The Placebo Effect

Placebo Effect /pləˈsēbō ēˈfekt/ noun - The idea that the brain can convince the body a fake treatment is the real thing—the so-called placebo effect 🤔

i have started this thread to discuss something that i as well as others have noticed ever since the release of the original game. a few have thought the same as me, even before i had asked them about this subject. i do not know if there really is something to this or not, but let us see. shall we?

there is what seems to be a "thing" with the camera i have talked about with various people here and there. so far most have agreed, but are still skeptical like me.

now there are times where i have noticed when climbing a hill or obstacle that sometimes it just "feels" (if that makes sense) that the vehicle is on the verge of cresting over the top, but sits there spinning away, sitting there not going anywhere. for what it is worth, 0% traction, well enough to hold the vehicle in its position, but not make progress.

when in the situation i described above, you turn the camera to look backwards, towards the vehicle ...

Does turning the camera (making it in front of the vehicle) seem to have some kind of weight and help give better traction, aiding the vehicle to start moving and cresting the hill or obstacle?

it is not limited to just those situations, but any similar situations that involve "on the verge of traction" that seem to "tip the weight" and we are talking what seems to be very little weight, but also seems enough to have an effect.
now it is not something that happens all the time everytime and others i have talked to about this feel the same, but it happens often enough i feel to question.

i invite all to give this little experiment/question the test. opinions, discussions, debates, finger pointing, ridicule and laughs welcome. i only ask when testing this to take your time, take it serious and be objective. other than that please keep the discussions civil if something happens to get heated.... after all this is still the internet you know. lol 😘

last edited by A Former User

I have never noticed this myself.

@8up-local I haven't noticed this either, and I have over 600 hours on this game. What I have noticed is that tire traction is sometimes intermittent in deep mud. You may get stuck for a while, but then the vehicle starts moving again as the mud shifts or a fallen tree breaks up. It can also help if you stop spinning the tires, then very gently accelerate and minimize the spin.

i know what you are talking about and you are right vehicles do tend to sit and spin for a bit then get going again, but this is a bit different. it is hard for me to explain other than the way i have.

if you want to put time into it then ok. basicly i have well over a 1000 hrs in ST and 200 in MR so far and this has been something noticed by a few people since the release of the original spintires. it is nothing new to MR. there are others (friends and a few randoms here and there) i have talked to with double the time i have. we pretty much agree. there does seem to be something to it, but we are unsure and skeptical if it really is a thing. hence why i started this thread to ask openly to the public for opinions as well.

last edited by A Former User

@8up-local I'll keep an eye out for it if my truck is ever in that situation, but most likely it's just placebo. I don't know how the camera position could affect the physics of the truck, even by accident. I know the physics are turned off on more distant, unselected vehicles and logs (spawned logs sometimes don't have physics even up close), but I've never seen physics turned off on a selected vehicle.

last edited by Unster

@unster right, that is all i am asking of anyone who feels like looking into this themselves. just take their time, be objective and give their opinion if they feel.

the camera should not have any weight to it and there is nothing found so far to say there is. yet it still seems to be a thing. with what seems like an affect in doing so. i am unsure myself if this is really a thing or placebo. logic tells me there is nothing to this at all, but gut feeling says that there is something going on. like i said also, others i have talked to feel the same as me and are unsure as well. there is also the fact to consider the coding and such with this game are tied to each other. like just changing the wheel mass will also affect the suspension for example. so i can see the possibility of maybe other things together giving this illusion.

one thing is clear i am not the only one to have this opinion and it is something i have noticed and questioned from time to time for years now.

@8up-local Got it. When I said that I didn't see how the camera position could affect the physics, I was speaking from the point of view of a game developer / software engineer which I am. It would be a really strange bug. If the physics are enabled, the camera position really has nothing to do with the physics.

Edit: The only case I can think of where this could happen is if you had conflicting key bindings, say a key that controls both the camera and something on the truck, like steering. Then you'd get weird stuff like that.

last edited by Unster

What if I've never noticed it before but now I do, is that confirmation or placebo? 😃

It could be that a certain percentage of the truck's weight is somehow framed to the camera. I use the cockpit camera zoom mod and it does feel more wobbly when it's up high, but the movements are magnified when there's a big distance between the viewpoint and the object. A good way to test might be having a fiddle with the RadiusMultiplier, a camera further away might have more leverage?

And does it still happen with the new stmod free cam? The camera isn't 'attached' to the truck but it's still the active truck.

@malcolm_tucker unsure about STmod, i have not reinstalled since it broke a while back with that update. just plain laziness really. lol

@8up-local yeah it's been a tough few months lol, the last 1.8 beta is good for me fortunately. The freecam is a game changer imo, I think you should stop being lazy and put your top screenshot skills to good use! 🙂

so out of curiosity, anyone notice anything? 🤔

Not noticed it and highly doubt this is the case from the way the game engine works. We talk about camera angles for our own understanding but in a 3D engine this is simply an arbitrary viewpoint position in 3d space. As someone mentioned earlier. I can imagine that perhaps in change camera position you are altering your throttle and getting more grip, or simply from seeing the front view might have a better visual idea of how to steer, giving more grip.

@zoglet agreed with zoglet there camera shoudnt have physical effect on environment/truck and its weight, unless it was specifically programmed.

its probably just n illusion

moving the camera with the preset keys will not affect throttle, but i get what you mean there. also i thought i was clear on that this is not something programed into the game, but more of a unintentional by-product. think of how adjusting something on a vehicle will affect other parts of it. like change your wheel weight and it will affect the suspension. not exactly something programmed in, but still is having an affect.

i also agree the camera should not have any affect, but with the way everything seems to be tied together with this game i can also see it being a real thing. idk and is why i asked others. also i see that steering is being mentioned, but i never said anything about moving the steering, only to turn the camera around to face backwards, thus trying to minimize other variables, like throttle position moving or the steering putting the wheel into a different spot. although playing on key board this may be easier for me than say someone using controller.

i want to say it is not a thing, but yet that is hard to do when i see it happen. 🤔

For what it's worth, I've noticed similar effects myself, but while climbing rocks. And not just because you made a post about it, I've noticed quite some time ago. It almost seems like the game doesn't really know what's going on if it isn't drawn on screen at the time, but when you rotate the camera so the game can "see," things work better..

@ssvqwnp will agree it has been noticed for a while, by a lot of different folk. since the original game actually.

last edited by A Former User

@ssvqwnp said in The Placebo Effect:

It almost seems like the game doesn't really know what's going on if it isn't drawn on screen at the time, but when you rotate the camera so the game can "see," things work better..

Do you mean the physics are turned off on a given object? I mentioned that earlier and that part I've seen, for example on spawned logs that haven't been activated yet (they just float in the air). But 8up was saying he gets better traction with some camera angles, and less traction (not zero) with others. That I've never seen and it makes no sense.

call it shifting COG weight, call it physics off, call it better traction. i don't know what it is, but there just seems to be something.

last edited by A Former User

@8up-local Well the reason I make that distinction is that it's an important one. By "physics off" I really mean just that, where the object is static. But you're saying your object in question was not static, but still had some physics, right?