Archive: 9 posts

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So I'm working on a steering system for a top down car that uses an actual pivoting wheel to control steering. At the moment, there's no analog steering: just full left, neutral, or full right. So I figured a joystick rotator would solve my problem if I rigged it right and it worked great until I tested it on a moving vehicle and immediately crashed. I forgot that the joystick rotator would always treat up as being relative the level, not the car, so my steering was useless. There's no local space setting for joystick rotator's so I was wondering if anybody can think of another way to get the same effect. Basically, I want it so that when you push the stick halfway to the left, the wheel turns about 22 degrees left and when you push it all the way left, the wheel turns 45 degrees left (the full steering radius is 90 degrees from left to right).

2011-01-30 00:20:00 Author: Sehven Posts: 2188

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How about a spring bolt to keep them straight, and a rotator with strength scale input to push it left or right? I know this works for a spring with a mover to get a linear position.

2011-01-30 01:30:00 Author: Rogar Posts: 2284

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Interesting. I'll have to give it a try. I had just sort of assumed that anything other than a joystick rotator would give me full 360 degree rotation rather than being able to rotate to specific positions. Usually, though, I use zero strength/low strength wobble bolts to constrain the angle so that you can't oversteer or end up with the wheel pointed backwards or something (my current setup uses a wobble bolt to steer and a "look at" rotator to center the steering wheel, but it's not quite as reliable as I'd like). I wonder if I can get a spring bolt/rotator combo stable enough to be useful.

2011-02-01 15:28:00 Author: Sehven Posts: 2188

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I tried it, but the spring transfers the torque from the steering wheel to the car (meaning the rotator will actually rotate the car rather than let the steering wheel pull it in the direction I want it to steer), which completely throws off the whole steering thing

2011-02-02 21:12:00 Author: Sehven Posts: 2188

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Maybe make the steering wheel out of invisible hologram with a decoration on it? Hologram doesn't excert force on physical materials.

2011-02-02 23:25:00 Author: Rogar Posts: 2284

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Well see that's the problem. It's supposed to exert force. When I say "steering wheel" I don't mean like the wheel inside the car that you use to steer. I suppose it would have been more accurate to say "axle," but it's shaped like a wheel and it accomplishes the steering, so I just called it a steering wheel. The way it works is it has a mover on it that pulls on the car and it can be turned to pull the car in different directions, so it's kind of like a front wheel drive car... except that I have a mover on the car's body too, so it's kinda' like all wheel drive. So what I need is for the mover to be able to exert force that will transfer through the bolt, but I can't have any rotational force transferring through it or it makes the car pivot unnaturally. Maybe I ought to just give up on the axle/wheel and come up with another way to steer.

2011-02-03 02:35:00 Author: Sehven Posts: 2188

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Sehven, I had the same problem and wanted to have my race car give the impression that it was the front wheel were what was turning the car. I started with duel wobble bolts on each tire then single center axle wobble bolt low strength w/ look at rotator but the one I stuck with for now was a center spring bolt and I think a advanced rotator( I'm not near my PS3 right now) anyway it turn out to do just the trick. When I get a chance I will find out for sure and get back to you but in the mean time you can test drive it on a test race level I put out about 2 weeks ago. tell me if you think it looks convincing. cheers......

2011-02-03 15:48:00 Author: pete007d Posts: 58

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I tried the center spring bolt and advanced rotator idea, but it turned out that once the "axle" hit the edge of its turn radius, the rotational torque would be transferred to the car itself which caused it to pivot around that point. Anyway, I've found a solution and I can't believe how stupid I feel now. You know what you call a geometric entity with direction and magnitude? A vector. And you know what happens when you turn the axle? You get a different vector. So why am I trying so hard to get different vectors in a weird and overly complicated way when I can just do some math with an advanced mover to get the exact same vectors but with none of the problems? So that's what I did. Swapped out my rotating axle with a fixed axle that can pull forward and side to side (and did the math and wired the logic to get it to work right--the steering power is based on the car's speed, so that you can't "sit and spin.") And the best part is that it has analog steering now and it's much more responsive due to removing the lag that the weird axle caused.

2011-02-03 20:52:00 Author: Sehven Posts: 2188

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Oh, I thought you wanted to use the axle because it would be more like how it works in reality! Yeah, I understand now. My contraption was immobile, but in your case, once the spring bolt won't budge any further, the whole car will be pulled. By the way, I tried making the wheel out of hologram material, and it does solve the car pivotting, but it was rather jittery.

2011-02-04 12:57:00 Author: Rogar Posts: 2284

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