in rl the amateurs burn out there clutches and have to pull out on the starting grid if they give it to much gas and use the clutch for to long. they reason i think they dont burn them out much if because of the ar$e whooping they cop in the pits. we just ctrl-p and start again so we go through alot more
Depends on where you live. I seem to recall that over 80% of the cars sold in the USA use automatic transmissions, which use wet clutches. In Europe, it's probably the opposite. Most modern motorcycles use multiplate wet clutches to avoid having a seperate case for the clutch.
Once again, this is not a driving issue for me, as I have a programmable driver for my joysticks, and simply programmed the throttle axis to auto-cut and auto-blip when I press the shift up and shift down buttons.
Some of you seem to be missing my point, the consequences of flat shifting should be a broken drivetrain (realistic), not an overheated and slipping clutch (not realistic). I don't like the idea of adding unrealistic physics to LFS to discourage flat shifting rather than waiting for it to be implemented realistically. One of the responses in this thread is that clutch overheating was a stopgap measure. Hopefully a future version of LFS will model clutch overheating properly, when the clutch is slippped for long periods of time, not brief intervals during a flat shift, and add drivetrain breakage to discourage flat shifting.
Once again you are going on about clutches that are NOT in LFS.
We DO NOT have an automatic in LFS in the same way we do not have X000bhp dragcars. We have gear help which helps change the manual gears. But you already know that.
Yep auto cars might use wet clutches and the USA like NZ have a majority if auto cars. But in LFS we have manual cars that probably run dry clutches.
Can we stop with stuff that is not really related. So, we are not talking about
1) Drag racing gear boxes.
2) Motor cycle gear boxes (Apart from possible the MRT)
3) Automatic gearboxes.
If your problem is you would prefer drivetrain damage to occur first before the clutch burns out then you are probably the same as everyone here.
The thing is that Scawen probably needed to improve the clutch to do the new gear boxes so it was LOGICAL to deal with clutch issues at the same time.
I would say MOST people in this thread would be happy of drivetrain damage and the like are added to LFS and I am sure they will be in time. But that the moment they are not. I am sure the moment they are we will get the next batch of "wah wah wah" threads as toys are thrown out of the pram.
So given that if you abuse the car flat shifting and there is not the drivetrain damage that will cause the failure it becomes possible to heat up the clutch to cook that because all the abuse is now centered there. Everything else in the chain can't be damaged yet.
What gets me is that you appear to believe that it is IMPOSSIBLE to overheat a clutch so that it will slip?
Is this the case, and if so would you like me to show you IN YOUR CAR? You will have to pay my flights and repair bill but I will be able to mess up your clutch so much it will not drive again. So would you like the demo?
From what I have experienced in patch Y though flat shifting really isn't too much of a problem for causing the clutch to overheat For example I can do 15 laps in the LX6 with very little overheating (i.e. doesn't reach red) flatshifting between 3-4-5-6 most of the time.
Most of the problems I see with overheating are from standing starts.
With an auto clutch enabled it feathers the clutch on a start rather than droping it, this can cause quite alot of heat buildup if you keep the revs at the limiter. With a fully manual clutch the heat build up is significantly less when you drop the clutch on starts.
I also suspect some of the problems people might be having on a manual clutch are simply engauging it too slowly, irl the clutch pedal has a stronger return spring than say a G25 and therefore you would be naturally inclined to release it faster than with soft pedals. The soft pedals thus encourage poor driving habits which in turn lead to higher clutch heat than you would normally expect.
No, only that flat shifting, where the clutch is only slipping for a few tenths of a second during a shift, isn't going to cause clutch overheating, but is likely to cause drivetrain damage. I was just surprised that rather than wait for drivetrain damage to be implemented, an unrealistic clutch model was implemented instead.
I also feel it was wrong to take away the auto-cut and auto-blip option, because of the range of abilities and controllers of players of LFS. If the goal was to level the playing field, then the time for an auto-cut shift could have just been extended a bit to compensate. This would be similar to eliminating the perfect at the limit cornering that keyboard players used to have. Keyboard steering sill works, but it no longer gives an unfair advantage. It's my opinion, that auto-cut and auto-blip should have been handled in the same way as keyboard steering, don't eliminate it completely, just eliminate the advantage.
All this fuss for a feature which from the driver's point of view gets LFS one step towards realism? Cars with no ignition-cut require you to lift-off the throttle during gear changes, those with ignition-cut don't.
As simple as that!
I don't care if it is the clutch, the drivetrain or whatever that gets worn when the gearbox is abused, I'm happy that flat-shifting is punished when it should be punished.
I am a "driving monkey" (meaning I don't really care for the mechanical stuff under my feet) and in my book LFS is more realistic now!
It's a racing simulation, it's aimed at a niche market, the whole point is that the majority of gamers won't like it or be able to play it, there's no shortage of arcade games for them. People are managing on mice with the new patch anyway but if they weren't I wouldn't shed a tear. Hopefully at some point LFS will have cheat prevention to check for automated inputs like your gear shift script and you'll be booted back to NFS
Doesn't it seem strange to you guys that JeffR is spouting on about the clutch not being realistic but at the same time uses an unrealistic controller setup?
