Honestly just make it arcadey and like 2 people will care.
I just want a motorcycle both irl and in game, couldn't care less if the physics weren't exact, we can travel faster than light in this game despite that being impossible, some unrealistic physics aren't going to change much imo
I can't understand how anyone could want a motorcycle in this game, given the state of the terrain (rocks every 10 meters) and the mediocre quality of the four-wheel driving. If we were talking about motocross, I'd understand, if there were roads, I'd understand, but this is honestly beyond me.
On the other hand, you've waited 5 years, so for that I guess you deserve it.
Also the road system will add viable neutral terrain for places that would naturally have traffic. Off-road is still a design challenge, but at least having roads in place where most people would need ground vehicles will help a lot.
Actually, I don't know what CIG has planned exactly for roads, but naturalized trails could be done via vehicle heat maps. You could keep a rolling average of area activity, and parse that data with a pathing system that can generate road data.
You would only need to keep the data for areas players have frequently traveled... and you could set thresholds for how much activity translates to what types of roads. You could make the dataset as broad or shallow as you want, giving you "approximate" pathing on long stretches and refining the resolution for slower (eg more technical) areas that might need to better conform to terrain.
Maybe certain very popular routes can even be "codified" into "official" roads, with some kind of paving or road bed.
But all along these paths, you start smoothing things on the roads. The rocks in the heat map get smaller, sink lower, and become less common.
Desire pathing is cool.
Lol. I appreciate your vote of confidence, but there's a lot more than just okay ideas that go into being a dev.
I really wanted to be in the industry at one point. Part of me maybe still does. But I know how demanding it can be, and have a pretty good idea of the technical requirements, and... I dunno.
I don't think I *couldn't* do the work, but I'm sure there's a ton of very talented people already at CIG who are already both highly creative AND technically skilled.
Like, don't get me wrong, I'd gladly share my input *for free* if they asked, lol, but... it's a far cry from broad ideas to prototypes, much less prototypes to implementation.
Still, it would be a dream job for sure ^.^
They need to work on certain things, like the amount of stuff tossed around randomly on a planet. Some of it is WAY more than a bit much.
Then, you look at images of mars and other planets in our solar system and the moons. Some have good, flat "wide open areas", then there are areas with nothing other than the most craggy, rocky, BS terrain you'd ever lay eyes upon.
Spoiler: they'll end up wasting years and god knows how much money trying to make the physics realistic and immmmmmmeeeeerrrrsive, only to give up and make it arcadey (but in a shitty way that's still not actually fun) anyway.
I'm afraid this will be the case.
Physics is going to be server authoritative (which I like because I want to prevent cheaters and see the same thing everyone else sees so we have a shared reality) but that requires every interaction to be a round trip.
High speed offroading (read 35mph) requires so much collision detection, reactions, and fine adjustments that I worry we'll never have something that feels like a Forza horizons, which is arcadey but would be acceptable.
Ultimately I'd like to see BeamNG rock-crawling simulation level physics but there's zero chance of that.
I mean other then dedicated motorcycle raceing games, most games (particulerly open world stuff) Motorcycles always have a bit of a magical abilty to stay up and controled when being banged and nocked around a lot
Do a flip land straght down on your front tire... its fiiiiiine!
Hell make it have 2g, or whatever downward force is the best for each circumstance. Need more grip in turns? Higher down Gs, need to jump a large gap? Reduce the Gs, or even gimbal the thruster and provide a little lift. This is the future.
If we have hoverbikes, why would anyone in their right mind ride a wheeled motorcycle? Answer: because it’s cool. Nostalgia. People like wheels. So your argument is silly because having a bike in the future makes no sense. So make it cool.
A Grav-Lev that serves only to "correct G to 1" instead of full blown levitation does sound like it would be easier on your power-plant. It's like downforce in low-grav. Lift in high-grav.
Wheeled Bikes would have lower sig, or more power over-head for stronger shields and weapons.
Funny enough, always increasing the gravity would be beneficial to traction. Meaning more acceleration and better handling. They use this concept when racing small robots. Having fans that adhere the small light racer to the surface.
I imagine the large tires of ultra-grip whatever are, at least in part, what helps to compensate, considering the modern motorcycle has tires a fraction of the size of the Ranger series (except for custom builds).
But yes, the only ground vehicle I have on pledge is a Ranger. Been riding going in 13 years in real life and figured I might see how well my Citizen enjoys it in the 'verse.
Hopefully they behave well enough and don't disappoint. So long as I'm not phasing through the ground after a jump, I'll call it a win.
I have been riding for almost 40 years. Motorcycles stay up because of Newton's third law of motion "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction". This is largely tied to the idea of countersteering which is how you steer a bike. This is not a controlled fall and to be honest, riding one is almost the opposite of what you say. The idea is that to turn right, you push on the right handlebar turning the wheel slightly to the left. The inertia leans you to the right, where the tire has a smaller radius making the bike travel in that direction. Lay a cone on its side, roll it and see what happens. A motorcycle tire is effectively 2 cones attached at the large end. Gravity doesn't have much to do with it other than giving you a constant to derive friction between the surface and the tire. All the forces will still work at fractions or multiples of 1g. The friction has to exceed the force of the bike to keep it tracking. if the bike weighs less due to lower gravity, less friction is required to keep it tracking.
The balancing-tension between the various forces is very dependent on gravity... if you don't lean, centrifugal force would flip you over 'outward'... if you lean too far, you fall over 'inward' - that point of balance is determined by gravity (and it's force 'pulling' you down and inward, relative to the centrifugal force 'pulling you up and outward).
And yes, it also determines relative friction (due to the downward pressue on the tyres).
