Bump with some bad news.

I can't get anyone to build a prototype for the shifter, so I can't produce these things for sale like I wanted. I'm pretty much just sitting on the design now untill I can find someone who'll be interested enough to atleast build a prototype.

Plus for anyone who was waiting for my sound pack, I've dropped the project, LFS's sound system can't do what I need it to at the moment, And I realy don't have time. It took me three days to get the XR GTR sounding close to a real car, and its still not finnished, I had atleast two more samples to get and adjust.

I am however working on a very simplified DIY design that should give realistic feel and good reliability, and can be made out of hardware store components. It will still have a realistic throw, and may actualy be gateless like the other design.

The plans for the DIY shifter are a collective effort of both myself and my Dad who is as much a car nut as myself. I will not release them untill I build a prototype and test it, I want it to actualy work before I give out the plans.

As far as I know the devs have already dealt with car moding, at least all they can do.

It is prohibited to share modificatons for LFS on the LFS forums, but thats about all they can do realy. People will always mod something if they find a way.

LFS even has a lable for moded games in the server list, I saw it just the other day. It was a server running an Audi quatro in place of the RB4 if I remember correctly, I coulden't join because I don't have the mod myself. I considered reporting it to the devs, but if they already have a label that pops up they already know.

As for the AE86, I personaly prefer the hatchback version, its weight is closer to 50/50 than the coupe. But I woulden't drift one if I had it, I'd build a wicked race machine out of it.

An old muscle car would be awsome, like a Mustang or Charger.

For the Charger:
-Torsion bar front susp.
-Leaf spring rear susp.
-V8 @440ci with twin 4 barrel carbs.

That would be an awsome car to drive in LFS

Its pretty much impossible to get a realistic sounding rotary in LFS at the moment. hell, its damn near impossible to get a realistic sounding engine period.

Rotary engines have very unique running characteristic that make them sound alot different from idle to reving, something that LFS can't generate.

You don't have normal dyslexia, thats a common mestake, you actualy have dyslexic dysgraphia, its actualy alot different.

It is the difficulty in writing fast, words will come out wrong and be illegible most of the time. Even if the words are formed correcly in your mind they will still come out wrong, people with dyslexic dysgraphia can ususaly spell perfectly fine if they write slowly.

It isn't always as sever though.
The most sever will have the person writing things completely as jibberish or even backwards, where as a mild case of it will just have the person using the wrong letters or writing them in the wrong order.

I have a very mild case of it myself, I only mess up on certian words/letter combinations. I ususaly pick up on it even before I'm finnished typing the word.

as a note, I made about 20 mestakes writing this.

Those are perfect, thank you.

Now I can adjust the stick and the lower assembly to get close to those dimentions. A 6cm or 7cm throw seems pretty short for stock, but then again an MR2 is a sports car.

A full throw from 3rd to 4th should be about 12-13cm on the final design. Side to side is going to be a bit different, I don't know if I'm going to go with gates or let the bottom mechanics keep it from going side to side in gear.

If I don't use gates then the top of the shifter is going to be right at the axis of the stick, I'm using a ball socket type assembly so It will look pretty nifty. It will also mean that the whole thing will be smaller because I don't need the bulky top section for the gates.

Big edit:

After doing some research on the existing shifters available such as the Lightning SST, the Act labs and the G25's shifter, I've found that every single one of them makes this horrid clicking noise when you shift. I thaught the more expensive ones wouldent, but it apears they all do. I'm going to make a quiet shift one of my to-do items.

I plan to make sure the one I build is reliable, realistic, and doesn't make horrid noises when you quickly move through the gears.

As I said previously though, no one should get thier hopes up for this. I'm not promissing a product yet, since I still need to figure out who is going to make them, if anyone at all will.

Last edited by DragonCommando, Fri, 13 Mar 2009 20:35.

Quote from senn :

And as for hydraulic wheel in the future? WHY WAIT
http://ecci6000.com/6000_wheel_01.htm

hope you're cashed up tho...

