How to: Baja Jump / Rally Jump Tutorial! - Mid-Air Car Control Guide | BeamNG 0.21
126A racing sim tutorial on how to control any car during rally jumps and Baja jumps using the throttle and brakes with steering! For anyone that's ever wondered "Can you control a car in mid-air?" This rally tutorial in BeamNG 0.21 is your guide on the basics of landing any jump better, whether you're beginner or a pro in a rally car, a Prerunner, or any old derby car, understanding this will help you on jump courses and in general off-roading and rally races. This level of simulation is why BeamNG.drive has such great potential as a rally sim. More detailed write up on jumping techniques below.
Chapters:
0:00 - Intro to Mid-Air Car Control
2:17 - Live Demonstrations of Jump Techniques
4:17 - Importance of a Good Jump Takeoff
5:09 - SBR4 vs MX Backyard
MX Backyard mod: https://www.beamng.com/threads/mx-backyard.7002/
Bajarama mod: https://www.beamng.com/resources/bajarama.9141/
BeamNG's official website: http://www.beamng.com/
BeamNG speedrunning page: https://www.speedrun.com/BeamNG.drive
The simplest way to understand it is that your car will spin in the opposite direction as you accelerate your wheels. This is based on the speed of your wheels at jump takeoff, the weight of your wheels relative to the rest of the car, and how quickly and how fast your car can spin its wheels. As a result, different drivetrains behave differently in the air. RWD is mostly limited to pitch control. FWD has the same pitch control but can steer the drive wheels, allowing the car to roll in the opposite direction that you spin your wheels too. AWD can alter pitch the most using the weight of all four wheels, with the same control of roll as FWD. Gas pitches the nose up, and braking pitches the nose down. Reversing further pitches the nose down, and can even roll your car in the same direction as your wheels. Heavier wheels increase the effect, which is why RC cars, monster trucks and MX bikes have so much mid-air control.
MORE ADVANCED PHYSICS: Based on the principle that braking affects your wheel momentum after a jump takeoff the same way as reversing, you may slightly alter your roll in RWD by braking with the wheels turned, but you have no way to undo this momentum afterwards and lose some gyroscopic stability. The same for braking with both 2WD setups, you can't accelerate the non-drive wheels, so you become unable to land as nose-up in them after you've touched the brakes. I pointed out AWD being unable to control roll without pitching up, but this is only true of 4WD. You can use the handbrake with AWD vehicles and the car will effectively behave as a FWD car that hit the brakes after takeoff. You could brake while keeping the gas pedal pressed in RWD and AWD, keeping the rear wheels spinning like a mid-air burnout, but I'm not sure how practical that this. All-wheel steering with AWD will cause the rear wheels to counter the roll of the front wheels, so in the CRD monster trucks, you'll want to disable all-wheel steering when jumping for more control in the air. The more suspension travel a car has, the more important preloading suspension at takeoff may become as well, so you don't have the rear suspension decompressing and springing the rear of the car too high up.
Finally, you change your pitch specifically by slowing or accelerating your wheels, so if you jump at top speed you can only maintain their speed. Also, you can't pitch up more in the air once you reach the top of your highest gear, but downforce and aerodynamics from the angle of your car will still have an effect with higher flight times, so for a massive Evel Knievel jump you may want to wait towards the middle of the jump to fully accelerate and counter the aerodynamic effects, leading to a more nose-up landing than accelerating from the start. There is slight driveshaft and engine torque rotation from the engine revving, but these aren't relevant in most cars and trucks. The more complexity you add to the technique, the more likely you are to make mistakes or freeze before you act, but the options are there.
I only discussed pitch and roll as they are most controllable axes. Turning the wheels from the direction they faced will have an equal and opposite reaction on yaw, but the momentum change is so small that the weight shift won't do much. If the wheels are spinning, there should be a gyroscopic effect that prevents spinning along a certain axis, and angular momentum from the wheels spinning as you turn them if you don't brake, but in zero G testing I didn't notice any intuitive or controllable effect on yaw other than spinning wheels slowing any flat spin, so be mindful if you're stunt driving or rotating in the air.
This video was edited and produced using Avidemux and FL Studio 20.
Main PC Specs:
GPU: EVGA GTX 1060 SC
CPU: Intel i7 4790K
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo
RAM: G.SKILL Sniper Series 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3
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