It seems indeed! Frankly, I believe most gripes about the clutch overheating have to do not with the missing realism but with the extra effort needed to achieve laptimes similar to patch X.
However, I noticed that in some combos I've achieved better laptimes with patch Y (although using patch X setups). For example, with the MRT@SO2 in patch X I had a pb of 0.55.100 but with patch Y I already managed 0.55.060 (and with a couple of gear misses).
PS. I don't know if SO2 has been shortened in patch Y or I have improved as a driver (or... both ) but with patch Y is certainly more fun!
LFS is just one of many games I play. I don't play LFS often enough or seriously enough to worry about lap times, currently. The biggest recent improvement was with patch S, (tire and differential physics), between S and Y, I haven't noticed any huge changes like the big improvment made to patch S.
I never claimed that using two joysticks to control a car was realistic, it's just more convenient for me than having to bother with a wheel and pedals (I do own a momo racing wheel and pedal set, but it's mostly used for visitors).
On the other hand, LFS is claimed to be realistic, so it should live up to a "higher" standard.
I don't see an issue with these. Some of the high end wheel and pedal setups include a scripting feature. The most common thing done is to make wheel and pedal set appear to be a single controller to work with games that only support a single controller. Since all of the scripting is done within the controller driver, the actual racing game is just receiving normal controller inputs that look no different if accomplished with human input or if accomplished via scripting.
Proably the most common scripted feature for first person shooter games is a rapid fire button to be used on single shot weapons, it's not faster than what player can generate, but it's a lot less fatiguing.
I didn't intend for this thread to get this long. As my focus was on realisim, not how it affected some players more than others. I wasn't personally affected by this, but since LFS has a history of focusing on realism, this was one of those times that a feature, the clutch overheating was a bit rushed.
JeffR: I believe I agree with you with the clutch not being realistic. The macro is an issue which definitely should be looked at as well. It won't be possible to get rid of them completely in my opinion but perhaps it should be less tempting to use one.
You made some good examples and explained things in detail yet the response is more or less 'go back to NFS'. Such a shame
The fact you own a wheel but choose not to use it highlights the reason why such scripts should be banned IMO. I'm sure it would be possible for LFS to monitor controller inputs and auto-kick users with impossibly consistent inputs.
You must have missed the part where I explained that I don't use the wheel and pedals because it's less convenient.
To use the wheel and pedal, I unhook the joysticks. I remove the center drawer on my desk and lean it against a wall, because the clamps won't fit around it. I then clamp on the wheel, and have to use a folded rag for the back clamp. I then setup a short box against the wall under my desk and then the pedals against the box so they don't slip away while in use. I then plug in the power to the wheel, and then connect the USB connectors. I then load up the Logitech software and select the proper profile for the game I'm running. I then have to restore or set the game config file to work with the wheel and pedals.
To use the joysticks, I partially open the center drawer on my desk and slip in the clipboard that joystics sit on.
The scripting for the controllers isn't impossibly consistent. I've looked at the output and there's significant variation, because the scripting clock is independent of the game controller sampling clock. I'm actually able to manually produce more consistent output than the scripted outputs, so looking for consistency isn't going to work. Because of the inconsitency, I have to program in more margin in the scripts than I would normally have if manually doing operations, so it's actually a slight handicap, but more convenient to use.
Haven't really got time to read all these posts and technical goo goo.
From my perspective some of my fun just went out of LFS with the clutch damage feature. I have a two pedal /wheel set-up and used to have lots of fun hammering around with a sequential set-up, pedal to the floor and flappy paddling between gears. Now after three laps the clutch is vapour.
I've tried setting a button as the clutch but I may aswell resort to competing in a double decker bus.
Shame really.
PS: Don't bother flaming or giving the realism argument 'cause I won't reply. "I" was having fun, now "I'm" not. Like I said, shame.
PPS: If there a config setting for a titanium clutch plate I would welcome the hint.
It is faster, it is a cheat, and every anti-cheat WILL ban you if it finds out... If you really believe there's nothing wrong with your script, then you are an idiot... There is a reason why macro-clutching has been banned from LfS, what you do is exactly the same...
The problem is you aren't using the typical excuse of not being able to afford a split axis wheel, you're just cheating without even attempting to cover it up. If you turned up with at any real life racing event with an auto-blip/auto-cut system that wasn't permitted within the rules would you expect other racers to go 'oh nevermind it's obviously not convenient for him to move his feet lets give him an advantage being idle'
Exactly, it didn't get removed from LFS just so someone could come along and write a script to do it themself. How anyone could think this isn't cheating is beyond me.
What a player does offline (like the slick mod) isn't cheating. It could only be considered cheating if it was used online or to submit hot laps.
Since it's off topic, I created another thread about controllers that can auto-cut and auto-blip. Please post in that thread instead of this one about the auto-cut, auto-blip issue.
For example I can do 15 laps in the LX6 with very little overheating (i.e. doesn't reach red) flatshifting between 3-4-5-6 most of the time. 
