Extracting game code to run a mechanical simulator.

[Jay130665]

Hi all.

I have been working in motor racing for over twenty years as race engineer and have all ways been fascinated with idea of creating an environment that can simulate what the driver is experiencing.

I have had donated to me a piece of kit that can reproduce almost 2 &1/2 Gs, good enough for F3, touring cars and the like. With a bit of tinkering we are hoping to up this to 3 & 1/2, good enough for GP2, Indy lights and eventually F1 and Cart.

We intend to use some of the Math Works products to bridge the gap between the graphics (the game) and machine controller (sorry about being secret squirrel).

I have arranged for the Motor sports dept. of a localish University to get involved when the kit is in situ in a couple months, so we should have enough brains on site when we turn the thing on.

I am keen to learn as much as I can about the hole process before this happens as the project and all its donated kit, carbon tub, computer, factory space and machine/controller is resting squarely on my shoulders.

I am mainly interested in how you get the code from the game and wether any of you guys have had experience with attaching the code to real world devices.

Cheers,Jay.

[TippeX]

erm the game code is generally from an engine, getting the code from the game, usually involves reverse engineering the program.. and most games are usually coded slightly differently...in your case contacting various game publishers about your project and asking for demos / demo code might be feasible...

[Jay130665]

Do the developers/manufacturers of driving games make this easy to do, i.e they know people are going to make a force feedback steering wheels so they provide a generic link of some sort, if they do what form does this come in?

Cheers.

[Joe Forster/STA]

In Sports Car GT (still one of my favorites!), Image Space Incorporated came up with a great physics engine for their car racing simulator games. They have been improving it since, in e.g. F1 2002, and you can see that it's still the same engine because many files still have the same extension (*.mas etc.) and format (some are GZip archives). When SimBin came out with GTR 2002, they released it as a free addon for F1 2002 - as far as I can tell because that game had the best engine available. Now SimBin are releasing their own, stand-alone games, GTR and GTR 2 but they still use ISI's engine.

So, if you want to license a physics engine for racing simulation, they are the ones to contact first!

[TippeX]

yup the force feedback etc is 'coded for' basically they call windows api's (exported i think from direct x, which then 'sub links' to the actual force feedback unit/device), but as i said earlier, and as joe says, you're probably better off contacting a developer directly for assistance, who knows one (or more) might actually end up supporting your product or helping you develop it