Thats fluid dampened though, it's not hydraulic FFB.
That wheel isn't FFB at all actualy.

$1000 for a non FFB wheel with a fancy fluid damper is a bit much in my opinion.

The next step is a hydraulic FFB wheel, with full hydraulic brake

Seriously though, that looks awsome, and the fact it can pull you out of your chair is awsome. I used to have a Logitech FFB joystick and I always found it was realy sloppy, if they've managed to make one that isn't I'll definately be interested.

The developers have chosen to work on more important things than Eye candy, If you want DX9 or openGL 3 then you might as well go somewhere else.

Eye candy is not important to a sim, the physics are.

so a 3/8in shaft and a moderately short shift then. But I still would like some numbers for the actual shift distance, something I can look at as a reference.

As I said, a distance in inches would be nice. How far is the throw on the G25? is it decent? I haven't used one in a long time, and I own a DFGT so I have no reason to buy a G25 since I'm making a shifter.

With the way the internals are designed I can pretty much make the throw any length I want. I can't say much about the design because its still a concept and NFPE. But I can say that the center axis/upper length of the shaft can be moved/changed to change the throw, but only in the design phase, If I made it user adjustable it would reduce reliability and make it a mess to re-design.

I'm designing this shifter to be the AK47 of shifters, I'm trying to make it as reliable and as realistic as possible. I want people to have to replace the shift linkages in thier real car before they even notice wear on this thing.

Last edited by DragonCommando, Sun, 8 Mar 2009 05:05.

9 and 3 for me, unless I am shifting, then 9 and shifter.

I tend to use 2 fingers to downshift sometimes, I keep my thumb on the wheel and just nudge the stick forward with two fingers to shift down. Its a nasty habbit realy, because if I make a mestake it takes longer to get back to the correct gear.

I wear leather finger gloves when I intend to race/practice for longer than a half hour, and it keeps me from tensing my hands too much. The gloves I wear are pretty nice, and they only cost around $15. The stiff leather keeps me from tensing my hands, I would suggest it for anyone who has a problem with gripping the wheel too tightly.

I don't understand how people can have issues with frame rate when they have more powerfull computers than I do

I'm always sitting capped at 60fps, never drops below, and I'm running at 1280x1024, with everything turned on/up.

And this is on a 3.2ghz prescott HT with 2gb dual channel DDR400 and an HD2600 512mb AGP 8X.

Quote from Lateralus :

Now that is just awsome.

Quote from Vinnylegends :

They all say they will buy it soon but never do!
But we give you a chance to prove it.

LOL, I said I would buy it soon and it took me a fue years, but I did.

Anyway, seriously, this guy already asked if it was ok to use his brothers S2 account, he even asked if there was a way to find out if it was cracked.

I doubt he would go through all that trouble if he cracked the game, crackers usualy don't post on the forums unless they are dumb enough to admit they cracked it, or post stuff they don't have access to as a demo player and then claim they don't have S2.

layouts can be made out of the game anyway, theres an editor.

I am working on a design for a shifter for sim racing and I need a bit of help. I currently don't have access to a car with a manual gearbox, the only vehicle I have is an automatic at the moment.

Now, I have all of the design thaught out, this is something I plan on designing and possibly selling in small batches, though thats still up in the air.

One of the things I'm missing is the stick shift shaft diameter, I need to find out what the best shaft diameter is for this shifter, Optimaly it would be the shaft diameter used in a real car, because that would take the most abuse without being too big, but I can't find a solid answer as to what the usual diameter of a stick shift is.

The next thing is the throw of the shifter, from gear to gear I need to know how far people would like the shift knob to move. This is not something I'm asking because I don't know, I realy want to know what kind of throw sim racers want on a shifter. The Ideal answer for this question would be from 1st to 2nd in inches if you can. After I get some replies I'm going to see which distance is most prefered and hopefuly thats how it will be made.

So there are two questions I'm asking

What diameter should the stick shift shaft be?

