The online racing simulator
Clutch Overheating
(114 posts, started )

Poll : Does the clutch pose problems for you?

No, I can shift perfectly fine.
439
I'm having a lot of trouble with it
64
The complaint's I have is...

I have Driven cars with high performance clutches (high power, low power, race cars, street cars. Not to mention I am a professional automotive technician, with a racing background (including drifting, autox, rallyx, track.). Clutches last a lot longer than in real life than LFS Patch Y... The idea is awesome that you can now burn up the clutch. but the physic's are far from realism. First of all I much would of rather had them employ the car being able to stall rather than wearing the clutch out in 15 seconds.(intentionally)

Cars in lfs are not 150,000 mile cars... every time you enter the track its 100% brand new... being 100% brand new you either have two choices as a developer... should we make the car so you have to break it in (more real) or make it so you have full access to the cars potential from a get go. (better for a game)

Honestly I think a few small changes would make this system work perfectly. The most important one is to make the car stall when appropriate.

On the race cars, they should have race clutches, which are meant for taking long periods of abuse. They should not be wearing out after 10 laps REGARDLESS of how you are driving. Especially the Forumla cars. THEY HAVE PADDLE SHIFTERS there is no clutch they are pushing in and out... Paddle shifters is how they shift their cars in real life, so their clutches in LFS should NOT be wearing out and you should not be able to even push the clutch in because its not there in real life to push in. They don't lift to shift either. and they do 100's of laps without a clutch replacement.

Now for drifting I found it much easier to clutch kick, and I burn my tires up FAR before I burn the clutch up.
Quote from Gunn :Options edited. You might get a more sincere response now in the poll. Nobody wants to admit to being an idiot.

Wrong, I freely admit to being an idiot, well why hide the truth

Anyway, I am having some trouble with shifting, mainly due to the fact that I use a joystick, and on lifting off, I tend to activite the brakes somehow :doh:


But that will be sorted in a couple of weeks when my G25 arrive, till then I'll be the one braking on the straights as I shift up
Quote from Mackie The Staggie :But that will be sorted in a couple of weeks when my G25 arrive, till then I'll be the one braking on the straights as I shift up

Thanks dude, i've now got about 3,000 tiny bits of ham and tomato sandwich splattered across my screen :ices_rofl
Quote from Mazz4200 :Thanks dude, i've now got about 3,000 tiny bits of ham and tomato sandwich splattered across my screen :ices_rofl

I aim to splatter.........




damn now I want a ham and tomato sandwich. *Mackie goes off to kitchen to make the mother of all sandwich's*
Quote from JessesAE86 :The complaint's I have is...

I have Driven cars with high performance clutches (high power, low power, race cars, street cars. Not to mention I am a professional automotive technician, with a racing background (including drifting, autox, rallyx, track.). Clutches last a lot longer than in real life than LFS Patch Y... The idea is awesome that you can now burn up the clutch. but the physic's are far from realism. First of all I much would of rather had them employ the car being able to stall rather than wearing the clutch out in 15 seconds.(intentionally)

Cars in lfs are not 150,000 mile cars... every time you enter the track its 100% brand new... being 100% brand new you either have two choices as a developer... should we make the car so you have to break it in (more real) or make it so you have full access to the cars potential from a get go. (better for a game)

Honestly I think a few small changes would make this system work perfectly. The most important one is to make the car stall when appropriate.

On the race cars, they should have race clutches, which are meant for taking long periods of abuse. They should not be wearing out after 10 laps REGARDLESS of how you are driving. Especially the Forumla cars. THEY HAVE PADDLE SHIFTERS there is no clutch they are pushing in and out... Paddle shifters is how they shift their cars in real life, so their clutches in LFS should NOT be wearing out and you should not be able to even push the clutch in because its not there in real life to push in. They don't lift to shift either. and they do 100's of laps without a clutch replacement.

Now for drifting I found it much easier to clutch kick, and I burn my tires up FAR before I burn the clutch up.

I have a similar background to you. And I think LFS's clutches could manage 150,000 miles of normal every day driving without melting.

Race clutches are NOT meant for taking long periods of abuse. They are designed to be light, small, and used fleetingly over a short period of time (even a LONG 24 hour race, the clutch gets a lot less use than you'd think).

Cars that don't 'lift to shift' have an automatic system, that either lifts for them, actuates the clutch, or (as in F1) both.

And, the clutches in LFS are partially designed to add realism (which they do very well), but are also designed to stop 'flat-shifting', which is an unrealistic technique that gives manual clutchers and h-shifters a big disadvantage. No you can't [as much], and so everyone is happy.

Except the idiots that can't drive.
Quote from tristancliffe : I think LFS's clutches could manage 150,000 miles of normal every day driving without melting.

