I've wasted hours over the last two days iteratively fiddling with the cooling parameters to try and get my normally-aspirated engine to be semi realistic and I can't find any real guidance (the comments in the SkipBarber are not helping!) At the moment, my engine (very) quickly reaches sensible oil and water temps (86 deg C) - but basically refuses to budge even if you cruise down an infinite straight at the red-line. What I'm aiming for is for a (relatively) rapid rise to running temp (water temp first, ideally, as in a real car) but then for the engine to be slightly under-cooled if worked hard - temps should creep up if you sit at the rev limiter or work it really hard. Starting with the SkipBarber, I've worked my way to the settings below - and then given up as nothing I seem to try helps! Code: OptimumOilTemp=98.0 // degrees Celsius at which engine operates optimally CombustionHeat=115.5 // degrees Celsius added per liter of fuel burned EngineSpeedHeat=2.5e-03 // heat added linearly with engine speed OilMinimumCooling=8.0e-4 // heat dissipated without oil/water transfer OilWaterHeatTransfer=(0.9, 4.1e-3) // heat transfer from oil to water (base, w/ engine speed) WaterMinimumCooling=4.0e-3 // base heat dissipated without velocity RadiatorCooling=(3.0e-6, 6.0e-5) // cooling rate with velocity (base, per setting) engineHeatTransferParams=(0.25,0.75) // Amount of heat that goes into oil and amount of heat that goes into water OilRadiatorCooling=(0.00037,0.00019) // Cooling rate of oil radiator (base, per setting) WaterRadiatorCooling=(0.00001,0.00009) // Cooling rate of water radiator (base, per setting) WaterThermostat=1 // Defines if thermostat is available thermostatClosedOpenTemps=(85.0,95.0) // Defines the lower and upper threshold in which the thermostat opens (value when fully closed, value when fully open) waterCoolingFanThresholdCelcius=100.0 // Defines the threshold where the water cooling fan starts to engage waterCoolingFanBaseAirVelocityMS=3.0 // Defines the amount of velocity added from the fan to the water radiator when engaged oilCoolingFanThresholdCelcius=115.0 // Defines the threshold where the oil cooling fan starts to engage oilCoolingFanBaseAirVelocityMS=0.0 // Defines the amount of velocity added from the fan to the oil radiator when engaged I've made some assumptions: RadiatorCooling - affects both oil and water rads. I don't see much/any effect of changing this and don't understand what the 'per setting' could mean in the context of velocity. OilRadiatorCooling/WaterRadiatorCooling - again, these seem to have minimal effect. You'd have thought that effectively zeroing the waterrad settings would cause temps to climb relentlessly but it doesn't seem to be the case. Admittedly both oil/water values are lower than the 'MinimumCooling' values (i.e. heat soak cooling) but lowering those doesn't seem to have the desired effect either. I'm also assuming that the 'per setting' entries relate to the application of duct tape and nothing else(?) What I have noticed is that if you enable the stat, the temps *very* quickly rise until it opens - which is fine - but how do I hobble the overall cooling efficiency once open? CombustionHeat is daft high at the moment to encourage initial warmup - I don't want to have to wait ages to see if the rad is working/not-working. Any help, gratefully received!
What type of car is it? From what you want to achieve it seems like it's a closed cockpit car? Can't give you much guidance on what's realistic since I've never really seen any data on live oil and water temp (only documented working ranges). As for RadiatorCooling, OilRadiatorCooling, and WaterRadiatorCooling, I've found that they have the largest effect on things. However, if you work with the new split system, which includes OilRadiatorCooling, and WaterRadiatorCooling, the RadiatorCooling should be redundant. I haven't played around with it a lot, but from what I found it seems like the new system is basically just RadiatorCooling / 2. It's probably more advanced than that, but I managed identical results by just having the same total base value. Your assumption of the 'per setting' is correct. I think you need to have the lines WaterRadiatorRange and OilRadiatorRange in the HDV for the game to read the OilRadiatorCooling and WaterRadiatorCooling. If you only have WaterRadiatorRange I assume it'll read the RadiatorCooling.
Thanks. It’s a closed cockpit car, yes. I’ve got a bit closer today by starting afresh with the current dev spreadsheet cooling! Obviously that system is not directly appropriate but it got me into the zone. Even so, I seem to be hitting the same sort of problems pick one of: I) extreme over-cooling (30-odd deg C fluids), Ii) gradual overheating or iii) almost un-bustable 80 ish deg c that refuses to budge even at full chat down Brianza…. Ho hum!
Not knowing your level of experience/knowledge with modding and especially maths, you might just be underestimating the effect of seemingly small values / changes. Regarding 'full chat down Brianza' - you very likely don't want engine temperature to be rising when you're at full speed. A car that does that will be basically unraceable, because that's one of the best scenarios for cooling (apart from cruising on a sunday drive at low RPM). Remember aero, and therefore radiator cooling, squares with speed. Full throttle near max RPM in 6th gear is better than full throttle near max RPM in 5th gear, is better than 4th gear, is better than 3rd gear, ... Try to get your heating/cooling working the way you want when at rest so you have a known good baseline. Then you can work on your radiator settings while driving at speed. I think your figures in the first post are a result of you already tying yourself in knots; start again with either the spreadsheet or skip barber values, and try to make few, and small, changes.
You’re probably correct in that I’ve slipped out of sensible values and then ended up chasing my tail. …and the advice to sort out the static cooling is probably sound - the excessive effect of the stat opening at speed has been a distraction - if I can get that to behave realistically at rest, it should be a good basis. …just a tad annoying that it’ll take quite a while to run that sort of test cycle…
In rF1 OptimumOilTemp did 2 things, according to Michael Borda (and I quote in italics): It defines the starting oil temperature, which is simply this number OptimumOilTemp*0.5+14.5 degrees. And you're exactly right that it controls when the thermostat opens, which is OptimumOilTemp-10 degrees Given that the thermostat now has its own control, and that it's years since I touched the base engine stuff, I couldn't say exactly what's changed. But increasing that optimum temp may give you a better starting temperature. Ctrl-X will hopefully also speed testing. Consider reducing/disabling the failure modes while you're tweaking.
