Can you drive an F1 car on the ceiling?

Nimugp said:
When I think about it, I think you got this point a bit wrong..... An airplane generates lift away from the earth. If you invert it, it would generate lift towards the earth, unless properly modified, or at an certain angle I suppose.

A (f1) car however, generates downforce which pulls it against the 'floor'. If upside down the wings still generate downforce against the 'floor' although in that case that is the ceiling ;)

Only thing I can imagine that MIGHT have to be modified is the interior: I have no idea how the fluids in the car would react when upside down, if they can't get where there supposed to go, then you obviously might end up with a problem in the end as well. (If this was your point anyway, then disregard this post, but I think you were talking about aerodynamics ;) )
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I was meaning mechanical modifications and fluids that are more of a limitation then the aero forces. A wing will provide lift in the same direction no matter which way it is inverted as long as enough air travels over the wings to generate the required lift. So like you said an upside down f1 car will still create down-force as long as the wheels are on the roof it shouldn't matter.

Thats why it should be easier in a sim as we dont need to worry about fluids and such but it all depends to how the aerodynamic forces are modeled. If they are actually pushing down on the car or are just adjusting grip levels, seeing as wind is something ISI will be working on this should show that aero is modeled in a realistic way.

Wind will have an effect on down-force as going into a strong wind will give more down-force and wind behind will reduce down-force. In order for wind effects to be realistic I think the aerodynamic forces must be properly simulated to a point. There is no way that RF2 is a full fluid simulation but it should have aero drag and lift numbers for a few parts of the car mainly the wings and front, center and rear of the car.

If aero is done properly already someone could try some inverted wings figures as in a plane and see if the car will take off at a certain speed.
 
martymoose said:
I was meaning mechanical modifications and fluids that are more of a limitation then the aero forces. A wing will provide lift in the same direction no matter which way it is inverted as long as enough air travels over the wings to generate the required lift. So like you said an upside down f1 car will still create down-force as long as the wheels are on the roof it shouldn't matter.

Thats why it should be easier in a sim as we dont need to worry about fluids and such but it all depends to how the aerodynamic forces are modeled. If they are actually pushing down on the car or are just adjusting grip levels, seeing as wind is something ISI will be working on this should show that aero is modeled in a realistic way.

Wind will have an effect on down-force as going into a strong wind will give more down-force and wind behind will reduce down-force. In order for wind effects to be realistic I think the aerodynamic forces must be properly simulated to a point. There is no way that RF2 is a full fluid simulation but it should have aero drag and lift numbers for a few parts of the car mainly the wings and front, center and rear of the car.

If aero is done properly already someone could try some inverted wings figures as in a plane and see if the car will take off at a certain speed.
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Exactly.

Similarly as I discussed months ago, a quick test with various temperatures, humidities and thus air densities (also linked to elevation, altitude below/above sea level) proved that these atmospheric conditions did not effect the current aerodynamics model which is obviously incorrect. As an ex-aero guy, this is what I'm looking forward to most in the future, getting a decent aero model taking into account atmospheric conditions (turbulence from car in front too) into account! The icing on the cake!
 
An interesting concept, but is there sufficient inverse lift from the wings and aero to keep the car adhered to the track like that? I can see the car being able to do loops due to inertia, but not real sure about the whole driving upside down thing.
 
Downforce required is quite a lot, if there is downforce worth of car's weight, it would be 0Kg car at ceiling, so you would need twice the car's weight worth of downforce and still it would be like F1 without downforce at all, now imagine how horrible that thing would be to drive enough fast that you would get enough downforce to stay up.

That + fluids and sfuff are probably problems one would face in there.

Suitable test track would be torus that is around 30km long and perhaps banked from top so that there would be no lateral force to mess things up, of course also 30km long tube should be working and in many ways easier, but one could not have so nice racing, with torus you could start racing on ceiling league, where drafting would have interesting effects.

To experience it properly, one should make upside down sim racing cockpit and drive upside down, downforce surely keeps car on roof, but not driver, there is 1G pull for drivers hands, legs, everything which does create some challenges, but at least one would not need expensive motion platform to experience that G-force :)
 
Johannes Rojola said:
It would not be big work to build such test track for rF2. If you design it, I will build it when I find one day off.
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That is cool, Johannes :). Check out the video in the very first post, something like that. Very long straight tunnel, smoother the better, no bumps. :cool:

PLAYLIFE said:
I posted a request for the exact thing the OP asks for in this thread earlier in the year:
http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.p...ers-for-Physics-Testing?highlight=upside+down
As stated by Nimugp/martymoose, in real life it would not be possible due to the internals not designed to work upside down (fuel, oil tanks/pumps etc.) but as I requested, it would definitely test out the aero model in rF2.
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Great minds think alike, I completely missed that thread.
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I agree the down-force physics are most likely fake, but interested to find out otherwise.
 
