Something I always thought would be neat, especially since LFS already has good steering animations (a few updates back it even got increased from 720 to 900 degrees or something like that), since it's a sim it'd make sense to add some gear shift animations too, primarily manual stick shifters and paddle shifters. Cars that use a sequential stick shifter like rally and touring cars could probably just use the manual stick shifter animation or something.

I don't know, I just like the smaller details like that. Considering all the other nifty features and realism of LFS I'm surprised this wasn't something that's included already lol.

it is possible...


just make a delay between gear shifts to 30ms for sequential gearbox and 350ms for normal gearboxes (so you can't shift faster than 350ms delay) then the animation can be with realtime (barely though)


Or did I understood at all?

* Brake heating, overheating
* Animation of selecting gears, handbrake and horn
* Rev limiter
* Smoke from exhaust(flame the gear shift)
* Damage the gearbox then select gear without press clutch (H gearbox) and sound of this "Krrrr"
* Part of car in mirrors

Last edited by ORANGE2113, Tue, 4 Jan 2011 17:40.

Sorry for bumping this and for the double post, but I just got an idea.
If you want gear shift animation, it could be done like in TDU (Test Drive Unlimited). There driver puts his hand on the shifter before you even need to shift.
Example: Car has max 7k RPM. When you get to 6, driver puts his hand on shifter and when you press the magical button, he shifts and return his hand to the wheel. And if the RPMs get to let's say 6,5 and fall down to 5k driver gets his hand back to the wheel, no matter that you didn't change the gear.
I hope you understand this.

The shifting animation wouldn't be that hard to figure out.
For folks with a clutch pedal, the arm could move down to the stick when you pressed the clutch - simple.
For folks without a clutch it's a bit harder. On the way up through the gears, the arm could come off the wheel as you approach the redline/shifting light, assuming that you're still on the throttle and not steering*. On the way down it'd need to be at low torque points, maybe just ahead of where an autobox would shift you.

It's fairly reasonable to assume that 99% of the time** in those situations you'd be just about to change gear. It might also count as a slight visual assist for anyone who wasn't sure

* Those are the only two things that jumped out to me which would stop you shifting - hard steering and (obviously) not accelerating. Maybe also assuming the car isn't sliding, since you might not be steering then but would be holding the wheel with both hands.

** Yes I realise that sometimes it might be wrong, but I can't imagine it would happen often enough that people would complain.

To be honest. I've seen this done in test drive. Looked awesome, in cars with paddle shifting he just flicks the paddle, and in manual cars, when it nears the shift point he reaches down, and when you take your foot off the pedal he reaches for the stick as if to shift down. It would only have to have a central point, and an animation to each gear in H pattern. ie, 3rd to 4th, animation returns to central point and then into 4th....5th to third would look weird because you have to click twice (unless you have a g25).

To fix the delay, when you approach the shift point, the animation can move down to the gear shift, and once you shift, the game registers, shifts, and puts has hand back onto the wheel until the next shift point arrives.

However, if you hit it to redline and dont shift, he'll have his hand on the gear until YOU shift it.

...Not sure if people get what i mean or not.

Quote from scoobyrbac :

Its GTR2 that has it and on my PC I dont see how you think it lags at all? Unless you have a crappy slow PC with slow internet which makes it lag?

Here we go again *sigh*

When people say the animation lags they DO NOT MEAN it has ANYTHING to do with internet connections or how fast your PC is. But for info the animations will lag even if you had a 10000000Ghz CPU with a GFX card that could raytrace in realtime.

Here is what people mean.... You reach for your gearstick and then start to shift. This is the first point where the game knows you are shifting so it then triggers the gear change animation so now you see the in game drivers arm move to the stick and change gear as you move your arm back to the wheel.

This is what people mean when they say lag, so AFTER you have changed gear you then watch the driver change gear.



MODS: PLEASE join this into the huge thread we had on this a little while back, it will save all this crap again.

Mmm , just ask , Why dont wanna the gear change stick animation?

Hard code ? , Low Fps ? , Unrealistic ?

I dont get it , should be , because LFS aim to real simulation , so , if aim to real sim , shoul be be the gear stick animation , like the Breake temp , or oil presure or engine temp , and many things

Maybe in the near future do this , or maybe in s3 , but why ppl dont wanna this?

If talk in real life the 60% or 70% of car in the WORLD have manual gears
And race cars (Not all) have to , also sequential or shift pad in the wheel

If you drive a automatic car and you dont wanna this , is your problem because LFS is Real Car Simulator

in how will it add to the realism?

You could work around though by simply playing an animation of the hand going to the gear stick when your engine revs come close to the shift points.

Still, I think that the developing ressources could be spent in many more usefull ways.

Quote from harjun :

but not if you have a decent computer...why should there be lag?

because when you shift gears it needs to happen immediately. but the animation still has to run, so it is going to be behind the physical act of you changing gears.

gtr2 is like that, and it is extremely annoying, especially since i have an H shifter and you know you shifted already, yet you see the hand moving down and shifting again for nothing.

in order for it to work right, LFS would have to predict when you are going to change gear and then have the hand in place JUST as you shift. not going to happen.

gear shift animation.