Interesting, Is that based on a hunch/guess-timate ?. The reason i ask is modern road car clutches are built with a tolerance/life expectancy of about 80,000 miles.

So if you're right about the LFS clutch then it is as a few of us have suggested, far to strong, can take far to much abuse and doesn't penalise the gay flatshifters enough.

Lets hope Scawen has a look at the clutch strength in future patches. And lets gets rid of autoclutch and the autobox while he's at it, or at least a serverside option to prohibit them.
Quote from Mazz4200 :Interesting, Is that based on a hunch/guess-timate ?. The reason i ask is modern road car clutches are built with a tolerance/life expectancy of about 80,000 miles.

my mom would toast it in less than 40,000 anyway...
#33 - JTbo
Also race clutches have designed to put as much torque to gearbox without slipping as possible, this also make them not so good at slipping (well side effect or how do you say that).
#34 - JTbo
Anyone up with challenge, using driver swaps, we try to run car as long as possible, would need at least 40 drivers, we could run 24 hours a day and few days, see how far we get? Would be something never done in sim, I think?
Quote from JTbo :Anyone up with challenge, using driver swaps, we try to run car as long as possible, would need at least 40 drivers, we could run 24 hours a day and few days, see how far we get? Would be something never done in sim, I think?

Lol, you nutter I'd do it for charity though, might be worth considering actually !

Ok, i guess what i really want to know is, is the LFS clutch to soft. I can still flatshift in every car i've tried so far without it causing to many problems, and i just don't like it. And bearing in mind the length of most pick up races being 5-10 laps then flatshifting seems to be the prefered option if you want to be competative, in a sense it defeats the purpose of having clutch heat there in the first place (if you see what i mean)

Having said all that i'll still continue to do it the 'right way' by lifting off the throttle during changes, and catching the backend as the wheels lock during downshifts is actually quite fun, even though i'm having to use the autoclutch at the moment grrrrr. But for the future i'll have to figure out how to build a clutch axis into a gear stick so i can drive full manual again
Quote from Mazz4200 :Interesting, Is that based on a hunch/guess-timate ?. The reason i ask is modern road car clutches are built with a tolerance/life expectancy of about 80,000 miles.

So if you're right about the LFS clutch then it is as a few of us have suggested, far to strong, can take far to much abuse and doesn't penalise the gay flatshifters enough.

Lets hope Scawen has a look at the clutch strength in future patches. And lets gets rid of autoclutch and the autobox while he's at it, or at least a serverside option to prohibit them.

Remember, we don't have clutch wear, just heat. So therefore the clutches are good for several million miles of normal driving. Because in normal driving you don't heat up a clutch very much (and if you do it has plenty of time to cool down).
Only suggestion that I have is to maybe allow people to choose the type of clutch (material and plate design). Like for instance, those who wish to drift and prefer to clutch kick the hell out of the car through the corners can use say a carbon twin disk (one with realistic wear and clamping force).

Thats really all I have to add to this thread.
I think kamkor has said he thinks the current clutch system is fine for drifting, even with 'clutch kicking'.
Quote from tristancliffe :Remember, we don't have clutch wear, just heat. So therefore the clutches are good for several million miles of normal driving. Because in normal driving you don't heat up a clutch very much (and if you do it has plenty of time to cool down).

Right, it makes sense now,

Cu'mon Scawen get yer finger out, lets have patch Z with clutch wear asap, chop chop
#40 - JTbo
Quote from Mazz4200 :Lol, you nutter I'd do it for charity though, might be worth considering actually !

Ok, i guess what i really want to know is, is the LFS clutch to soft. I can still flatshift in every car i've tried so far without it causing to many problems, and i just don't like it. And bearing in mind the length of most pick up races being 5-10 laps then flatshifting seems to be the prefered option if you want to be competative, in a sense it defeats the purpose of having clutch heat there in the first place (if you see what i mean)

Having said all that i'll still continue to do it the 'right way' by lifting off the throttle during changes, and catching the backend as the wheels lock during downshifts is actually quite fun, even though i'm having to use the autoclutch at the moment grrrrr. But for the future i'll have to figure out how to build a clutch axis into a gear stick so i can drive full manual again

In sake of realism I sometimes did use old Sidewinder joystick as a gear stick, found program from RSC which send keypress to LFS when joystick was in position of gear.
Only mod I needed to make was to remove springs of joystick handle (also needed to remove wrongkey.wav or something from LFS as it kept ringing when gear was in). I had clutch on trigger button of joystick.

That did work out really well actually, except that there were no any feeling of gears, it was totally loose but no problem when driving, added lot to immersion factor too.