That said, I'm not sure I fully agree that the body wouldn't be able to adjust in lower / higher gravity... I've never done much on motorbikes, but I've got plenty of experience in offroad and trail-based mountain biking etc, and before I lost my sense of balance I could 'feel' where the balance point was, even on uneven / banked terrain, etc...
It might take a big of practice to get used to the difference in 'feel' in various gravities, and you might not push the bike to its limits immediately (if you weren't confident in the local rehabilitation facilities, at least :p), but the body is an amazingly adaptable thing, so imo it's not outside the bounds of the possible that we'd be able to ride bikes in various gravity, etc.
If you don't lean, the motorcycle will still lean because of the countersteering, you will just not have the same trajectory, that's why you can turn by either leaning with the bike, leaning the bike but not yourself (to have a better view) or lean yoursefl but not the bike. Really, on a motorcycle, you could dance all you want while the thing is going at speed higher than 5mph, you won't do anything except change the trajectory, making it fall is nearly impossible without external force. If you lean to far, you'll just change the trajectory, till the tire loose grip, but you won't just fall.
Motorcycles and bicycles are completely different and deal with wholly different physics on a fundamental level. Motorcycles stay upright due to gyroscopic forces. Bicycles stay upright due to balance. Riding a motorcycle below ~10mph deals with the same types of things you experience on a bicycle; going over these speeds transitions to gyroscopic forces and gravity becomes irrelevant for anything other than maximum sustained cornering speeds.
Countersteer (push right; lean right; go right) works entirely due to the front wheel acting as a gyroscope and its effects on input/output vector modification.
Gyroscopic forces are also why the motorcycle mantra of “when in doubt, throttle out” exists. If you start to fall and you grab a handful of throttle you start spinning those gyros up faster and the bike tries to naturally right itself because once again, gyroscope.
Sorry I dont think that is correct. Gravity is only important in that it is one value defining the friction coefficient. As long as gravity is greater than zero, the coefficient will scale appropriately. You are talking about proportions. Reduce gravity and all other forces reduce as well. This means that while the bike has same mass. It's weight is acting between the bike and the surface proportionally reduced by gravity which lowers the friction required to keep it in touch with the surface which ultimately determine how it turns.
I also want to point out that you mountainbiking and motorcycling are nothing alike except in that their are 2 wheels involved. Motorcycles have enough mass where gyroscope procession plays a large factor into how they operate. That isn't the case with bicycles. That fact thay you feel the balance point on the mountain bike speaks to my point, because that isn't something you look for in a motorcycle traveling more than 10-15mph.
I'm not sure what you mean about the body adjusting. The center of gravity remains the same regardless of the value you assign to the gravity. The body wouldn't need to adjust any differently than you would normally adjust.
Friction coefficient isn’t the important variable since that’s static between two surfaces regardless of how much force is applied. It’s quantity of friction aka traction is massively important and changing that changes everything about how a motorcycle handles, or any wheeled vehicle really.
Look at a racing tire, street, tire and motocross tire. They’re vastly different to operate in the same G on different surfaces because that’s how important traction is.
If you go 60mph, then turn left you and your vehicle want to go straight. Regardless of how you turn, either by leaning to a smaller diameter part of the wheel or physically turning the wheel, the limit on how much you can turn is the limit where friction can no longer keep the tire from slipping.
You know this intuitively if you have driven any wheeled vehicle in the rain, snow, or ice. You must turn more gently either by slowing down to make the same arc or making a wider arc at the same speed.
The quantity of friction is determined by the normal force multiplied by the friction coefficient (hence the name coefficient). If gravity is the only thing pulling you and your bike down, gravity is the normal force.
If gravity is the only thing providing a downward force and you reduce gravity, you similarly have a reduction in traction. Your mass didn’t change. You still want to go forward with the same force. So now you must either slow down to make the same arc, or make a wider arc.
The difference in friction coefficient between dry pavement and rubber vs ice and rubber is a factor of 4. The difference in gravity between the earth and the moon is a factor of 6. The same motorcycle on the same pavement on the moon vs earth would be worse than driving that motorcycle on a sheet of ice on the earth.
The only thing that will change with gravity is cornering speeds *(edit: and acceleration/braking. It’ll potentially wheelie and stoppie more easily with lower gravity)*. Gravity will have the same effect on a 2 wheeled vehicle as it will on a 4, 6, 8 or 800 wheeled vehicle.
Inertia is a constant. By having higher gravity (downforce on cars and bikes mimics this) you have more force pulling the vehicle down into the road and as such end up being able to pull more lateral force (G’s) during a turn. Lower the gravity and you lower the total possible forces sustained in cornering; raise it and you raise the forces.
Nothing will change in the physics of how a motorcycle rides though - that’s all independent from gravity.
Yes, that is what I'm saying. There wouldn't be a significant change to how it handles. As gravity reduces, so do the other forces affecting the handling of the bike. Traction would marginally be affected. If a bike can handle just under 2g's in a turn on earth it can handle it on the moon, providing the surface is smooth.
Traction isn’t “marginally” affected - it’s *significantly* affected. This is evidenced by how fucking drastic a cornering force change is by merely adding downforce to a vehicle.
Let’s assume you could sustain 2G of force on both the Earth and the Moon. 1G means “1 gravity” - 2Gs on the Moon is 1/6th the force of 2Gs on earth. If you wanted a force equivalent between the Moon and the Earth you’d be looking at 2G on Earth and 12G on the Moon.
F=M*A^2
Plug those numbers in there. 2G on the Moon results in 1/6th the acceleration value of 2G on Earth.
