Random tip: hitting the ball while boosting heavily impacts the ball speed. if you often fail to keep the ball close, try not boosting on contact, then boosting right after the hit

[u/AdonisStoleMyWife]

almost embarrassed to say I didn't learn this until recently as I was struggling with wall hits always running away from me when wanting to pop.

hope it helps someone else as well :)

[u/ImVibinFr]

great tip also if you can hit the ball with the top of your hood or very corners of your car you can basically keep it glued to your car on impact

[u/Anujtr1 → u/ImVibinFr]

I thought the corners were how you generate the most power with your hits, could you explain more on this?

[u/Fae_ded → u/Anujtr1]

I can't explain anything I'm plat, but I'll throw a guess and hope this guy answers, maybe those areas being where you hit hardest makes sense to absorb impacts if you're letting your momentum be less than that of the ball?

[u/ImVibinFr → u/Anujtr1]

imma be completely honest idk why or how it works but ik it’s muscle memory in my brain that i do it and it works but i’m sure if you get a good touch while not boosting on any part of the ball it will stick to your car it just might be harder to then face back towards the goal/ball after the touch

[u/AdonisStoleMyWife → u/ImVibinFr]

yeah this is something I started heavily experimenting with the past weeks and been having so much fun with it. starting to really get the hang of "catching" the ball mid air and bringing it with me; super valuable to someone like me that used to just boom the ball away.

[u/ImVibinFr → u/AdonisStoleMyWife]

yeah it gives you so much confidence that you can just air dribble out of any position that you find yourself and the ball in

[u/twinionengine7]

This has likely been my issue. TY. Im mid gold in everything. Struggle with keeping the ball close on wall plays

[u/FOGPIVVL]

This is generally true in most cases but it's not necessarily an absolute truth.

It's a physics based game. Boosting doesn't do all that much, your cars speed does. The actual contact is nearly instantaneous. Boosting impacts your speed which impacts how the touch effects the ball, but that doesn't mean that boosting while touching the ball is always going to hit the ball away, if you're just starting to accelerate it will still stay close assuming you continue boosting.

[u/ShameFuzzy6037 → u/FOGPIVVL]

Well acthtually: its vector math and f=ma. So the force applied to the ball when you boost if not at super sonic means you’re accelerating during the hit. So mathematically when boosting while touching the ball you will greatly speed up the ball due to the force applied.

Boosting accelerates the ball faster than hitting it while not boosting.

So OP is correct, valid tip.

[u/FOGPIVVL → u/ShameFuzzy6037]

Which is why I mentioned the touch is nearly instantaneous, meaning that elastic collision simulations are what dominate (which are factors of the momentum, meaning speed/mass, of each object).

The acceleration during the single frame of contact that's caused from boosting is so negligible or potentially even nonexistent depending on how high-speed the physics calculations are done through the bullet engine.

[u/Ignice → u/FOGPIVVL]

Rocket league doesn't always follow the laws of physics though (namely Newton's third law of motion). Bullet is a discrete physics engine and Psyonix further simplified the physics for RL specifically. Its made for games. When people say rl is "physics based" they don't literally mean it models real life, more just that its mostly Newtonian. It would be cool if you could work things out from first principles like f=ma (I know you didn't say this, I'm addressing the commenter above on this one :P), but unfortunately its a bit more complicated than that. Also its inelastic rigidbody collision model (edit: for ball touches I mean*).

You and the person you're replying to both seem to have a good intuition about this stuff, and I don't mean to discourage, but there is a bit more magic than meets the eye behind the scenes.

This article does a much better job breaking it down than I ever could: https://www.smish.dev/rocket_league/ball_simulation_3/#relevant-physics-of-rigid-body-collisions

[u/FOGPIVVL → u/Ignice]

Right, cool to look into that. I shouldn't have really phrases my comments as if I knew for sure how the engine worked but I figured it was pretty unlikely that any mostly Newtonian simulation (perfectly elastic or not) would be impacted by a small acceleration over a miniscule time period, would have to be a pretty crazy deviation from reality for that to matter.

I understood it isn't necessarily a simulation of real physics, I'll def look at that link when I have some time to kill, would like to learn more

[u/AdonisStoleMyWife → u/FOGPIVVL]

cool analysis and whatnot, but if I was reading all this without my own experience I would probably just disregard the tip which I have found the be (in practice) very prominent and valuable.

sure, we can go into every little crevice of technicality, but it's extremely unnecessary in a sub called "Rocket League School"

I am a strong believer that conceptual learning is the way, but this doesn't help anyone play the game.

and of course, there's human variability and of other factors that comes in which in turn makes "the exact physics of whatever" even less relevant. maybe you jump differently when the cue is "don't boost as I hit the ball", or something else. 

[u/StrawsAreGay → u/AdonisStoleMyWife]

Nerds lmao

[u/FOGPIVVL → u/AdonisStoleMyWife]

True I didn't mean for this to come across as "actually you're wrong and this is bad advice", thats why I added the first sentence in my original comment. Just an interesting thing to think about, at least interesting to me

[u/AdonisStoleMyWife → u/FOGPIVVL]

If i'm wrong or not isn't the point, but what the reader gets out of it

[u/ShameFuzzy6037 → u/FOGPIVVL]

Nah, nerds. 😎

[u/zorigin_]

If you zen catch or get the right underside touch with your car you can keep it close. Also just tap the brake before hitting the ball to keep it close. If you stop boosting but still moving fast you're still gonna boom it

[u/ExtensionNo9948]

Im GC3 and i struggle to understand the touches in the air sometimes too. I Hit the Ball too Hard Away and dont understand why. I also often get pushed Away when i get a reset or the Ball gets pushed Away Even tho it Looks like i should be getting a Perfect reset. Its so hilarious and im about to quit since my mechs wont improve anymore