Q&A #1: Daniel Findley (Managing Owner/Physics)

About Me:

• How old are you? 27
  
• Where do you live? I spend time in two different west coast states in the United States, California and Washington.
  
• What is your primary career? As of January 1st, 2023, I will be the CEO of Sim Racing Studios. As I am stepping away from being an attorney, I will have more time to focus on HSS and also my A Casual Sim Racer YouTube channel.
  
• Who is your favorite racing driver? Jeff Gordon was my childhood favorite. I don't really have a favorite anymore, though if I was forced to pick I'd probably say Kevin Harvick.

• Who do you think is the greatest race car driver ever? Hill/Clark/Foyt/Andretti, if forced to pick I'd probably go with Jim Clark, but that is purely based on his peak and not overall career.
  
• What is your favorite hobby outside of sim racing? American college football, I love going to football games and my two brothers are both involved as college coaches.
  
• Do you have a background in engineering or are you self-taught? I wanted to be an engineer for a long time and as a child and even into early high school I just absorbed everything I could get my hands on engineering wise. But then I struggled to understand theoretical math and I decided to attend College to become middle school teacher instead. After graduating and teaching for a year I changed my career again, attending law school and obtained my law degree. However, throughout this time I have always continued to code with my computer and I slowly continued to develop my engineering related skills and knowledge. So I'd say I'm self-taught, but its been a life-long hobby more than anything. I have plans to take some courses over the next year to continue to grow, and I have a large book collection on physics and engineering concepts that I have read and rely upon.
  

About HSS:

• What is your main goal with HSS? I want HSS to be the premier historic simulation game studio, but at the same time I will be very up front about what happens behind the scenes (i.e. money, plans, my personal life, etc.)
  
• What are your thoughts on the long term future of historic sim racing? I believe it will be one of the largest areas of growth within our hobby. Every year more cars become "historic" while only a few years remain viewed as "modern" cars.
  
• Will HSS make mods for other sims (such as AC2)? Yes! We are in contact with a few developers and hope to support at least a couple of the new games (Rennsport, AC2, GTR Revival, AMS2, etc.) and Assetto Corsa in the future.
  
• If so, are you doing anything to make your models re-usable or will you have to start from scratch? We make sure to have our 3d models in a state we can build off of them, but the upcoming games will allow us to add more details and so we expect to do a couple of passes over each model that will improve their visual appearance.
  
• How many people are currently working at HSS? 18 paid! Plus roughly half-a-dozen volunteers.
  
• Will the list of cars, in early access, increase infinitely or will you limit the amount on which you work actively? I hope to always have 10-12 cars in the Patreon. The goal is a one-year early access development cycle before the cars are released for free to the public.
  

Physics:

• How did you learn making physics for AC? I learned how to software code during elective classes I took through my high school. I started Sim Racing with Grand Prix legends, and I was a huge fan of Sergio Loro's tracks which introduced me into the modding scene when I began to search for them and download them on my computer. GPL was my main racing game up until Assetto Corsa came out, the approachability of Assetto Corsa led me to start messing around with the physics on certain cars. I spent years making changes, but never posted or shared anything outside of my close friends. I actually had run into an issue I couldn't resolve a couple years ago, and Legion helped me fix it. He mentioned that my code was pretty good and that gave me some confidence to start releasing my work to some other people in the sim racing community. From there, I discovered that not a lot of people actually understand how the Assetto Corsa physics engine works from top to bottom, so I had somewhat unknowingly developed a pretty valuable skill. I continue to learn and refine this skill everyday, and I hope to someday be considered one of the elite physics coders for Assetto Corsa.
  
• How hard is it to look for reliable data on old racing cars and make educated guesses for things what you can't find or calculate? So this really depends, I love to go to museums or people with the actual cars and take laser scans and/or measurements. I also have a large collection of books vintage racecars, which can have useful tidbits of information you can't find on the internet. I can rely on information from other similar cars in that period to flesh out a complete picture, and I've gotten pretty good at then feeling out the code from there. If we ever start making a large profit, my goal would be to fly out and visit people who have the actual cars to get multiple laserscans completed and detailed measurements recorded before beginning every single project.
  
• Have you ever been in a situation where you seriously considered adding a car to your projects but found out it couldn't be viable due to a lack of data? Kinda, we did end up changing the McLaren Indycar M16C to the M16B version because we had better reference photos. But as I just mentioned, I'm pretty good at figuring out the physics one way or the other eventually.
  
• What do you think are the main barriers for entry into coding physics? Well, you have to enjoy math and looking at numbers on lots of white screens for a long time. I feel like a lot of people don't find it to be "sexy" and perhaps there isn't the same visual reward for your progress like you get with 3D modelling for example as you see the car physically come into shape. In terms of skills needed, I rely primarily on my software coding experience and a deep understanding of the mechanics of cars. It is also important to understand kinematics and physics, which are both subjects I studied in College while becoming a teacher.
  
• How do the extended physics in CSP work? Extended physics not only changes how the base AC physics engine works, but it also adds the ability for new features to be added to cars. For example, with extended physics enabled and the proper code added the tires on cars simulate heat build up and movement through the various parts of the tires, such as the carcass, the core, the wheel, and the brakes. It adds the ability to add visual damage to the tires, and other code improvements for more realistic tire physics.
  
• Will you be updating the Lotus physics? Yes! The update will release this Saturday. A completely new physics model for the rear end is being developed based on some things I've learned about how Strut suspensions work within the Assetto Corsa physics engine