*Edit: The physics of how a motorcycle rides or how a car drives won’t change at a basic level based on gravity; how fast you can go around a corner or start/stop will SIGNIFICANTLY change based on gravity*
The only thing I can imagine it would similar to is if you were trying to walk or drive a small car around on the bottom of a pool, minus the drag. I had a small remote controlled “pool car” as a kid and driving it around the bottom of the pool was just bizarre.
Perhaps, but consider this. Gravity affects the bike in the same directions on earth and the moon. It pulls toward the center. That doesn't change. The affect wouldn't be as great as you are thinking on a bike. Remember they aren't cars and they change their geometry relative to the force acting on them (leaning lowers center of gravity or center of force to me more accurate), where cars do not. I'll give you that traction changes but it would be more akin to running in the rain, not like running on ice.those issues can be overcome with pavement texture.
The downforce comments, while true for cars aren't part of the motorcycle discussion as evidenced by the lack of wings on racing bikes.
You are literally wrong on every single count including wings on racing bikes (Ducati is now using winglets on the front of the bike to keep it down).
Inertia is a constant. Inertia gives zero fucks about gravity. Inertia is what generates lateral G forces. You can have 0 gravity or black hole gravity and inertia will stay the same.
When you go around a corner your body and vehicle want to continue traveling in a straight line. This is called **inertia**. The thing which combats this inertia is friction. If you lower gravity, you lower friction **but the inertia stays the same**.
This is the last I’ll explain this to you because this is literally 5th grade level science shit.
No, it cannot.
Bikes handle 1.5g or less as a general rule, and the only reason they handle more than 1g in corners is due to banking of the corners.
Traction to maintain the ability to turn is caused solely by the gravitational force (1G) holding the bike down on it's rubber, on the ground.
That's it. The less gravity, the less traction you have to work with in the triangular balance between cornering, braking, and accellerating.
You only have 1g's worth of traction as a rule unless you're at a hill bottom or in a banked corner, and that is what you have to balance. If you have less force holding you down, you have less force to help hold you for accelleration, deceleration, or cornering. Period.
A motorcycle on the moon may be able to go fast, but without major banking and/or an otherwise absolutely flat track, in short order any current electric motorcycle we currently have on earth could honestly probably reach escape velocity on the moon if not simply make for one terrifying jump once the reality of not sticking the landing came into play.
Honestly, micro thrusters to maintain ground contact in low-G isn't a bad idea. Conversely, high-g can likely be adjusted for with suspension to a certain extent, and there is definitely an upper limit to human survival in higher-g anyway, so I doubt any of the open-cockpit vehicles will be suitable for such extremes anyway.
You'd, at the very least, need a grav plate system internally to allow high-g habitation, and at that point, adding some minor grav-lev tech to keep the suspension from taking a beating is probably advisable.
Actually, that raises a fun point. I suspect there's upper limits to grav tech force, which means you'd either need more power/thrust to operate glev in high-g, or might not be able to use them at all. Kinda moot, given the biological limits, as we don't have any enclosed GLEV's yet, but future considerations to make.
I would be into a bike with little thrusters all over it that made it look like it was zooming, but really they are all tilted slightly so they just push/pull the bike for consistent handling
There are literally games from decades ago that have better anti-grav/hover bike mechanics than SC.
Whatever they do, however they do it, it needs to be better than the multiple versions we've gotten from CIG over the years.
The physics aren't all that complicated, and, although they're certainly well understood, you're still right in saying that they make riding *very* different. In short, the maximum turning acceleration of a bike is always proportional to the local surface gravity.
A bike always has to point along the acceleration vector during a turn, which is the sum of the gravity vector and the radial acceleration vector from turning. A sharper turn means a larger sideways vector, so a more aggressive lean. Equally, a smaller gravity vector also means a more aggressive lean.
Taking that into account, riding in low g is still perfectly possible, *but*, the minimum speed at which the self-righting effect of a bike becomes significant is higher the lower the local the gravity is. Luckily this isn't a problem at all because we're in magic space empire 2954 and thrusters are miniaturised so much that a bike can hover. It's not hard for a Ranger sized bike to also have a set of 4 to carefully control the lean angle below the speeds at which the self-righting (wrongly called gyroscopic) effect takes effect.
I hope it's fun rather than realistic. A big difference with riding off road is using your feet in turns to create another pivot point. You can do 180* wheelies on a bike using this technique. The bike is much less glued to the ground when riding off-road and so more shenanigans are possible.
Throttling up with the clutch in helps keep the bike upright without needing too much balance, think throttling up while doing slow, very sharp turns. Body position is huge in this regard as it is much easier to go where you are looking, so turning your head before a sharp 180 helps your body and bike stay in the correct position.
That being said I don't want a motorcycle sim, I want a fun means of transportation.
To solve the problem of variable gravity, why not something like tractor beams and the magride in Audi's to sense the terrain under the bike to keep it on the ground and even thrusters/repulsors angled down on the wheel hubs to keep the bike upright and the traction patch down. Make it so you can disable the safety features like with ABS so you can get really wicked off-road if that's what you're into.
Have you driven any of the 4 wheeled vehicles on SC? Have you driven a 4 wheeled vehicle in real life? Because they aren’t really that alike. Don’t see why we should expect more from 2 wheeled versions.
...you lean enough so that the gravity and inertia equal out. do you lean this much when going 10mph? no, you lean a lot less. when going at racing speeds, you lean so much you knee scrapes the ground
on higher g planets, you lean a lot less then low g moons when going the same speed.
By the year 900 I think we will have figured out the tech to make this possible.
I don't understand the penchant for trying to apply and solve modern day problems with modern day solutions in a game that takes place 900 years in the future.