How far should the throw be from gear to gear? (eg. 1st to 2nd)

Last edited by DragonCommando, Sat, 7 Mar 2009 21:47.

Its not the fastest, but if you can get a Volvo like a 240, it would be a good choice. Like I said, they arn't by any means fast, but they are very reliable cars. IF you get them in good condition that is. They are also very safe as far as collisions go, they are built like tanks, but they still have decent fuel economy.

Any car you buy that will be reliable will NOT be US made, domestic cars lost thier reliability when they started making them out of plastic. For some reason the big 3 can't make cars for shit now.

Last edited by DragonCommando, Sat, 7 Mar 2009 06:55.

Watching that video I'm amazed at how I haven't tried that before, or never thaught of it, I ususaly find odd ways of doing things and I didn't find that one.

I'm gonna try that out. I can't imagine using that constantly though, it would kill the tires, even used less agressively than that.

You actualy want to set wheel turn compansation to 0. the wheel turn compensation is only there for people using wheels with very low turning ranges, it lets them have precise steering in the center and gets gradualy faster at the ends.

What you want to do to get 900 in LFS is make sure its set in the profiler, then go into the car setup screen and click on the steering tab, change the controler wheel turn setting to 900. You only have to do this for one car, it is a global setting and will apply to all cars you drive.

I WAS holding out for a G25, but when I saw the DFGT and how nice it seemed in the reviews I watched I said screw it and got one. I regret NOTHING!

Fanatec just seems like a realy shady company to me, the stuff they sell doesn't seem like its very good quality.

It may pass for some people, but when I look at thier wheels I see shoddy work.

If you do manage to get them to buy back the wheel, get a G25 or a DFGT. The GT may not have a shifter and clutch, but that seems to be easy to fix, and less expensive than $400. If you get A DFGT just by a shifter and stand alone pedals, they are garanteed to be higher quality than the G25's shifter and pedals, and everything together should come under $400.

Quote from jbirdaspec :

yep. like he said.

I recommend the DF GT to be the wheel to get in this price range until May when the new 'budget' Fanatec Porsche Carrera wheel set comes out for 130 dollars USD, other currency prices on Fantec's website. (includes a clutch, six speed and 900 degrees FFB wheel).

All that for $130, I would never buy it, that has to be some serious cost savings, considering the G25's $300 price tag, and it's still pretty cheaply made.

The DFGT is a good buy if you can get it for under $130usd, I payed $145can for it, and that was on sale. I was very impressed by the wheel, and with the new drivers, all the buttons work perfectly.

The only thing with it is the pedals, they are a bit cheap, but they are actualy much better than the DFP or Momo, the DFGT has re-designed internals in the pedals, so they won't spike or fail.

I had the same problem with my DFGT. follow these steps exactly and it should work perfectly.

-Uninstall any existing profiler/driver files
-make sure the wheel is unplugged from the computer
-restart the computer
-install the logitech software
-when prompted to plug in any logitech hardware do so, make sure the power supply is connected and the wheel is secured to the desk/stand.
-wait for the install to finnish
-restart your computer

That should work. the logitech drivers won't detect new hardware properly after install for some reason, you have to reinstall the drivers and then plug in the wheel when prompted.

Quote from agm_ultimatex :

The 2 feet distance is for keeping the sub away from my computer, as it has a giant magnet inside it. If I were to move that behind my pedals (it may fit) it would break that distance.

Thanks for the suggestions, ill see if I can get some older textbooks behind it or something.

I thaught you where talking about the pedals, lol, for the sub that makes sense.

Quote from bunder9999 :

clipping is where the sound wave is louder than what is physically allowed, so the excess gets "clipped". or at least that's how i always pictured it.

That is exactly right, the sound wave reaches a higher peak than the hardware or software is allowing and it just clips off the part it can't play. sometimes this can be bad enough that you get horrible crackling and poping.

I hear this all to often in sound systems where someone who doesn't know what they are doing tries to get good sound.

I'm going to be making a new thread with the finnished work, the old thread got lost.