Using a peak on lateral tire curves is fine and easy when doing a full-on simulation game. The reason it is not feasible to do in an arcade racer is that most players will play the game with a gamepad. It would not be uncommon for them to use the steering input in a digital manner.
This means that it is very hard for a regular player to hit a specific slip angle on the front wheels through regulating the steering. This is especially true since the slip angle will change when the rotational velocity and forward velocity of the vehicle changes due to the dynamics of the vehicle while taking a corner.
When playing simulation racing games with a Force Feedback enabled steering wheel, this is actually possible to regulate for a decent / good player by the centering torque being applied through the FFB used to simulate the Aligning torque and mechanical trail effect coming from the contact patch interaction with the ground.
The forces created by the tire slip angle with regards to normal tire curves (peak ~10 degrees and steadily dropping to ~60-70 % at 90 degrees slip, not “ZERO”) are in the tires coordinate system.
When translating this to the vehicles you’ll get a drop in lateral force due to the force being multiplied by the cosines of the steering angle. While the force multiplied with the sinus of the steering angle being translated into tire drag (The “Slowing down while turning” effect).
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...Being passionate about cars, racing and games, the idea of modding and looking under the hood of the game are intriguing to the people working here also. But do keep in mind that anything you do can cause problems with the game, just putting 1 value wrong can cause a chain reaction leading to a game crash under certain driving conditions and a “wrong” value is based on the rest of the parameters of the car, I.E. copy-pasting values from one car to another is not always an option.