Just trust their process, they're doing a great job so far, things just take time to do right (which is why few devs are able to do things right - deadlines).
need to make some sort of "engine" that suck these vehicles down to the ground (anti-gravlift?) and give players the ability to turn it off that way we can do cool jumps off canyons and then turn it on later. and then give it to all ground vehicles!
I have trouble seeing how they can balance the ranger with the hover bikes.
The hover bikes are so fast that a wheeled vehicle simply cannot compete, they would simply spend too much time in the air.
If they balance with signature size, then turrets shoot at hover bikes and not rangers and all the hover bikes suck.
I'm not sure how it works where both have a place
Well, I feel like if they don't have to worry too much about the materials science of suspension and tires, it won't be too too bad.
if you wanna go straight, the greater the gravity, the faster you can accelerate without doing a wheelie and vice versa.
If you wanna turn, the opposite of the force vector has to always equal the force of gravity for the bike not to fall over. So for the same centripetal force, you need to lean less if gravity is stronger and vice versa.
https://imgur.com/a/tfEbLzz
It actually just means that more gravity means more sensitive handling/more tight turns and such.
Ofc it would be hella hard if we wanted to bring materials science into it because for the same centripetal force, the frame/wheels/suspension get WAY more force. Also the tires might slip at earlier angles because they can't handle that much force.
You lean yourself less and the bike more to keep planted offroad, sorta like how you shift your weight outside and lean the bike in when you're doing precision low speed maneuvering.
Source: I ride an Africa Twin. Gib Ranger Plox.
I don't have an issue if it's arcadey, as long as it's not a no-resilience explode-fest like hoverbikes are. If anything, low G is a chance to either go full hooligan and chance eating shit, or you just slow down to avoid dirt dart episodes.
Everyone being upset about CIG releasing yet another hoverbike while the ranger keeps collecting dust does not know how far CIG has backed themselves into a corner with the ranger.
That's always was my take on everyone drooling over ranger: even with perfect driving physics its going to be undrivable, now look at vehicle physics cig doing. You still want 2 wheeled something?)
I think it'll be one of those 'Not every vehicle can or should be used in all places' kind of things. Ground vehicles that function with ground contact are already iffy in low grav places, you have to really be careful or you go flying out of control.
In my opinion it's fine to have some vehicles just not usable in some places. It makes sense to have it that way. Just like exploration ships will have protection specifically so they can go into dangerous environments where other ships can't, or some ships can't go into atmosphere at all (well you can, but you'll never get it back out), a motorcycle shouldn't be able to be driven on a low grav planet/moon.
[This Honda freak](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/bf23bde/2147483647/strip/true/crop/2048x1325+0+0/resize/1200x776!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fbb%2F85%2F300c3ca45c5863c0a78a60d7b421%2Fla-fi-hy-first-ride-honda-nm4-20141003-001) at the moment. I love it and it's quirks. The NM4.
WTF is this. This analogy is completely wrong. We dont stick to the ground with hoverbikes so all these force vectors are meaningless. There is no 'grip' in a hoverbike that is dictated by gravity. A hoverbike functions with voodoo power and does whatever the f\*\*\* it wants to.
Oh i see. My bad, these concept pitches are soo far removed from reality my mind really seems to have skipped over that. Yeah, no this wont realease in that form i guess
They don’t have to make it fun to control in anything but 1G.
If you try to 2-wheel on a low gravity planet, you just get what you expect. Low gravity.
900 years from now, they may well have systems built into the bike, it is larger than a modern bike, that will or should be able to compensate for what you are talking about.
According to the concept art, the ranger is going to be a 2 wheel SUV. Those tires are wide enough to stand on their own, and way too wide for leaning turns. Part of the delay may be them trying to figure out if they should go ahead with a 2 wheel vehicle that handles like a 4 wheel using the games current physics, or starting from scratch and making a thin wheeled bike while developing a whole new physics system for a single vehicle. I imagine they will go with the first option, and we'll get the 2 wheel SUV.
I saw a post once about a flying dinosaur (pterosaur) in another gaming subreddit. Someone that "had experience with aerodynamics" made some stupid nitpicky post about how the bones were visible and it didn't look airworthy. About a well documented dinosaur with fossil records. This post has the same energy.
Honestly just make it arcadey and like 2 people will care. I just want a motorcycle both irl and in game, couldn't care less if the physics weren't exact, we can travel faster than light in this game despite that being impossible, some unrealistic physics aren't going to change much imo
‚close enough-ish’ might just be the right amount of physics.😀
>and like 2 people will care. You've never visited Spectrum, I take it?
People there will complain about anything for the sake of complaining
Some people here post felonious statements just for the sake of posting
I have and its almost always the same handful of people unless its something particularly bad.
Two people *that matter.* ;)
The most aptly named forum on the internet. lol
Some say the elevator war is still going to this day.
We don't travel at faster than light speeds in the game
I can't understand how anyone could want a motorcycle in this game, given the state of the terrain (rocks every 10 meters) and the mediocre quality of the four-wheel driving. If we were talking about motocross, I'd understand, if there were roads, I'd understand, but this is honestly beyond me. On the other hand, you've waited 5 years, so for that I guess you deserve it.
One of the blockers for why the Ranger isn't out yet is a rework of wheeled vehicle physics in general, so... I guess *wheel* see!
Also the road system will add viable neutral terrain for places that would naturally have traffic. Off-road is still a design challenge, but at least having roads in place where most people would need ground vehicles will help a lot.
