Ultra Forgiving Clutch?

[Devias]

After having my newbie shoes on for a long time, I'm starting to play AC with full realism, not necessarily for getting great lap times right now, but just to get a feel for the cars with all assists turned off.

One thing I noticed is how forgiving the clutch is on my Fanatec wheel and 3 pedal setup. I can pretty much shift without the clutch no matter what car I'm using. Yeah, it's not as smooth as using the clutch, but it's more than possible and that just seems.. off. I've done 20 laps with several older cars like the Miura and the F40, without using the clutch to shift once and I'm not exactly expertly matching RPMs to do a perfect clutchless shift every time.

Having never driven those cars in real life I'm not sure what to expect but I'd expect to hear grinding gears and possible gear box failure after I'm really reaming it for 20 laps. I keep thinking that my controller settings aren't right or there's some extra realism setting I don't have turned on.

Am I missing something?

[guidofoc]

You turned off the automatic clutch and automatic blip&cut, right?

[Devias]

Yup, everything is off, using the full Pro mode and have made sure my pedals are configured correctly and can verify via the Pedals OSD during driving.

I can take the Lambo from the pit lane all the way to 5th gear by flooring the gas and not touching the clutch pedal without any reprecussions. As I said, it's not as "smooth" as if I actually use the clutch but there is nothing preventing me from doing it.

My friend who's used to driving high performance cars tried out AC and kept thinking I had my settings wrong because there's no way you could just shift non stop without a clutch and without hearing or feeling any feedback.

I know it's not like I'm driving an 18 wheeler towing a cargo container without using a clutch, but I expected a bit more griding and performance loss, or perhaps a totally busted gearbox by lap 3. Instead I get a RPM blip and a not so smooth shift but nothing audible nor force feedback wise.

Has anyone truly ruined their gearbox by shifting without a clutch in this game? If I could do that then I'd be convinced that it's not so ultra forgiving, but so far I can just ream these cars. Again I don't have any real experience with older F40's and such but I doubt you'd be able to just ignore the clutch for 20 laps when you're going full out.

My only other thought is that since the cars are magically repaired to factory fresh after every session, other than the performance loss when shifting without a clutch, there's no incentive to not just tromp on the gearbox. If you had a real F40, you'd never shift without a clutch because of the damage it'd cause, but in a video game where you're only putting in 10 or 20 laps at a time, it's not that big of a deal because the damage is gone when you quit.

[SeriousSpy]

Are you hearing a grinding noise when you try to shift, or is it literally just shifting for you no matter the RPM?

Make sure you have damage on, if you're grinding the clutch then you should be getting damaged.

[Jump]

I have read in other forum that the clutch is not yet fully implemented in AC, so there are some hope it will improve with time. As you probably noticed, you also cannot stall the car no matter if you use or not the clutch when starting or going really slow. The only real use for the clutch I found is for heal-toe which avoid losing the rear like in real life in some situations. Beside that, it does make shifting a bit more smooth, but not much yet.

[kazereal]

Originally posted by Devias:

Yup, everything is off, using the full Pro mode and have made sure my pedals are configured correctly and can verify via the Pedals OSD during driving.

I remember that you have to use custom to fully disable the assists, pro-mode still leaves something on (I haven't checked in a while though).

Also using H-pattern shifter won't apply clutch but using paddles like on semi-automatic gearboxes will apply some clutch or the gearbox uses double-clutch system or similar.

It depends on car if you can shift without clutch. Sauber-Mercedes C9 is one where you can.
More road-going cars like Abarth 500 should need clutch.

In real life you can often shift without clutch with practice and timing according to engine revs and depending if gearbox has synchro-gears or not.
Although if you mess it up you'll break the gearbox (teeth are broken from gearbox cogs).

[BRT Cobra]

go in to general settings and uncheck adjust assists based on control,its called somthing like that :)

[Marty]

Have you got damage at 100%? If damage is offnits impossible to damage the gearbox for obvious reasons.

By the sound of it you dont have dage or a h shifter and that makes the biggest difference. If you shift many h pattern cars with bad shifts your gearbox will not last too many laps if any. If your using paddles then I think it still will be much more forgiving as there is an auto clutch enabled when using sequential rather then with a h shifter.

[whofertaguen_m]

With the h shifter, if I don't use the clutch or make a mistake using it, I hear grinding gears and the picture of the gearbox being damaged appears.
With paddle shifters, I think there is no need to use the clutch.

[kazereal]

Originally posted by Marty:

Have you got damage at 100%? If damage is offnits impossible to damage the gearbox for obvious reasons.

