I have a DFP wheel, and up to know I've been using the paddle-shifters. This has worked fine up to now, but I'm starting to find as I move up to more powerful cars (particularly the big GTRs), I'm not able to move the wheel fast or far enough as I have to keep my hands on the wheel to change gear.

So I've decided to switch to the sequential stick-shift instead. I now present one of the most noob-ish questions ever asked: Is it up or down to shift up? I've tried both and neither feel particularly natural to me at the moment, although I am finding it a lot easier to be able to change gear one-handed.


Also, can I have some reassurance from the GTR drivers that the stick-shift is the way to go?

pull the "knob" towards you to go UP gears and away to go down gears

i dont really drive gtrs but um...yeah go for it

About the title, have you seen YGO the Abridged Series?

Quote from mongoosetierney :

pull the "knob" towards you to go UP gears and away to go down gears

i dont really drive gtrs but um...yeah go for it

Ah good, that's the way I've been trying it this evening.

Quote from Dalek0220 :

About the title, have you seen YGO the Abridged Series?

Nope, I'm just a bit puerile

Last time I knew it had little + and - on the wheel

It is usually pull for up, push for down but IIRC there was someone in a gt championship a few years back who used it the other way round. I guess you find which you are comfortable with and stick with it .

The picture on my G25 has, pull for up and push for down so I just go with that. But if the picture wasnt there, then I would push up for up and pull down for down

Every racing game or sim I've tried has defaulted to "push up" for upshift and "pull down" for downshift when there was a default setting. I've always had to change it to do the opposite. The "Pull" for upshift and "Push" for downshift just feels more natural. I've never watched a racing series that used sequential shifting, so I had nothing to base it on when I started sim racing (many many moons ago).

The most natural thing imho is to pull towards you for upshift and push away for downshift, same as sequential boxes are set in race cars. However, I've driven a few RL cars with "sports" auto transmissions (basically auto with a sequential option) and it's the other way round, which is really bloody annoying and counterintuitive, so I just left them in normal auto mode. It didn't bother me in the work car (Ford Falcon - big, lardy family sedan), but it sort of spoiled the fun of driving my wife's friend's shiny brand new VW Golf with only 300km on the clock. A couple of times I changed down when I meant to change up and I was a bit embarrassed (and concerned) by the awful sound it made I tried to make her get a normal old manual but she wouldn't have it. Philistine!

Why is it so annoying? Well, when you're accelerating you're being pushed back into your seat by inertia. It's a very natural movement to pull the stick towards you to change up a gear, because you're moving your hand backwards, with the inertia. It's also the most efficient thing to do, especially in a car with fast acceleration: drop your hand from the wheel, grab the stick, and let inertia assist you as you pull it back - you're only doing half of the pulling. To have to grab and push forward while accelerating is counterproductive as you have to move against inertia, which means you expend more energy & take longer than you need to. Same when downshifting: your body moves forwards as you slow down, so all you have to do is drop your hand and pop the stick forward. Having to push it back as your body is being thrust forward is very inefficient and I don't really know why road cars with sequential boxes are set up this way. It also takes longer to move your hand against the inertia which means more time with only one hand on the wheel. Car makers may have a good reason for their backwards dog-boxes but it seems completely illogical to me, Captain

Of course, none of this inertia stuff actually applies to sim-racing

1 link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggz52h11uXM

Quote from The General Lee :

Best Thread Ever!

You better keep S14 Drift out of this thread because he might get the wrong idea with all this talk of pulling knobs towards you.

EDIT: The picture on my G25 has, pull for up and push for down so I just go with that. But if the picture wasnt there, then I would push up for up and pull down for down

LOLOLOLOLOL thats my new sig

Quote from Hankstar :

Well, when you're accelerating you're being pushed back into your seat by inertia. It's a very natural movement to pull the stick towards you to change up a gear, because you're moving your hand backwards, with the inertia. It's also the most efficient thing to do, especially in a car with fast acceleration: drop your hand from the wheel, grab the stick, and let inertia assist you as you pull it back - you're only doing half of the pulling. To have to grab and push forward while accelerating is counterproductive as you have to move against inertia, which means you expend more energy & take longer than you need to. Same when downshifting: your body moves forwards as you slow down, so all you have to do is drop your hand and pop the stick forward. Having to push it back as your body is being thrust forward is very inefficient and I don't really know why road cars with sequential boxes are set up this way. It also takes longer to move your hand against the inertia which means more time with only one hand on the wheel.

That makes a lot of sense, thanks

Personally I've always pushed the shifter upward to shift up, and downward to shift down, at least that's the way it is in Volvos.

I have seriously tried over and over again pushing forward for down gear, and back for up, as it is in most sequential race cars (due to G, inertia and human nature being pretty efficient) and I`m buggered if I can manage it.

I always end up somewhere north of 5th gear in hairpins. Using the manual 6-shifter on my G25 is no problem at all, and it`s what I use as much as I can. I just cannot do the back/up, forward/down thing :weeping:

Quote from Modalicious! :

Personally I've always pushed the shifter upward to shift up, and downward to shift down, at least that's the way it is in Volvos.

Yeah, afaik that's how it is in all road cars (like the Golf I was talking about), but in race cars it's the opposite and, to me, that makes much more sense.

In road racing games like Test Drive Unlimited I use road car style shifting, but in a simulation game like Live for Speed I use it the other way. Perhaps in future versions it can automatically switch depending on the car?

Quote from Modalicious! :

In road racing games like Test Drive Unlimited I use road car style shifting, but in a simulation game like Live for Speed I use it the other way. Perhaps in future versions it can automatically switch depending on the car?

it already does for the open whellers in lfs. If you use h-shift for road cars, it automatically switches to sequential for you

Yeah, but I meant switching between pushing the shifter up to switch up and pushing the shifter up to switch down.

You can already... Only thing you'd have to to is reassign the respective buttons in those cars' .lfs-scriptfiles (you could link to another script where you reassign the buttons as well)...

Quote from Hankstar :

Yeah, afaik that's how it is in all road cars (like the Golf I was talking about), but in race cars it's the opposite and, to me, that makes much more sense.

The only road cars I've ever seen that have it the "right" way are BMW and Mazda, on both of them, you pull back to upshift, and push forward to downshift. I remember reading once that the ISO standard for sequentials was to push forward to upshift, so the standard is wrong, lol.

Quote from unseen :

I have seriously tried over and over again pushing forward for down gear, and back for up, as it is in most sequential race cars (due to G, inertia and human nature being pretty efficient) and I`m buggered if I can manage it.

I always end up somewhere north of 5th gear in hairpins. Using the manual 6-shifter on my G25 is no problem at all, and it`s what I use as much as I can. I just cannot do the back/up, forward/down thing :weeping:

Dude, I had the same ****ing problem, but as I drive with my eyes, rather than my ass, I've gotten over it after telling myself that's the right way to do it. Now I cant use tiptronic because I keep downshifting when I should be upshifting. I noticed that BMW's tiptronic is done corectly through.

EDIT: I think, that te reason it's done like that, sort of reverse, is becasue of peoples mind thinking that up should be forward, and down should be backward... get it? It used to feel more natural to me too, now it sucks, lol.