I was just wondering about wheel support because the Bus Driver game doesn't really support wheels very well. I've tried everything to get it working but I can't . It's really weird -
Pushing the brake pedal down releases the brake and then the bus accelerates... but the accelerator seems to be like a boost button that makes the bus accelerate even faster.
The FFB is pretty poor too. The wheel has no real 'stiffness' when you turn it normally, but when you crash, it shakes your desk to pieces... literally
To anyone who has played Bus Sim '08: How do you get the doors to open? I'm sitting here at the bus stop, in park, with my indicator on, furiously bashing Z, X and C, but to no avail...is there something I need to do before opening the door? I've announced it with G before stopping, too
The graphics isn't brilliant, unless you have a Crysis PC, and the collision detection is a bit off. Also you can fly around the town at 100km/h in a couch without slowing down. Like big rigs, but with busses
I always quite fancied being a bus driver, but I can't drive, I drink far too much, and I hate people, so it probably wouldn't be the best career move.
But in regards to using a shifter, you could use certain gears to put into P, D, R, 2, 1 and N. And even use reverse for a handbrake.
I can understand why most buses are automatic as stopping and starting all day long would get a bit tedious having to throw it in gears a lot. And for passenger comfort I guess, newer buses have pretty smooth gear changes. The bus they mostly use on my regular journey (43 in Plymouth) use Merc Citaro's, and as far as buses go they're quite smart. The rest of them are old Dennis things.
The majority of the coaches National Express are weird. They're comfortable and everything but the gearboxes seem awful for a new bus/coach. Sitting at a steady speed the gearboxes don't know wether to stay in the gear its in, drop down one or go up one, so it's quite a jerky ride and some speeds. I can't imagine it's constant 'kick down' causing it either.
18WOS series isn't that bad. I've been playing them for years and kinda enjoyed them. Some were better than others. Some people have made some pretty nice mods for a lot of them.
Euro Truck Sim looks quite good but it is basically gonna be like the last few 18WOS just with better trucks and roads hopefully.
Rig 'n' Roll is the one everyone is waiting for, but as it's been in development for several years people are getting/got bored of waiting for it. Multiplayer will be good if it's open road cruising aswell as 'racing'.
For those that are interested, Truckpol Forum has loads of discussion and mods about most, if not all truck sims.
I'm pretty sure most manual coaches only have 6 gears, automatic buses/coaches i'm not sure about. I'll have to listen to the gear changes next time i'm on the bus.
National Express coaches have some little lever which I imagine could be a semi automatic sequential shifter thing, but I've not noticed a little plus/minus sign on it.
Trucks on the other hand are different, they can have anything upto something stupid like 20 or more gears, using range splitters or something. i.e. 6 in Low, flick it into High and use another 6. Others have 2 gears for one gear with another switch so you could have 12 gears before you even go into High. Some trucker on here could probably explain a bit better than I have, it's been some years since I've been in a truck so it could have all changed these days.
Picture of my actual "workplace", with the gear selector shown..
This stick had 4 positions, R, N, A, & M... pretty self explanatory, Reverse, Neutral, Auto, and Maintain; yet all the 'M' setting does is to hold it in whatever gear you happen to be in at the time.
The gearbox is fully automatic with 12 forward and 2 reverse gears, which are selected by an 'Intelligent' system that has approximately the same level of intelligence as the LFS AI...in other words, almost (but not totally) useless. What that means is some computer analyses speed, engine load, rpm and other stuff, then automagically selects precisely the wrong gear It eventually works its way up to 12th and croozes quite happily at 100kph in top even going up big hills with a full complement of passengers, but a Volvo B12 engine helps for that too
Nice, reminds me of the coach I was on the other week, although the cab layout seemed more open than the one in the pic, and the shifter was to the left of the seat, was cruisin at 1500rpm most of the way, also are those things limited on speed? Because we overtook loads of vehicles.
May i ask what the furthest left pedal does. I know my school bus (a manual) has one, but our driver never uses it... always presumed it was a valve to release built up air pressure or something.