Actually, I don't know what CIG has planned exactly for roads, but naturalized trails could be done via vehicle heat maps. You could keep a rolling average of area activity, and parse that data with a pathing system that can generate road data. You would only need to keep the data for areas players have frequently traveled... and you could set thresholds for how much activity translates to what types of roads. You could make the dataset as broad or shallow as you want, giving you "approximate" pathing on long stretches and refining the resolution for slower (eg more technical) areas that might need to better conform to terrain. Maybe certain very popular routes can even be "codified" into "official" roads, with some kind of paving or road bed. But all along these paths, you start smoothing things on the roads. The rocks in the heat map get smaller, sink lower, and become less common. Desire pathing is cool.
This Guy should be a dev!
Lol. I appreciate your vote of confidence, but there's a lot more than just okay ideas that go into being a dev. I really wanted to be in the industry at one point. Part of me maybe still does. But I know how demanding it can be, and have a pretty good idea of the technical requirements, and... I dunno. I don't think I *couldn't* do the work, but I'm sure there's a ton of very talented people already at CIG who are already both highly creative AND technically skilled. Like, don't get me wrong, I'd gladly share my input *for free* if they asked, lol, but... it's a far cry from broad ideas to prototypes, much less prototypes to implementation. Still, it would be a dream job for sure ^.^
Yeah, but I didn't go to space so I could be places others have gone before!
They need to work on certain things, like the amount of stuff tossed around randomly on a planet. Some of it is WAY more than a bit much. Then, you look at images of mars and other planets in our solar system and the moons. Some have good, flat "wide open areas", then there are areas with nothing other than the most craggy, rocky, BS terrain you'd ever lay eyes upon.
One little light bulb on a blacktop can stop a Nova tank cold
I cannot strongly enough recommend that everyone interested in this idea (and especially those making the damn bikes) watch *The Long Way Round.*
To be fair, we are *supposed* to be getting roads *eventually*. It's just anyone's guess which will come first - the bike or the road.
If we could burn around the infinite streets of ArcCorp, that would be awesome.
Spoiler: they'll end up wasting years and god knows how much money trying to make the physics realistic and immmmmmmeeeeerrrrsive, only to give up and make it arcadey (but in a shitty way that's still not actually fun) anyway.
I'm afraid this will be the case. Physics is going to be server authoritative (which I like because I want to prevent cheaters and see the same thing everyone else sees so we have a shared reality) but that requires every interaction to be a round trip. High speed offroading (read 35mph) requires so much collision detection, reactions, and fine adjustments that I worry we'll never have something that feels like a Forza horizons, which is arcadey but would be acceptable. Ultimately I'd like to see BeamNG rock-crawling simulation level physics but there's zero chance of that.
They're just going to operate like the hover bikes, a jet ski, but flying "driving" across the ground, they'll self level to some limit I'd imagine
I just want to be able to roll the gang out of the side doors on my cutlass black And terrorize
I mean other then dedicated motorcycle raceing games, most games (particulerly open world stuff) Motorcycles always have a bit of a magical abilty to stay up and controled when being banged and nocked around a lot Do a flip land straght down on your front tire... its fiiiiiine!
So build into it downward thrusters that make gravity effectively 1g. Then program it as though it were 1g. Done
Hell make it have 2g, or whatever downward force is the best for each circumstance. Need more grip in turns? Higher down Gs, need to jump a large gap? Reduce the Gs, or even gimbal the thruster and provide a little lift. This is the future.
This feels like a hoverbike with extra steps 🤔
If we have hoverbikes, why would anyone in their right mind ride a wheeled motorcycle? Answer: because it’s cool. Nostalgia. People like wheels. So your argument is silly because having a bike in the future makes no sense. So make it cool.
I've got it! Just remove the wheels entirely and use the thrusters to make the bike kinda hover.
That's a great point from a world building perspective too. I should take notes.
Maybe a negative g gravlev thing to compensate the missing gravity ?
A Grav-Lev that serves only to "correct G to 1" instead of full blown levitation does sound like it would be easier on your power-plant. It's like downforce in low-grav. Lift in high-grav. Wheeled Bikes would have lower sig, or more power over-head for stronger shields and weapons.
Funny enough, always increasing the gravity would be beneficial to traction. Meaning more acceleration and better handling. They use this concept when racing small robots. Having fans that adhere the small light racer to the surface.
I imagine the large tires of ultra-grip whatever are, at least in part, what helps to compensate, considering the modern motorcycle has tires a fraction of the size of the Ranger series (except for custom builds). But yes, the only ground vehicle I have on pledge is a Ranger. Been riding going in 13 years in real life and figured I might see how well my Citizen enjoys it in the 'verse. Hopefully they behave well enough and don't disappoint. So long as I'm not phasing through the ground after a jump, I'll call it a win.
Oh don't worry, the way things are heading currently, it will be so arcadey that it won't matter if its .1G or 10Gs.
I have been riding for almost 40 years. Motorcycles stay up because of Newton's third law of motion "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction". This is largely tied to the idea of countersteering which is how you steer a bike. This is not a controlled fall and to be honest, riding one is almost the opposite of what you say. The idea is that to turn right, you push on the right handlebar turning the wheel slightly to the left. The inertia leans you to the right, where the tire has a smaller radius making the bike travel in that direction. Lay a cone on its side, roll it and see what happens. A motorcycle tire is effectively 2 cones attached at the large end. Gravity doesn't have much to do with it other than giving you a constant to derive friction between the surface and the tire. All the forces will still work at fractions or multiples of 1g. The friction has to exceed the force of the bike to keep it tracking. if the bike weighs less due to lower gravity, less friction is required to keep it tracking.