Lifting off throttle when shifting you can shift without using clutch AND without damage to gearbox. At least on the C9 it is possible.. (Car has been designed this way)

In some cases you can't get new gear in if you don't use clutch in addition to causing damage so it should easy to spot these cases..

[quf]

Devias, are you really doing this with a clutch and h-shifter configured or shifting with paddles?

Could you record your screen while driving on manual cars without using the clutch? And keep the pedals app on screen, and make sure damage displayer is activate (shortcut: Ctrl+Q).

And show screenshots of in game on how your pedals and shifter are configured. Make sure in options-general, you disabled "modify assists based on controller", then make sure Pro assists are selected in the Summary tab before pressing Start engine in the menu.

[quf]

Originally posted by mr munkee:

I don't even have a clutch pedal, and I've tried without auto clutch and it didn't seem any different, no problems shifting.. nothing going wrong..

That's because the game won't punish by damaging the cars if you don't have a clutch or hshifter assigned. But the game will balance the gear change time so that it isn't an advantage over who operates the cars with clutch and hshifter on manual cars, versus drivers who use no clutch and paddles on manual cars.

When you don't have a clutch assigned and want to use the hshifter, then you need to enable auto clutch, otherwise you can't get going the manual cars. If you don't want auto clutch assist, then you need to disable the separate shifter from the controls menu.

If you have a clutch assigned but no shifter, you can drive well the manual cars without pressing the clutch and shifting with paddles, but there is a slight shifting delay to balance the advantage of not having to operate a manual shifter.
And here using auto clutch will make the gear change smoother, especially on downshifts when there is more danger of the car losing traction.


But given you have both clutch and separate shifter configured in the game controls, how you drive the F40 without using the clutch and not damaging the transmission? When I tried I found that I just can't complete a lap without yellow/orange damage to trans. Is easy on upshifts, but what about downshifts?

@Devian, could you pls do what I described in my post above this one?

[deffx42]

ive got the fanatec clubsport shifter an pedals. damage on an i blow up gear box an engines quite regularly .over reving on up shifts makes the engine indicater slowly go red with each mis shift ,ive destroyed engines by clipping walls an guard rails..in races an practice
u do learn the in's an outs of each car , there engine wear rates an limits .
adds a new level to the game.. specially in races under reving just to finish .
an it happens with either wheel i use. F1 add on or after market Saas with adapter ,
have 100% damage .manual clutch ,auto blip off . always .an the game seems to pick the right clutch/gearbox combo for me.

[Devias]

I put in 20 laps on the F40 today with full damage, all assists off, full clutch, basically everything off and as realistic as I could set the game.

I shifted without the clutch the entire time without any adverse effects. Ran another 5 laps shifting as well as I could in the same conditions and yes, it was a smoother driving experience, but my laptimes were within a second of the un-clutched laptimes.

As an F1 fan I understand that a second is a ton of time but I'm not really great at this game so it's a normal variation for me. Basically my point is that with the F40 and 20 laps and full realism and full damage I saw no real difference (other than the N blip and rev scream for a split second) when using no clutch vs clutch.

Don't get me wrong - I still want to play this game using the clutch while pretending it's really my own F40, and I'll still dutifully shift and use the clutch like I'm supposed to. And it's more fun playing it without getting a destroyed gear box because I screwed up my clutch pedal the past few laps, because it's so ultra forgiving.

I really think the issue is that since your gearbox is magically repaired between sessions, you'll never really notice the damage you're doing to your gearbox unless you run 100+ laps without stopping the simulation. So you're free to just grind away slamming the shifter into a new gear on any car without reprecussion.

[SeriousSpy]

You are using a wheel with an h-shifter, right?

[Devias]

Yes, Fanatec Wheel with H shifter. Don't get me wrong, the time it takes me to shift from one spot to the next, about .5 second, isn't a pretty shift. I would never do that in a real car, grinding it without a clutch for 20 laps / 50 miles. I'm not proud of those shifts but the fact remains that AC will gladly let me do them seemingly without any reprecussions.

Again, I'm only putting maybe 30-50 miles on the car, grinding the gearbox without shifting, before resetting the simulation by changing tracks or weather or whatever.

Resetting the simulation means my F40 is getting a brand new gearbox all factory fresh, and ready to be abused by someone who isn't using the clutch to shift. I guess the point of this topic is to identify that yes, AC has a very liberal clutch simulation, and for various reasons including this magical supply of undamaged F40 (and other cars) gearboxes, you'll never really need to use the clutch even on the most realistic settings - unless of course you want better laptimes. Even so, my laptimes didn't suffer horribly without the clutch, maybe 1 second or less depending on various other factors that could not necessarily be related to me using the clutch.