All files related to that are attached, can't really remember a lot from how to install etc, too long time, but maybe someone can find that useful to solving shifting troubles?
Attached files
shifter1_07_fix.zip - 115.8 KB - 290 views
virtual_h_shifter_v2_3a.zip - 430.3 KB - 281 views
virtual_h_shifter_v2_3c_full.zip - 578.1 KB - 284 views
I am loving patch Y, but i would like to see my clutch temperature in numbers.
Quote from WorkHorse :I am loving patch Y, but i would like to see my clutch temperature in numbers.

Would you like that in analog or digital?
Clutch doesn't heat up if you flat shift in the slow cars (XFG,XRG,UF1). I've ran several hotlaps, only flat shifting, and with negligible clutch damage. So this new feature doesn't stop flat shifting in these slower cars.
I was shocked by how easy it is to toast the clutch in the FZ50 GTR - I thought I'd see what all the fuss was about with the new clutch dynamics, and had it slipping chronically with half a lap worth of flat shifts and a couple of clutch kicks (just for testing, you understand)

I'm in two minds about all of this - I've never *ever* come close to burning a clutch IRL and that's in some fairly quick cars, yet you can knacker the XRT in a lap if you're drifting. I can't help thinking that the overheating is too harsh, and I think that the cars in the game you wouldn't expect to have a manual clutch IRL should still autoblip just as their real life counterparts would.

As for unfair advantage for flatshifters.. the MK5 Golf GTI with a DSG box is quicker to 60 IRL than the manual, but that's a small advantage compared to the things that can go wrong in a 30 lap race. A good driver will put down similar times in either. If someone doesn't appreciate the fine art of manual gear changing then they're unlikely to be driving at the same level as people who do, so I would imagine any advantage will be cancelled out.
@ JTbo, Is that the same as FF shifter ? coz i tried that years ago for GPL with my old Logitech Wingman Force, but i couldn't get it to work. I think it has something to do with how the motors are attached to and how they put the force through the stick. But i'll try those apps as well see if it helps.

I was actually thinking of starting from scratch. Building a sequential lever with micro-switches in the base for up and down gears. And using the thumb stick axis thingys from an old PS2 controller, one on the 'backside' for the clutch and another on the top of the stick for a smooth panning view axis.

But i'll also have to mod my wheel (TM RGT) quite a bit too. I'm gonna have to replace the upper flappy paddle buttons with progressive levers (similar to the bottom set) and then swap the wires around so i can then have the bottom left and right paddles as the throttle and the upper left and right paddles as the brake. That way i can 'heel and Toe' and blip the throttle during upshifts and downshifts. It's hard to explain but at least i know what i mean
#46 - JTbo
It is not FF shifter.

This one gives me exception sometimes, but if I click continue quickly it will work just fine
Quote from tristancliffe :I think kamkor has said he thinks the current clutch system is fine for drifting, even with 'clutch kicking'.

yes but i can feel the clutch slipping a bit on FE Black Rev. coming out of turn 12, transitioning to 13 and trying to clutch kick in 5th gear for more angle.

also i am running shorter ratios so 4th gear is ridding the limiter the whole time hence the reason for up-shifting to 5th
#48 - Woz
Quote from Kuang :I was shocked by how easy it is to toast the clutch in the FZ50 GTR - I thought I'd see what all the fuss was about with the new clutch dynamics, and had it slipping chronically with half a lap worth of flat shifts and a couple of clutch kicks (just for testing, you understand)

I'm in two minds about all of this - I've never *ever* come close to burning a clutch IRL and that's in some fairly quick cars, yet you can knacker the XRT in a lap if you're drifting. I can't help thinking that the overheating is too harsh, and I think that the cars in the game you wouldn't expect to have a manual clutch IRL should still autoblip just as their real life counterparts would.

As for unfair advantage for flatshifters.. the MK5 Golf GTI with a DSG box is quicker to 60 IRL than the manual, but that's a small advantage compared to the things that can go wrong in a 30 lap race. A good driver will put down similar times in either. If someone doesn't appreciate the fine art of manual gear changing then they're unlikely to be driving at the same level as people who do, so I would imagine any advantage will be cancelled out.

I get the feeling that you have never abused a clutch like you have in LFS either. I can't believe, even while learning to drive stick, that you have never experienced the smell of a burnt clutch. Its not hard to miss.

As a special offer I am willing to come around and show you that I can burn out the clutch in your road car in a few seconds if you want
Quote from Mazz4200 :Interesting, Is that based on a hunch/guess-timate ?. The reason i ask is modern road car clutches are built with a tolerance/life expectancy of about 80,000 miles.

My Subaru's got 205,000 miles, has been pushed hard (though well taken care of) and only NOW is starting to show signs of needing a new center clutch pack (and that's not even the "drive clutch," just the one that transfers power front-rear based on grip.) Main clutch still going strong!
No, I can shift perfectly fine.

Clutch Overheating
(114 posts, started )
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