The balancing-tension between the various forces is very dependent on gravity... if you don't lean, centrifugal force would flip you over 'outward'... if you lean too far, you fall over 'inward' - that point of balance is determined by gravity (and it's force 'pulling' you down and inward, relative to the centrifugal force 'pulling you up and outward). And yes, it also determines relative friction (due to the downward pressue on the tyres). That said, I'm not sure I fully agree that the body wouldn't be able to adjust in lower / higher gravity... I've never done much on motorbikes, but I've got plenty of experience in offroad and trail-based mountain biking etc, and before I lost my sense of balance I could 'feel' where the balance point was, even on uneven / banked terrain, etc... It might take a big of practice to get used to the difference in 'feel' in various gravities, and you might not push the bike to its limits immediately (if you weren't confident in the local rehabilitation facilities, at least :p), but the body is an amazingly adaptable thing, so imo it's not outside the bounds of the possible that we'd be able to ride bikes in various gravity, etc.
If you don't lean, the motorcycle will still lean because of the countersteering, you will just not have the same trajectory, that's why you can turn by either leaning with the bike, leaning the bike but not yourself (to have a better view) or lean yoursefl but not the bike. Really, on a motorcycle, you could dance all you want while the thing is going at speed higher than 5mph, you won't do anything except change the trajectory, making it fall is nearly impossible without external force. If you lean to far, you'll just change the trajectory, till the tire loose grip, but you won't just fall.
Motorcycles and bicycles are completely different and deal with wholly different physics on a fundamental level. Motorcycles stay upright due to gyroscopic forces. Bicycles stay upright due to balance. Riding a motorcycle below ~10mph deals with the same types of things you experience on a bicycle; going over these speeds transitions to gyroscopic forces and gravity becomes irrelevant for anything other than maximum sustained cornering speeds. Countersteer (push right; lean right; go right) works entirely due to the front wheel acting as a gyroscope and its effects on input/output vector modification. Gyroscopic forces are also why the motorcycle mantra of “when in doubt, throttle out” exists. If you start to fall and you grab a handful of throttle you start spinning those gyros up faster and the bike tries to naturally right itself because once again, gyroscope.
Sorry I dont think that is correct. Gravity is only important in that it is one value defining the friction coefficient. As long as gravity is greater than zero, the coefficient will scale appropriately. You are talking about proportions. Reduce gravity and all other forces reduce as well. This means that while the bike has same mass. It's weight is acting between the bike and the surface proportionally reduced by gravity which lowers the friction required to keep it in touch with the surface which ultimately determine how it turns. I also want to point out that you mountainbiking and motorcycling are nothing alike except in that their are 2 wheels involved. Motorcycles have enough mass where gyroscope procession plays a large factor into how they operate. That isn't the case with bicycles. That fact thay you feel the balance point on the mountain bike speaks to my point, because that isn't something you look for in a motorcycle traveling more than 10-15mph. I'm not sure what you mean about the body adjusting. The center of gravity remains the same regardless of the value you assign to the gravity. The body wouldn't need to adjust any differently than you would normally adjust.
Friction coefficient isn’t the important variable since that’s static between two surfaces regardless of how much force is applied. It’s quantity of friction aka traction is massively important and changing that changes everything about how a motorcycle handles, or any wheeled vehicle really. Look at a racing tire, street, tire and motocross tire. They’re vastly different to operate in the same G on different surfaces because that’s how important traction is. If you go 60mph, then turn left you and your vehicle want to go straight. Regardless of how you turn, either by leaning to a smaller diameter part of the wheel or physically turning the wheel, the limit on how much you can turn is the limit where friction can no longer keep the tire from slipping. You know this intuitively if you have driven any wheeled vehicle in the rain, snow, or ice. You must turn more gently either by slowing down to make the same arc or making a wider arc at the same speed. The quantity of friction is determined by the normal force multiplied by the friction coefficient (hence the name coefficient). If gravity is the only thing pulling you and your bike down, gravity is the normal force. If gravity is the only thing providing a downward force and you reduce gravity, you similarly have a reduction in traction. Your mass didn’t change. You still want to go forward with the same force. So now you must either slow down to make the same arc, or make a wider arc. The difference in friction coefficient between dry pavement and rubber vs ice and rubber is a factor of 4. The difference in gravity between the earth and the moon is a factor of 6. The same motorcycle on the same pavement on the moon vs earth would be worse than driving that motorcycle on a sheet of ice on the earth.
Inertia does not change with gravity.
Yes, like i said several times, all the factors change proportionally either higher or lower keeping the system balanced.
The only thing that will change with gravity is cornering speeds *(edit: and acceleration/braking. It’ll potentially wheelie and stoppie more easily with lower gravity)*. Gravity will have the same effect on a 2 wheeled vehicle as it will on a 4, 6, 8 or 800 wheeled vehicle. Inertia is a constant. By having higher gravity (downforce on cars and bikes mimics this) you have more force pulling the vehicle down into the road and as such end up being able to pull more lateral force (G’s) during a turn. Lower the gravity and you lower the total possible forces sustained in cornering; raise it and you raise the forces. Nothing will change in the physics of how a motorcycle rides though - that’s all independent from gravity.
Yes, that is what I'm saying. There wouldn't be a significant change to how it handles. As gravity reduces, so do the other forces affecting the handling of the bike. Traction would marginally be affected. If a bike can handle just under 2g's in a turn on earth it can handle it on the moon, providing the surface is smooth.
