways, but its centreline will remain horizontal...i.e. it won't tilt.
Same thing happens here - the wheel (in theory) can move up and down, but its upper and lower ends can't go left and right (as viewed from the front of the car).
Of course, this doesn't mean that the car's body won't roll, as it's attached to the wheels by means of compressible springs.
As a guess, I would say that the RC is in the middle of the track, halfway up between the LCA and UCA. At least, common sense would suggest so.
At the same time, if the above hypothesis is correct, it is another reason why equal length, parallel control arms are not very popular - high RC.
Hope the above was halfway cohesive.
Cheers,
Your points are all valid. In fact, I would very much prefer that something like that is done. But the whole idea of this thread is to suggest something very basic, that's simple to implement in the short term, before the proper damage model is complete (and that, I understand, will take quite a while).
You don't necessarily have to count the number of hits. You can do with just one, for all I care, above a certain threshold speed, as Boris has suggested. The point is, even something basic like this could be better IMHO than nothing (current suspension damage doesn't really count).
Oh wow...the tetris suggestion was good though. 
Very simple damage idea
Disclaimer: found nothing by searching.
As I was driving around yesterday, it occurred to me that most cars have the engine upfront (what a revelation, eh?), and when you have a crash that visually damages your front bodywork in LFS, it will most likely affect the engine in some way or another.
So what I want to suggest is that whenever you get, say, 2 or 3 hits on the front end resulting in bodywork damage (since LFS can already "detect" that), your race is over. Same could apply to the roof damage, or if you flip.
The idea/advantage here is that you don't need to calculate the effects of the crash on the entire car and each individual component. You just get screwed, plain and simple.
I realize that this type of approach could make for some frustrating racing, particularly on demo servers, but hopefully this will make people drive more carefully.
I also want to mention that I see this as a temporary "fix" and would wholeheartedly welcome an accurate damage model. But as the latter is no easy feat, I'd be willing to stick it with a simplified one for the time being.
Cheers for reading
As I was driving around yesterday, it occurred to me that most cars have the engine upfront (what a revelation, eh?), and when you have a crash that visually damages your front bodywork in LFS, it will most likely affect the engine in some way or another.
So what I want to suggest is that whenever you get, say, 2 or 3 hits on the front end resulting in bodywork damage (since LFS can already "detect" that), your race is over. Same could apply to the roof damage, or if you flip.
The idea/advantage here is that you don't need to calculate the effects of the crash on the entire car and each individual component. You just get screwed, plain and simple.
I realize that this type of approach could make for some frustrating racing, particularly on demo servers, but hopefully this will make people drive more carefully.
I also want to mention that I see this as a temporary "fix" and would wholeheartedly welcome an accurate damage model. But as the latter is no easy feat, I'd be willing to stick it with a simplified one for the time being.
Cheers for reading
I will one day (honest), I just haven't gotten enough out of demo. I'm still too slow
That's great work! I'd love to race at BL in a big pack like that.
What about Blackwood on the exit out of T1/T2 (the last right turn just before the main straight)? All the quick guys run the 2 left wheels on the kerb, while the right wheels are in the air. When taken "right", they almost don't lose any speed at all doing this jumping. Though F10 shows a little bit of suspension damage every time you do this manouvre. Maybe it's just me, but it really bugs me how the cars remain intact while doing this lap after lap. I always try to take the clean line (right wheels on the edge of the kerb), but I realize that I'm scrubbing a bit of exit speed doing this.
vtak just...kick'd me out, jawohl!
*sorry, couldn't help that one
*sorry, couldn't help that one
What about "Carnagolica" for T1 at BL on Demo servers? 
Never said the chicks have to be hot :bump:I just wanted to avoid the gender-based discrimination
Aside from Becky, are there other women perusing the LFS?
Good points, Electrik Kar! Indeed, it would be a shame to lose the photographic sky, as I like it very much, as well as any effect this would have on the so nicely done track textures (a separate thanks to you for that).
Regarding the Sun appearance/reappearance...when I used to play GTR2, depending on the time you set, the sun would, in fact, come out from behind the clouds at certain spots on the track and be in your eyes (making the driving harder). Also, after you lay rubber lap by lap, the location of the sun (angle, etc.) would also change, making you realize how much time you've just wasted (in this sense, this isn't such a great idea, perhaps).
Anyways, I'm not saying the Devs should make LFS' weather akin to that of GTR2, as I like LFS the way it is - a lot less graphics card intensive, even compared to netKar Pro...which, IMVHO, has sh!tty graphics in itself. Just some points to mull over in the spare time (if they have any).
Regarding the Sun appearance/reappearance...when I used to play GTR2, depending on the time you set, the sun would, in fact, come out from behind the clouds at certain spots on the track and be in your eyes (making the driving harder). Also, after you lay rubber lap by lap, the location of the sun (angle, etc.) would also change, making you realize how much time you've just wasted (in this sense, this isn't such a great idea, perhaps
).Anyways, I'm not saying the Devs should make LFS' weather akin to that of GTR2, as I like LFS the way it is - a lot less graphics card intensive, even compared to netKar Pro...which, IMVHO, has sh!tty graphics in itself. Just some points to mull over in the spare time (if they have any).
Another changing weather blab
There's a non-zero chance that something like this has been suggested already, but I couldn't find a thread like that, so fwiw, here goes...
So there are three "preset" weathers (in Blackwood, at least, dunno of other tracks) - clear day, cloudy afternoon, and cloudy sunset. All three have a predefined sky texture to them (and maybe to grass, bridges, etc. I'm not sure). What has just occurred to me is that perhaps you could fade in a new sky texture while the old one fades out, and then you'll have changeable weather patterns, at random if you will, and hopefully without terribly involved coding.
Anyhoo, this is just to get it out there. If this has been already suggested, then don't flame me hard and remove this thread if you want.
So there are three "preset" weathers (in Blackwood, at least, dunno of other tracks) - clear day, cloudy afternoon, and cloudy sunset. All three have a predefined sky texture to them (and maybe to grass, bridges, etc. I'm not sure). What has just occurred to me is that perhaps you could fade in a new sky texture while the old one fades out, and then you'll have changeable weather patterns, at random if you will, and hopefully without terribly involved coding.
Anyhoo, this is just to get it out there. If this has been already suggested, then don't flame me hard and remove this thread if you want.
Don't you think we need a chick as well?
I'd say Paul Oakenfold - Ready Steady Go would be more appropriate for that.
Also, Fedde Le Grand - Put Your Hands Up for Detroit (for those who want a V8 American musclecar in the game)
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG