Acceleration in GTA San Andreas

Handling
A lot has changed since GTA 3 and GTA Vice City. We have much more control over
how a vehicle accelerates in the GTA San Andreas handling.cfg.

Settings Which Affect Acceleration

There are several relevant values in the.

Effect on Acceleration Effect on Top Speed

Higher value slows

Mass No change (different to earlier editions).
acceleration.
Higher value slows
Drag Higher value reduces top speed.
acceleration.
Acceleration
Higher value increases Higher value increases top speed up to the
acceleration. TopSpeed limit.
Higher value slows
Inertia No change.
acceleration.
TopSpeed No change. Limits the top speed. Details are below.

Actions Which Affect Acceleration

Action Effect on Acceleration
Driving up a slope. Decreases.
Driving down a slope. Increases.
Leaning forward slightly on a motorbike or quadbike. Increases.
Retracting landing gear of planes. Increases.
Nitro Boost Increases.

Recipe for Realistic Acceleration

Real sports cars take 5 to 10 seconds to reach 100km/h, about 30 seconds to reach
200km/h and 1 or 2 minutes to reach maximum speed.

This is much slower than original GTA San Andreas setups but after a while it will feel
a bit like Gran Turismo. My GTA San Andreas Handling Overhaul has some realistic
setups for the original cars.
Mass

The real world mass of the vehicle in kilogrammes. Normally between 1000 and 2000.

Drag

This should be much lower than original setups. As a rough guide:

Value Type of Vehicle

0.8 Streamlined supercar.
1.0 Normal saloon (sedan).
1.3 Open top cars.

TopSpeed

Should be the maximum possible speed which can be achieved in the highest gear in
kilometers per hour. This will normally be higher than the speed the vehicle can reach
on a flat road without using nitro boost.

The TopSpeed setting has 2 modes. The mode is selected by USE_MAXSP_LIMIT, which
is the 25th bit of the HandlingFlags setting.

Acceleration
USE_MAXSP_LIMIT Notes
Mode
Maximum speed is about 20% higher than
0 Normal
TopSpeed value.
1 Advanced Maximum speed is the same as TopSpeed value.

A vehicle might not be powerful enough to reach the TopSpeed limit. Changing
TopSpeed does not change Acceleration or Drag.

Acceleration

Sets the normal rate of acceleration. As a rough guide:

Value Type of Vehicle

15 Normal car
25 Sports car
30 Very powerful supercar

Inertia

This is the key to realistic acceleration. A high value smooths out the acceleration curve.
A value between 80 and 120 is good for most vehicles.

HandlingFlags
The USE_MAXSPD_LIMIT entry for the HandlingFlags setting should be enabled by
being ticked in my CFG Studio Handling Editor. This makes TopSpeed a precise limit.

Special Vehicles
Flying vehicles (planes) and floating vehicles (boats) have special data in sections at the
end of the handling.cfg file. They also use a completely different method for their
acceleration performance which I dont understand.

The effect of special data on acceleration is not covered in this tutorial. All settings are
briefly described in my GTA San Andreas Handling Definition.

Taxi Experiments
All my experiments are based on completely original Taxi handling, driving the car in a
straight line on a flat road (the Julius Thru Way around Las Venturas). The Taxi is the
modern one, not the old Cabbie thing.

Original Settings

These are the original values. Using them puts the Taxi back to normal.

TAXI 1450.0 4056.4 2.2 0.0 0.3 -0.25 75 0.80

0.75 0.45 5 180.0 19.0 10.0 F P
9.1 0.60 0 35.0 1.4 0.1 0.0 0.25 -
0.15 0.54 0.0 0.2 0.51 20000 0 200000 0 1
0

Normal Taxi Acceleration Curve

Now the experiments go from top speed to the way the car accelerates. By comparing
this curve of the standard Taxi acceleration to the graphs below, you can see the
different effects of different parameters. Note that the standard Taxi has a 0-100km/h
time of about five seconds but a top speed of only 144km/h! This is the lack of realism
you can expect from the normal acceleration mode.
Effect of Acceleration on Top Speed

More acceleration means a higher top speed, as you would expect. The TopSpeed
setting gives an artificial limit to the maximum speed a vehicle can reach.

Effect of Drag on Top Speed

With a value of 0 for Drag, the Taxi should keep getting faster and faster as there would
be no resistance. This does not happen because the TopSpeed setting is limiting the top
speed, but this is set to only be 180km/h.

Ofer Porat experimented with the original GTA San Andreas cars and published his
results. It seems that a cars speed limit will be 20% higher than the TopSpeed setting
when in the normal acceleration mode. In the advanced acceleration mode, the
TopSpeed setting limits top speed precisely.

Effect of Inertia on Taxi Acceleration Curve

This seems to be the key value to better acceleration curves. A higher Engine Inertia
value will make acceleration more gradual without lowering the top speed.
Unfortunately, the limited top speed makes the car suddenly stop accelerating when it
should gradually stop accelerating.

Effect of Drag Multiplier on Taxi Acceleration Curve

We have already seen the effect of Drag Multiplier on top speed, so here we see how it
effects the way the car accelerates. Basically, a high drag makes the vehicle accelerate
more slowly and reach a lower top speed. Interestingly, a low Drag Multiplier means the
car takes longer to reach its top speed, which is increased. Another important part of
realistic acceleration.

Notes on Top Speed

It is interesting that the vehicle does not always achieve the TopSpeed value of
180km/h, which becomes 214km/h in the game. When the Acceleration is too small
relative to the Drag setting, the vehicle will not reach its TopSpeed setting.

This means that the TopSpeed setting is simply a limit to the speed of the vehicle. Your
vehicle might never actually reach this speed.