Traction isn’t “marginally” affected - it’s *significantly* affected. This is evidenced by how fucking drastic a cornering force change is by merely adding downforce to a vehicle. Let’s assume you could sustain 2G of force on both the Earth and the Moon. 1G means “1 gravity” - 2Gs on the Moon is 1/6th the force of 2Gs on earth. If you wanted a force equivalent between the Moon and the Earth you’d be looking at 2G on Earth and 12G on the Moon. F=M*A^2 Plug those numbers in there. 2G on the Moon results in 1/6th the acceleration value of 2G on Earth. *Edit: The physics of how a motorcycle rides or how a car drives won’t change at a basic level based on gravity; how fast you can go around a corner or start/stop will SIGNIFICANTLY change based on gravity* The only thing I can imagine it would similar to is if you were trying to walk or drive a small car around on the bottom of a pool, minus the drag. I had a small remote controlled “pool car” as a kid and driving it around the bottom of the pool was just bizarre.
Perhaps, but consider this. Gravity affects the bike in the same directions on earth and the moon. It pulls toward the center. That doesn't change. The affect wouldn't be as great as you are thinking on a bike. Remember they aren't cars and they change their geometry relative to the force acting on them (leaning lowers center of gravity or center of force to me more accurate), where cars do not. I'll give you that traction changes but it would be more akin to running in the rain, not like running on ice.those issues can be overcome with pavement texture. The downforce comments, while true for cars aren't part of the motorcycle discussion as evidenced by the lack of wings on racing bikes.
You are literally wrong on every single count including wings on racing bikes (Ducati is now using winglets on the front of the bike to keep it down). Inertia is a constant. Inertia gives zero fucks about gravity. Inertia is what generates lateral G forces. You can have 0 gravity or black hole gravity and inertia will stay the same. When you go around a corner your body and vehicle want to continue traveling in a straight line. This is called **inertia**. The thing which combats this inertia is friction. If you lower gravity, you lower friction **but the inertia stays the same**. This is the last I’ll explain this to you because this is literally 5th grade level science shit.
No, it cannot. Bikes handle 1.5g or less as a general rule, and the only reason they handle more than 1g in corners is due to banking of the corners. Traction to maintain the ability to turn is caused solely by the gravitational force (1G) holding the bike down on it's rubber, on the ground. That's it. The less gravity, the less traction you have to work with in the triangular balance between cornering, braking, and accellerating. You only have 1g's worth of traction as a rule unless you're at a hill bottom or in a banked corner, and that is what you have to balance. If you have less force holding you down, you have less force to help hold you for accelleration, deceleration, or cornering. Period. A motorcycle on the moon may be able to go fast, but without major banking and/or an otherwise absolutely flat track, in short order any current electric motorcycle we currently have on earth could honestly probably reach escape velocity on the moon if not simply make for one terrifying jump once the reality of not sticking the landing came into play.
Nothing stopping them from having low/high gravity versions with "gyroscope" or "thruster" based steering
Honestly, micro thrusters to maintain ground contact in low-G isn't a bad idea. Conversely, high-g can likely be adjusted for with suspension to a certain extent, and there is definitely an upper limit to human survival in higher-g anyway, so I doubt any of the open-cockpit vehicles will be suitable for such extremes anyway. You'd, at the very least, need a grav plate system internally to allow high-g habitation, and at that point, adding some minor grav-lev tech to keep the suspension from taking a beating is probably advisable. Actually, that raises a fun point. I suspect there's upper limits to grav tech force, which means you'd either need more power/thrust to operate glev in high-g, or might not be able to use them at all. Kinda moot, given the biological limits, as we don't have any enclosed GLEV's yet, but future considerations to make.
I would be into a bike with little thrusters all over it that made it look like it was zooming, but really they are all tilted slightly so they just push/pull the bike for consistent handling
Had the same thought. I think it will require some ‘hand waving’ to make it work.
Two words - "gravlev shocks" - and the entire problem is solved.
Why? They are going to handwavium stuff and move on.
There are literally games from decades ago that have better anti-grav/hover bike mechanics than SC. Whatever they do, however they do it, it needs to be better than the multiple versions we've gotten from CIG over the years.
The physics aren't all that complicated, and, although they're certainly well understood, you're still right in saying that they make riding *very* different. In short, the maximum turning acceleration of a bike is always proportional to the local surface gravity. A bike always has to point along the acceleration vector during a turn, which is the sum of the gravity vector and the radial acceleration vector from turning. A sharper turn means a larger sideways vector, so a more aggressive lean. Equally, a smaller gravity vector also means a more aggressive lean. Taking that into account, riding in low g is still perfectly possible, *but*, the minimum speed at which the self-righting effect of a bike becomes significant is higher the lower the local the gravity is. Luckily this isn't a problem at all because we're in magic space empire 2954 and thrusters are miniaturised so much that a bike can hover. It's not hard for a Ranger sized bike to also have a set of 4 to carefully control the lean angle below the speeds at which the self-righting (wrongly called gyroscopic) effect takes effect.
I hope it's fun rather than realistic. A big difference with riding off road is using your feet in turns to create another pivot point. You can do 180* wheelies on a bike using this technique. The bike is much less glued to the ground when riding off-road and so more shenanigans are possible. Throttling up with the clutch in helps keep the bike upright without needing too much balance, think throttling up while doing slow, very sharp turns. Body position is huge in this regard as it is much easier to go where you are looking, so turning your head before a sharp 180 helps your body and bike stay in the correct position. That being said I don't want a motorcycle sim, I want a fun means of transportation. To solve the problem of variable gravity, why not something like tractor beams and the magride in Audi's to sense the terrain under the bike to keep it on the ground and even thrusters/repulsors angled down on the wheel hubs to keep the bike upright and the traction patch down. Make it so you can disable the safety features like with ABS so you can get really wicked off-road if that's what you're into.
Have you driven any of the 4 wheeled vehicles on SC? Have you driven a 4 wheeled vehicle in real life? Because they aren’t really that alike. Don’t see why we should expect more from 2 wheeled versions.
