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I've had several things on my mind about some key physics issues and the general state of development at the moment, and I think they all need addressing. Starting with the physics issues...
While testing some new tyres I made some discoveries about the ground physics of the game, specifically the issue of being able to bar drag on a flat corner. For a long while I thought this issue was caused by the traction model having too much grip, allowing you to lean all the way over without sliding out like on tarmac irl. But while testing a tyre with very low grip I found this wasn't the case. Here's a video to demonstrate:
Despite having almost no traction, you can still bar drag on flat ground. So obviously the issue isn't traction. Rather, it's more likely due to the "legs simulation" holding the bike up at unnatural angles (thanks to Ruubs for bringing this to my attention initially, he's known about this for ages and has asked for fixes multiple times in the past). From my experience the legs simulation causes a lot of weird "slow physics" behaviour, like the bike flopping from side to side without falling, standing itself back up after falling over, drifting across the ground on it's side, allowing you slide sideways while upright without high siding, allowing you to land jumps completely sideways without high siding, I could go on. Basically it stops the bike from falling over in many situations when it absolutely should. It does make the game easier and less punishing in a lot of ways, but sometimes it causes the bike to behave unnaturally and actually makes things harder. So I propose some major reworks to the legs simulation to fix this.
Legs simulation should be either disabled or heavily toned down at any speed above walking speed. It does make sense to allow it when riding very slow so simulate the rider putting his leg down, but this could still lead to a lot of weird behaviour and typical slow physics issues, so I'd even tone it down or adjust it at slow speeds. At medium to high speeds it should be largely disabled. This will mean flat corners will become entirely dependant on traction and body positioning, and landing sideways will make you high side and fall off realistically. The game will be a lot more difficult with it disabled in this way, but it will be a simpler physics system overall, and once you learn to balance yourself properly it will be more predictable and realistic. I think it's a necessity in the pursuit of realism because this heavy use of the legs simulation seems to be doing the lion's share of holding the bike upright instead of relying on player inputs and tyre traction. Irl the only things holding the bike up at any given time are the combined effects of traction and rider balance. Take either of those away and the bike will fall. Evidently that's not how the game functions at the moment. EDIT: Also, calling it legs "simulation" isn't exactly accurate because irl the legs don't do anything to hold the bike up unless you're stopped. So i'd say if the goal is a simulator, this "simulation" needs to be removed.
Of course, making these changes will mean more reliance on the traction model, and because that still needs a lot of work as well you're likely to slide a lot more until then. I'd suggest some changes will have to be made to the "intelligent" virtual rider to help manage this. At the moment, the way the virtual rider corrects oversteer can often make it worse. Here's another clip demonstrating that:
Obviously this is a serious issue. The way the virtual rider is able to steer the bars in an attempt to stabilise the bike actually makes the situation worse more often than not. It's the reason we have never been able to do hill climbs in this game, which is just absurd for a dirtbike simulator. Following the trend of my previous suggestions, I and others believe the way to fix this is to make the rider physics more simple rather than more complex. Remove the virtual rider "intelligence" and replace it with a simple, unscripted spring and damper system on the bars, so unless the front wheel is on the ground, the front wheel will simply return to a straight position. Ruubs explained this idea in the discord the other day:
"AFAIK, the 'virtual rider' has 'intelligence' of what to do with the handlebars. This virtual rider also turns the handlebars to achieve the bike lean angle we put in on our joystick (direct lean). What I'm trying to say is that as far as I know, the virtual rider has 'logic' for when to turn the bar and when not to
"I don't think the virtual rider should have much hard-coded 'intelligent-logic'. The fact that the virtual rider is aware of the front grip and does actions depending on this sounds very unpredictable and 'clunky' (and that's kinda how MXB's front end feels to me)
"What I think is a better way to keep the front-end stable, is a spring and damping system on the front-end/handlebars. The damper would dampen any sort of forces on the front-end and could be seen as the rider's arms absorbing the forces. This will help in situations where the front-end/handlebars tend to lock-out easily now, like at sharp terrain transitions.
