I think that it could be done easily if you just overly simplify the effects of aerodynamic braking according to the speed, the angle of attack of the car and a coefficient of drag for each vehicle instead of simulating it properly. It would be a gross approximation, but it could do the trick until they decide to go into true aerodynamic realism.
I know we're talking about kinetic energy when 2 cars crash & big speeds, but I just wanted to throw in "my 5 cents" into this & show a picture of a beater Covet that I crashed at a low speed into a tree on Yellav Valley, because I didn't manage to take the corner on those bad brown-ish worn out tires. I'd say it was a ~40km/h impact on front left side
Alright, i see what your getting at but in recording videos i record driving MUCH faster even in my realistic crash videos. If you do it slow they all turn out pretty boring. Do not compare youtube videos to real crashes because many factors are changed to make it an entertaining video. so in this video i made at 1:25 i think its the exact type of crash that your describing that's "unrealistic" another realistic crashes video i made
Ofcourse that devs wanna implement this, they even do researches to implement improved global aerodynamics ( this may or may not be possible, we and even devs don't know, but they try hard ) not only per vechicle like it is atm, so now drafting doesn't excist. OP. Like other peoples mentioned a lot of the times you see modded vechicles and maps which usually aren't that well made which cause some not natural looking stuff, also a lot of stuff happens in way way higher speeds than you see on YouTube even in rally or racing crashes. But yes, I also have a feeling that cars slide more than in real world, but that's usually on surfaces like dirt, which irl car would get deeper and get stuck more instead of sliding like in BeamNG. But recorded stuff on camera feels different than when camre follow the car and tumble with it, if the camera would be fixed stationary you'd feel like the crash was less intense. A lot of the times it's what we feel would be more realistic than what it really is more realistic. Crashes recorded from higher altitude (as equvalent irl from helicopter) looks very similar too me even at very high speeds. So in many situations it's just a perspective fault and human's biased brain, but I'm also not saying the game is flawless. What may be interesting for you to study, so you'll know a little more about the game amazing physics simulation: - The good old BeamNG vid: - interesting @Slammington post about friction: https://www.beamng.com/threads/physics-demonstrations-in-beamng.34620/ and few replies in that thread are also worth noting - My old thread: https://www.beamng.com/threads/beamng-science.28426/ - http://blog.beamng.com/Tennis-racket-theorem-check/ - < this is damn nice / blogpost is a bit broken, but you can see by links - vs (source: https://www.beamng.com/threads/micro-blog-s-march-to-december-2016.23153/page-3#post-420234) and there have been lots more that I forgot. To be honest I'm way more excited for every physics improvement and stuff like this new damping (https://www.beamng.com/threads/micro-blog-s-2017.34617/page-2#post-709158) than anything else but I'm an physics simulation lover freak Edit: For @Octothorpe Obelus Try this: http://media-cdn.beamng.com/c2P85f8avguFkhus if it will work use "direct link" under videos to view them
