Gauge to left of fuel gauge

[Ulfran]

There is a meter that rises and falls next to the fuel gauge.
I thought this was effectively your mpg/fuel economy (low being good, high being bad), however other places have suggested it's more of a tachometer or engine power meter.
Does anyone know what it actually is?

[CowboyKing06]

It has to be a tachometer, it rises when you step on the gas regardless of your speed and whether or not the car is in gear.

[Ulfran]

That's true, though it then falls to almost zero once you hit top speed. Which is a bit odd cause normally in top gear you should still be seeing that increase

[Ulfran]

This is why I thought it was a basic fuel economy meter. But I'm just not sure

[CowboyKing06]

Originally posted by Ulfran:

That's true, though it then falls to almost zero once you hit top speed. Which is a bit odd cause normally in top gear you should still be seeing that increase

I've never really noticed that, I don't spend very much time looking at the gauge cluster.

[Ulfran]

Haha that's fair. I keep glancing down particularly when I'm out of danger (which isn't often).
Give it a go. You'll notice that when you set off it rises high, then decreases as you speed up. Or, if you set off more slowly it doesn't rise quite as high.

[Nate Mc Bow]

Pretty sure the tiny gauge you are referring to is a general sense of your engines RPM, as such it directly translates to your average fuel consumption.
Since the car uses an automatic gear shift it consumes the most fuel during rev ups, so whenever you gas up from a dead stop or brake. If you maintain high speed however the car maintains it´s highest gear setting, reducing the fuel you are using.

[Puzuzu Ebon]

I took it as stress on the engine. How hard the engine is working to do what it is doing. I.E. Heavy at take off, lighter at speed. Heavier going uphill or through rivers, lighter on the downhill. I thought it was rpms too and it can work like that a bit except for it's disappearance at speed. I thought I saw a correlation between how often i had to keep it in the red vs. how many engines got worn out or needed replacing or fixing. I could be wrong, although I've learned to ease into the gas more because who wants to search for more thermosap crystals?

[Ulfran]

I guess also because the gauge drops while the pitch of the engine keeps rising I'd thought it probably wasn't rpm.
Would be nice if the ingame logs would note each aspect of the dash

[Ulfran]

Yeah, ultimately I think I'm going to keep reading it similar to how I have before. Stress on the engine/fuel consumption.
Tbh I've barely seen any damage to my engines, I think the only bit I got was after a heavy crash, so I'm not too worried about wearing it out.

[info]

Okay, I'll bite. I'm not sure because the developers don't tell us what it is... and there is only a "W" key and no real throttle. But it acts like a fuel consumption/efficiency gauge. In reality that would be an engine intake manifold vacuum gauge. You open the throttle and intake vacuum decreases with more fuel available and the rpm increases until you reach higher rpm under load and the vacuum starts to increase. The reverse happens when you close the throttle with less fuel and the vacuum increases to the maximum and compression slowing until idle. Remember an internal combustion engine has a big butterfly or throttle body valve on the intake. Old Cars had what was called throat and not just exhaust noise. It was the growl when a the carburetor opened up and pump injected fuel. It makes sense the developer would have a code routine to model this for fuel consumption as speed, slope, or rpm alone would be very inaccurate. it gets a little bit more complex with turbos but still much the same with turbo lag and bypass. Most airplane engines (not turbine) have vacuum gauges and many some cars (BMW) had them. So the smoother your driving in the power band, the smoother your vacuum gauge behaves, the higher your mileage, and the less wear on breaks and tires. Also the sign of a good driver. That vacuum is the physics that make a venturi (carburetor) work.

[Ulfran]

Nice write up. I defo agree that it fits that fuel consumption/efficiency angle, it's the only thing that makes sense to me.
Nice write up on that. It's something I've been aiming to keep low unless I'm in a real need to go fast.
It's just hard to tell if it makes a difference, I guess some tests could be done back at the garage where the driver list tells you the percentage of fuel remaining. I might do that just out of curiosity.