The spring would basically be the virtual rider which at all times tries to keep the handlebars straight. This obviously means that the forces which the rider applies to turn the bars should be increased due to having to work against this spring. But I don't think that's a problem."
These two mechanics appear to be the cause of the most significant physics issues that have plagued the game since its inception. Us long time players have been asking for these issues to be fixed, or at least investigated, for years, yet still they remain. We've already offered a lot of feedback and potential fixes for a lot of the physics issues, and we tend to know our stuff because most of us have been riding irl for years, but most of this feedback is just refused or ignored with no elaboration. Ruubs, Insane, Jesse, myself and many others know a lot about the physics of riding a bike on dirt, and not to offend, but with your background being in road bikes you could use our insight.
Honestly, we are starting to lose patience. We know the pandemic and life in general has made development very difficult, but it's incredibly disheartening to see you putting time into unimportant things like freestyle tricks, particle effects and backfire sounds instead of fixing the fundamental issues the game has had forever. The community does so much for this game, giving it an endless stream of free content to attract new players and keep existing ones interested, but there's only so much we can do ourselves. We have even resorted to trying to make a full set of new tyres to make the inadequate traction model manageable on each different soil type, but this is difficult because we're working blind with values we don't understand. Collectively we have put thousands of dollars and tens of thousands of hours into making content and organising the community for this game, yet development seems slow and misguided with minimal communication of what's even happening. It's getting very hard to justify putting this amount of time, effort and money into a game that will supposedly never be fixed. And now there are other games on the horizon with very active and transparent developers who implement player feedback the day they hear it. They're in very early days now, but give them a year and at this rate their games will be easily competing with MXB.
I hate to say it, but the bottom line is this: if we don't start to see either progress in fixing the major issues in the game or at least much greater communication of what's going on behind the scenes, many long time players and modders will leave for other projects. And without the free bike packs, tracks, skins and web services provided by these people the rest of the player base will soon follow. So please, use these points as valuable constructive criticism and spend some good time fixing these major issues with the physics and the netcode, or if that's not possible, tell us why not.
I wish you all the best
- The Community
While testing some new tyres I made some discoveries about the ground physics of the game, specifically the issue of being able to bar drag on a flat corner. For a long while I thought this issue was caused by the traction model having too much grip, allowing you to lean all the way over without sliding out like on tarmac irl. But while testing a tyre with very low grip I found this wasn't the case. Here's a video to demonstrate:
Despite having almost no traction, you can still bar drag on flat ground. So obviously the issue isn't traction. Rather, it's more likely due to the "legs simulation" holding the bike up at unnatural angles (thanks to Ruubs for bringing this to my attention initially, he's known about this for ages and has asked for fixes multiple times in the past). From my experience the legs simulation causes a lot of weird "slow physics" behaviour, like the bike flopping from side to side without falling, standing itself back up after falling over, drifting across the ground on it's side, allowing you slide sideways while upright without high siding, allowing you to land jumps completely sideways without high siding, I could go on. Basically it stops the bike from falling over in many situations when it absolutely should. It does make the game easier and less punishing in a lot of ways, but sometimes it causes the bike to behave unnaturally and actually makes things harder. So I propose some major reworks to the legs simulation to fix this.
Legs simulation should be either disabled or heavily toned down at any speed above walking speed. It does make sense to allow it when riding very slow so simulate the rider putting his leg down, but this could still lead to a lot of weird behaviour and typical slow physics issues, so I'd even tone it down or adjust it at slow speeds. At medium to high speeds it should be largely disabled. This will mean flat corners will become entirely dependant on traction and body positioning, and landing sideways will make you high side and fall off realistically. The game will be a lot more difficult with it disabled in this way, but it will be a simpler physics system overall, and once you learn to balance yourself properly it will be more predictable and realistic. I think it's a necessity in the pursuit of realism because this heavy use of the legs simulation seems to be doing the lion's share of holding the bike upright instead of relying on player inputs and tyre traction. Irl the only things holding the bike up at any given time are the combined effects of traction and rider balance. Take either of those away and the bike will fall. Evidently that's not how the game functions at the moment. EDIT: Also, calling it legs "simulation" isn't exactly accurate because irl the legs don't do anything to hold the bike up unless you're stopped. So i'd say if the goal is a simulator, this "simulation" needs to be removed.