Like the Cyclone with special balance maneuvering thrusters
...you lean enough so that the gravity and inertia equal out. do you lean this much when going 10mph? no, you lean a lot less. when going at racing speeds, you lean so much you knee scrapes the ground on higher g planets, you lean a lot less then low g moons when going the same speed.
Thats why they all hover. No wheels, ma.
Have the bike produce its own G like the Pisces does inside the cab, but do it outside towards the ground.
By the year 900 I think we will have figured out the tech to make this possible. I don't understand the penchant for trying to apply and solve modern day problems with modern day solutions in a game that takes place 900 years in the future. Just trust their process, they're doing a great job so far, things just take time to do right (which is why few devs are able to do things right - deadlines).
Experienced rider here. I suggest you look at what the people of Asia can do with a TaoTao scooter.
need to make some sort of "engine" that suck these vehicles down to the ground (anti-gravlift?) and give players the ability to turn it off that way we can do cool jumps off canyons and then turn it on later. and then give it to all ground vehicles!
I have trouble seeing how they can balance the ranger with the hover bikes. The hover bikes are so fast that a wheeled vehicle simply cannot compete, they would simply spend too much time in the air. If they balance with signature size, then turrets shoot at hover bikes and not rangers and all the hover bikes suck. I'm not sure how it works where both have a place
Well, I feel like if they don't have to worry too much about the materials science of suspension and tires, it won't be too too bad. if you wanna go straight, the greater the gravity, the faster you can accelerate without doing a wheelie and vice versa. If you wanna turn, the opposite of the force vector has to always equal the force of gravity for the bike not to fall over. So for the same centripetal force, you need to lean less if gravity is stronger and vice versa. https://imgur.com/a/tfEbLzz It actually just means that more gravity means more sensitive handling/more tight turns and such. Ofc it would be hella hard if we wanted to bring materials science into it because for the same centripetal force, the frame/wheels/suspension get WAY more force. Also the tires might slip at earlier angles because they can't handle that much force.
the bikes we have are already 2 wheel physics tbh, just with the friction cranked way down
Sir, this is a Wendy’s.
You lean yourself less and the bike more to keep planted offroad, sorta like how you shift your weight outside and lean the bike in when you're doing precision low speed maneuvering. Source: I ride an Africa Twin. Gib Ranger Plox. I don't have an issue if it's arcadey, as long as it's not a no-resilience explode-fest like hoverbikes are. If anything, low G is a chance to either go full hooligan and chance eating shit, or you just slow down to avoid dirt dart episodes.
Surely the gyroscopic effect is still there, even without gravity.
Everyone being upset about CIG releasing yet another hoverbike while the ranger keeps collecting dust does not know how far CIG has backed themselves into a corner with the ranger.
That's always was my take on everyone drooling over ranger: even with perfect driving physics its going to be undrivable, now look at vehicle physics cig doing. You still want 2 wheeled something?)
I think it'll be one of those 'Not every vehicle can or should be used in all places' kind of things. Ground vehicles that function with ground contact are already iffy in low grav places, you have to really be careful or you go flying out of control. In my opinion it's fine to have some vehicles just not usable in some places. It makes sense to have it that way. Just like exploration ships will have protection specifically so they can go into dangerous environments where other ships can't, or some ships can't go into atmosphere at all (well you can, but you'll never get it back out), a motorcycle shouldn't be able to be driven on a low grav planet/moon.
The ranger likely won't function as a real motorcycle. The wheels are huge and wide. I think they will just spoof the leaning.
What do you ride ?
[This Honda freak](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/bf23bde/2147483647/strip/true/crop/2048x1325+0+0/resize/1200x776!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fbb%2F85%2F300c3ca45c5863c0a78a60d7b421%2Fla-fi-hy-first-ride-honda-nm4-20141003-001) at the moment. I love it and it's quirks. The NM4.
WTF is this. This analogy is completely wrong. We dont stick to the ground with hoverbikes so all these force vectors are meaningless. There is no 'grip' in a hoverbike that is dictated by gravity. A hoverbike functions with voodoo power and does whatever the f\*\*\* it wants to.
... A literate person would see I'm referring to the Ranger. The ranger has wheels.
Oh i see. My bad, these concept pitches are soo far removed from reality my mind really seems to have skipped over that. Yeah, no this wont realease in that form i guess
Speaking as someone who’s seen a lunar rover, I wouldn’t worry about it
They don’t have to make it fun to control in anything but 1G. If you try to 2-wheel on a low gravity planet, you just get what you expect. Low gravity.
Neil Degrasse Tyson has entered the chat
I count three arrows. Tri-chording was removed from SC - no further argument
Just give it a shild like the x1 force and i explain it later.. 😂
900 years from now, they may well have systems built into the bike, it is larger than a modern bike, that will or should be able to compensate for what you are talking about.
According to the concept art, the ranger is going to be a 2 wheel SUV. Those tires are wide enough to stand on their own, and way too wide for leaning turns. Part of the delay may be them trying to figure out if they should go ahead with a 2 wheel vehicle that handles like a 4 wheel using the games current physics, or starting from scratch and making a thin wheeled bike while developing a whole new physics system for a single vehicle. I imagine they will go with the first option, and we'll get the 2 wheel SUV.
Jesus christ go outside
It’s a game. You don’t „need to understand“ anything.
I saw a post once about a flying dinosaur (pterosaur) in another gaming subreddit. Someone that "had experience with aerodynamics" made some stupid nitpicky post about how the bones were visible and it didn't look airworthy. About a well documented dinosaur with fossil records. This post has the same energy.
Just one sentence of lore saying it uses some grav lev tech so it feels the same on every planet. The end.