Taiga Racer is a motor cycle simulator I'm (Johan Mossberg) writing on my spare time. I aimed to do a very realistic motor cycle simulator without making it so realistic that it was impossible to use. My way to achieve this was to make the physics very realistic and then implement driving aids that help you in the cases where you would have a great advantage of driving the motor cycle in real life instead of on the computer.

The biggest difference between driving a motor cycle in real life and on the computer is that you can't feel the acceleration when driving on the computer. This makes it difficult to know how sharply you can turn before loosing grip. It also makes it difficult to know when the acceleration in the motor cycle's direction is zero, which is interesting to know as that is the state where the sharpest turn can be made. To combat this problem I have implemented two driving aids. The first one helps to not loose grip by overriding your accelerator, brake and steering commands when they can not be executed without loosing grip. The second one, which only works on force feedback joysticks, moves the accelerator/brake axis's rest point to the point where the acceleration in the motor cycle's direction is zero instead of at zero accelerator, zero brake which almost always means that the motorcycle is decelerating due to engine braking.

Another goal I had when designing Taiga Racer was that you should be able to do measurements on an existing bike, enter them into Taiga Racer and then ride the motor cycle on the computer. This can be done in the current version. To define a new motor cycle you just create a new motor cycle definition file and fill it with your measurements, more information can be found in one of the existing motor cycle definition files (for example "Taiga Racer 1300 Sport Touring.cav").

The setting is an endless road through the woods, hence the name Taiga Racer. You can either be alone on the road or share it with other vehicles controlled by the computer.

Enjoy!