martymoose said:
It would be very interesting to see this done in RF2 because if the aero forces are modeled in a realistic way it should theoretically be possible but we dont know if the sim will fail once inverted as it most likely never was intended to do this. If aero modeling in game is only really adding extra grip to the sim and not pushing the car down to the road then the sim car will not stay on the tunnel roof. I have no idea of how the aero physics are actually applied in game so this would be an interesting test to see if aero is a canned effect or actually simulating the downforce on the car.
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No canned aero. You can check telemetry, how the whole car reacts to aero, especially vertical forces acting on tyres and ride height + suspension compression.
But... what really might not work well, is how "lift" and "downforce" are designed. It might be, that "downforce" means simply "down". Then, when car goes upside down on ceiling it will be pushed away from it and will fall, instead of got glued even more to ceiling, like it would happen in real life.
 
LesiU said:
No canned aero. You can check telemetry, how the whole car reacts to aero, especially vertical forces acting on tyres and ride height + suspension compression.
But... what really might not work well, is how "lift" and "downforce" are designed. It might be, that "downforce" means simply "down". Then, when car goes upside down on ceiling it will be pushed away from it and will fall, instead of got glued even more to ceiling, like it would happen in real life.
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Edit: My bad, you were talking about simulation in rF2 :)

Downforce does not mean it pushes the car down to earth. It means that it pushes the car down as in relative to the car itself. Air doesn't care which way you are and which direction you are traveling. Surely, gravity does matter.

I am little skeptic if Formula One car could be driven upside down, it would basically mean that it could fly (albeit, very badly) if you would turn the aero parts upside down. I don't think it would happen... Not sure though.
 
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Johannes Rojola said:
Downforce does not mean it pushes the car down to earth. It means that it pushes the car down as in relative to the car itself. Air doesn't care which way you are and which direction you are traveling. Surely, gravity does matter.
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But how it is in rFactor, that might or might not be an issue. I remember how rF1 had some issues with things not upright, rF2 seems to be better with that, but not sure if this still is same as in real world, but with testing it should become quite clear.
 
jtbo said:
But how it is in rFactor, that might or might not be an issue. I remember how rF1 had some issues with things not upright, rF2 seems to be better with that, but not sure if this still is same as in real world, but with testing it should become quite clear.
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Yes, only testing would give an answer to that :)
 
Tucker Fleming said:
LionDrome.jpg
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Hey, I thought barrel was local, stupid of me, though this looks like...concrete prefab blocks?
 
1959nikos said:
Phew...when I was a kid, at the 60s, my father used to take me at the barrel.
The barrel was a true wooden barrel, but 6 or 7? meters long and 5? meters high.
There, some young guys took their (basic) motorcycles to the top of the barrel and down again, for quite some time, truly scaring the s**t out of me.

Hey, F1 can do better than this?
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That is called the wall of Death
http://youtu.be/Ci7ig-XV2Ic

A more modern version is this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9aREQpcLGU&feature=fvwrel
 
I have one testing track up and running. It has tunnel, wall of death, and a loop. I must say, having tested with rTrainer and with our own mod project, results are not very encouraging of gMotor engine handling these. But I'll port this to single play mode where there is more cars, and lets see what happens. I can also post this track for your use if interested.

stuntworld.jpg


Mind me with graphics, this is test only :D And with these results it might be that this test is not worth continuing anyway...
 
Can you make the ceiling flat about 4m wide? With such relatively low radius, it may be hard to do tests with low-riders like F1 of GT cars.

After that change, please share it (can be just for DevMode). I will do some tests for sure!
 
Wow Johannes, that is great. A big thank you. Shame your early tests have not been promising, but we'll still give it a go none the less. Thank you again. :)
 
LesiU said:
Can you make the ceiling flat about 4m wide?
After that change, please share it (can be just for DevMode). I will do some tests for sure!
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https://dl.dropbox.com/u/7364491/Stuntworld_devmode.rar

Ceiling fixed too :)

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/7364491/Stuntworld.rfcmp

Here is also component version for use in Single play.

With Formula Master I didn't get even close to reach the tunnel ceiling. Half way there stuff starts to happen. Also Formula went through the Loop, wall of death I didn't bother to try.
 
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Thanks Johannes!
OK, next issue - it has just too few polys (and some bumps) and car goes very unstable once I'm on "walls".
Can you increase polycount of the tunnel? It's just a test track so I don't mind if the tunnel has 500k polys or even more ;-)

But I must say, it looks promising :)

EDIT:
Actually, you can also increase radius of the tunnel, maybe 2x?

The loop also has wayyyy too small radius. Make it at least 4-5x bigger (and with much more polys, because it is not smooth).
 
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