Of course, making these changes will mean more reliance on the traction model, and because that still needs a lot of work as well you're likely to slide a lot more until then. I'd suggest some changes will have to be made to the "intelligent" virtual rider to help manage this. At the moment, the way the virtual rider corrects oversteer can often make it worse. Here's another clip demonstrating that:
Obviously this is a serious issue. The way the virtual rider is able to steer the bars in an attempt to stabilise the bike actually makes the situation worse more often than not. It's the reason we have never been able to do hill climbs in this game, which is just absurd for a dirtbike simulator. Following the trend of my previous suggestions, I and others believe the way to fix this is to make the rider physics more simple rather than more complex. Remove the virtual rider "intelligence" and replace it with a simple, unscripted spring and damper system on the bars, so unless the front wheel is on the ground, the front wheel will simply return to a straight position. Ruubs explained this idea in the discord the other day:
"AFAIK, the 'virtual rider' has 'intelligence' of what to do with the handlebars. This virtual rider also turns the handlebars to achieve the bike lean angle we put in on our joystick (direct lean). What I'm trying to say is that as far as I know, the virtual rider has 'logic' for when to turn the bar and when not to
"I don't think the virtual rider should have much hard-coded 'intelligent-logic'. The fact that the virtual rider is aware of the front grip and does actions depending on this sounds very unpredictable and 'clunky' (and that's kinda how MXB's front end feels to me)
"What I think is a better way to keep the front-end stable, is a spring and damping system on the front-end/handlebars. The damper would dampen any sort of forces on the front-end and could be seen as the rider's arms absorbing the forces. This will help in situations where the front-end/handlebars tend to lock-out easily now, like at sharp terrain transitions.
The spring would basically be the virtual rider which at all times tries to keep the handlebars straight. This obviously means that the forces which the rider applies to turn the bars should be increased due to having to work against this spring. But I don't think that's a problem."
These two mechanics appear to be the cause of the most significant physics issues that have plagued the game since its inception. Us long time players have been asking for these issues to be fixed, or at least investigated, for years, yet still they remain. We've already offered a lot of feedback and potential fixes for a lot of the physics issues, and we tend to know our stuff because most of us have been riding irl for years, but most of this feedback is just refused or ignored with no elaboration. Ruubs, Insane, Jesse, myself and many others know a lot about the physics of riding a bike on dirt, and not to offend, but with your background being in road bikes you could use our insight.
Honestly, we are starting to lose patience. We know the pandemic and life in general has made development very difficult, but it's incredibly disheartening to see you putting time into unimportant things like freestyle tricks, particle effects and backfire sounds instead of fixing the fundamental issues the game has had forever. The community does so much for this game, giving it an endless stream of free content to attract new players and keep existing ones interested, but there's only so much we can do ourselves. We have even resorted to trying to make a full set of new tyres to make the inadequate traction model manageable on each different soil type, but this is difficult because we're working blind with values we don't understand. Collectively we have put thousands of dollars and tens of thousands of hours into making content and organising the community for this game, yet development seems slow and misguided with minimal communication of what's even happening. It's getting very hard to justify putting this amount of time, effort and money into a game that will supposedly never be fixed. And now there are other games on the horizon with very active and transparent developers who implement player feedback the day they hear it. They're in very early days now, but give them a year and at this rate their games will be easily competing with MXB.
I hate to say it, but the bottom line is this: if we don't start to see either progress in fixing the major issues in the game or at least much greater communication of what's going on behind the scenes, many long time players and modders will leave for other projects. And without the free bike packs, tracks, skins and web services provided by these people the rest of the player base will soon follow. So please, use these points as valuable constructive criticism and spend some good time fixing these major issues with the physics and the netcode, or if that's not possible, tell us why not.
I wish you all the best
- The Community