Engine Speed (RPM) Flaw

I'm not sure how many of you are aware but this game, as realistic as it is in many ways, is quite flawed when it comes to simulating engine speed & sound. In the cabin view the tachometer actually displays engine load rather than engine speed. When you shift to a higher gear, RPM should go down but in this game it often goes up as the engine load increases in the higher gear. And going downhill while in gear the engine should be revving as the truck's momentum keeps the engine turning but in this game the engine is essentially idling, even though it's providing good braking.

Can this get fixed? It's not a huge flaw, but it is physically wrong. I hope at least MR2 simulates this better.

Yes. Engine and transmission are pretty bad. I actually stopped caring since it's so bad I just don't think they can just "Fix" it. Instead, they would have to write all over again IMO. It's interesting how the game engine simulates some things so well and some others are horrendous. Like the speed... The game just doesn't handle well high speeds.
Anyways. Back to your post. I agree and I think it's been discussed before. Let us see if you can grab enough attention to get this looked into.

I'm playing on Nintendo Switch, you know , is not a powerful console as PC or PS/XBOX. This engine make me speechless because is very "light". Never seen a beautiful graphic as MudRunner on this kind of console so I think that is very good engine! Maybe need some fine tuning about fx and other kind of sound engineering but I'm exited about next release of MudRunner.

Alex

@deathcoreboy1 said in Engine Speed (RPM) Flaw:

Yes. Engine and transmission are pretty bad. I actually stopped caring since it's so bad I just don't think they can just "Fix" it. Instead, they would have to write all over again IMO. It's interesting how the game engine simulates some things so well and some others are horrendous. Like the speed... The game just doesn't handle well high speeds.
Anyways. Back to your post. I agree and I think it's been discussed before. Let us see if you can grab enough attention to get this looked into.

To be fair this game was probably never built with speed in mind. After all it's not exactly a racing simulator.

@sodoma Thanks Sodoma. I had a brief look at that thread and I'm not really surprised that it's troublesome to get an RPM value out of this game, since some of the physics are pseudo/simplified physics. Would like to hear from Pavel or another developer if anything came out of the planned improvements to the physics engine. I also understand that this may not be an easy fix, given how the physics engine works, but the developers would know better than any of us how feasible this improvement would be (I'm a game dev myself and have done vehicle physics, so I know how complex it can get, especially when it's someone else's code).

@unster I quite agree, as you can see (if you'll go deeper in there) I went through that a bit.
My personal conclusion is that you MAY get something a bit like RPM, but not actually. More like "progress bar" for a range of speed-for-a-gear. Even that might be helpful, but in the end I am not sure if it worth it. Pavel likely thinks it's not 🙂

@deathcoreboy1 I agree. I actually noticed this flaw long ago, pretty much from my day 1, but I kind of brushed it off because this game is still pretty cool and a nice logging truck simulator overall. But I thought of posting about it last night just to bring some attention to it, because it is indeed a part of the game that is lacking, especially compared to other driving simulators like BeamNG. That one does engine & transmission simulation really well.

And yes, driving on pavement could use some improvement, especially for light vehicles. Notice how the A-969 with its skinny tires is all over the place on pavement? It's pretty bad. Heavier trucks are mostly OK, though even they have too much wheel spin on pavement.

@unster Yes, especially because I don't like these kinds of maps where you are surrounded by mud non-stop. Even the garage is mud everywhere. I live in a rural environment myself and I personally like the maps where there are village and roads and dirt roads but in poor conditions. Like, the road is badly paved and has potholes covered by mud etc. Then there is this other side road where you can put all the mud you want and cross a river... I hope you get my point. It feels more realistic according to my experience. I just don't like to be drowning in mud since I open the map until I close the game. There are other kinds of challenges I like as well which don't involve mud, like having to drive through a narrow passage on the verge of a hill with rocks... The thing is that traction, speed, RPM, transmission etc.. play a more important role in these conditions, hence my disappointment. I love the game anyway thus I still play it but I agree it needs a lot of work on these regards.

@justinlynch3 You're right, but I'm not talking about 200km/h. I'm talking about 40km/h on a paved road which is pretty normal for a truck or a small scout vehicle.

last edited by deathcoreboy1

@sodoma It's worth noting that in neutral the trucks do have a functioning concept of RPM. Engine speed goes up and down with the throttle pedal as it should. It's while in gear where the engine speed kind of loses touch with reality and gets mixed up with engine load.

Yes I completely agree I made a post about it a while back but nobody seemed to understand. Hopefully when get some legit sounds and characteristics of the engine and tranny in mr2

A simple solution, which would not be a problem, would be to calculate rpm as speed*ratio (according to the gear), the problem is that the speed is also calculated incorrectly and a truck that gets stuck in the mud and only its wheels are only spinning shows zero speed, so when the wheels slip the speed is calculated incorrectly (at least in snowrunner) and thus it is not even possible to calculate the rpm from the speed.

The correct solution would of course be to calculate the rpm according to the rpm wheel*ratio (according to the gear), but this is probably more complicated, because otherwise the developers would program the speedometer correctly. So that it shows the circumferential speed of the wheels and not the actual speed of the vehicle.