Aerodynamic Simulation at the moment

Hi, I have a few questions about the depth of aerodynamic simulation.

1. how is it simulated at the moment? is it just force applied vertically down on the vehicle based on speed and AoA of the wing?

2. Is Ground effect simulated? if I put hillclimb aero on a car with high suspension, will I lose aerodynamic efficiency / overall downforce?

3. If I make a really soft car and accelerate or brake hard, will the game take the different pitch of the car into account? therefore changing the AoA of aerodynamic surfaces? Or, when you go really fast, the rear wing bends, is that taken into account?

4. Is atmospheric pressure simulated? ie. the higher up you are, the less air pressure there is?

Thank you for answers and the devs for such an amazing simulator! already 1700+ hours deep

 

You can try this out yourself with a modern car like the Sunburst Time Attack config and then enable the aero debug in the options. It's not a global value, each part has aero characteristics which will be shown by vertical lines (lift/drag)

 

Each triangle has its own force applied to the center of it the force is applied at 90° to the triangle, which allows accurate planes or helicopters to function without any extra coding. You can see it using the debug option JlnPrssnr mentioned.

Simulated, no. It works the same way any other part does, so if you have a properly set up underbody (i.e. Scintilla), the effect is there.

You will lose it to some degree, mostly stemming from the overall stability.

Yes, see above. What's more, cars with active aero (i.e. Scintilla) have physically accurate wings – so when you brake, there isn't any magical force applied, just the downforce from the angled wing.

It is bent by the force applied to it. So, technically it isn't taken into account if we want to be precise here. Rather, the visual part bends because the physical one does under the air.

It is there, it affects cooling and engine air density mostly. I haven't observed any effect on the aerodynamics, but I'd say there aren't any maps which could actually make it noticeable.