Question to stefano casillo about transmission damages

Hello Stefano,

I enjoyed a lot your recent interview with Andreas Nie from ISR, and where you talked a bit about the damage simulation you have implemented in AC about the gearbox.

Today one question is heating up the community I race with, and I really would appreciate if you could go deeper in explaining what transmission damages are simulated by AC.

The question is (are) the following:

- does simple heal & toe (simple gaz pedal hit at downshifting) prevents damages in AC versus no gaz pedal hit at all ?

- digging further the above question, does complex heal & toe (double clutching -> declutch - shift to neutral - clutch & gaz pedal hit - declutch & downshift - clutch) allows further preventing transmission / engine / gearbox damages in AC ?

From what we have seen so far, simple heal & toe does not seem to help preventing damages. Or seen the opposite way: you can be as fast without doing any gaz pedal hit at downshifting and this without suffering more damages a heal & toe (simple) driver will get too. I'm talking about players with good level, capable of nearing the top of RSR leaderboards.

I would have expected simple heal & toe to already provide a slight advantage over a long race but it doesn't seem to. Also I would try to learn the more complex double clutching method but I'm not encouraged to do the learning effort when I see the gaz pedal hit at downshifting already doesn't seem to give an advantage damages-wise (and I'm about as fast with the gaz pedal hit now, so we cannot say a performance loss here would compensate an eventual damage benefit, it just does seem there is no benefit damages-wise from hitting the gaz pedal when downshifitng in AC).

What is your opinion on this Stefano ? Could you please go deeper in what is simulated in assetto corsa regarding transmission damages ?

Thank you by advance !

 

How can you be as fast without revmatching? In the Lotus 49, if I screw up the heel and toe I almost always lose the rear and spin out.

 

You just adapt your driving style, waiting lower revs to downshift so you don't get grip loss due to engine-brake effect, preventing the need for hitting the gaz pedal.
In my league a guy was able to win our lotus 97t races without doing heal & toe.
Now as you cannot always wait revs to get low to downshift, and need to downshift at high revs on some fast curves entry, I expected hitting the gaz pedal would give a slight advantage there in term of transmission damages. But it doesn't seem to, and you can do without it, be amongst the fastest, and not get more transmission damages than people doing a gaz pedal hit evertime they downshift.

So I wonder if this is me overestimating the benefit of this gaz pedal hit (= underestimating clutch resistance), or if this is just the simulation engine not going as deep as this regarding transmission damages simulation.

 

It's not hitting the gas that prevents damage, it's pressing the clutch that's important. Heal and toe doesn't damage transmission if you use the clutch correct.

 

I hope you don't mind that I add a little question to this topic, but I was just also wondering myself something about transmission damages.

I heard/read that transmission damages were simulated so that when you screw up a certain gear, after a certain time doing this, that gear might give up, so you have to skip a gear (2 -> 4th for example).

So I started trying to shift without clutch into 3rd all the time and saw the transmission getting, yellow, orange without a real noticable perfomance loss. However once it turned red, not a single gear was accesible anymore ?

Now i'm wondering whether this is an error in the damage model, if it's as designed or if I'm missing something.

Again sorry for 'hijacking' your topic, but since it's about the same subject it could do no harm i guess

 

@Gunja I'm not saying heal and toe damages the transmission but that not doing it at all doesn't damage it more than doing it properly (IOW, h&t doesn't help at all preventing from damages).

 

Last night I downshifted from 4th to 1st in a abarth and the transmission went red and dead - pretty accurate to me.
Just after AC-RC was released I was driving a lotus elise sc. I was upshifting just like you say - without releasing the accelerator - and yes the transmission became slightly damaged. I didn't get to the phase that it was red but IRL I can say that a car with broken manual transmission just omits the most damaged gear to the point that almost every time you try to select that damaged gear it cannot engage it, while other gears work.
So maybe you just hit that sweet spot when the transmission is still operational but will miss 2 out of 10, for example.

 

Shifting without proper clutch operation or rev matching seems to cause gearbox damage, in gear over revving seems to cause engine damage.

Before the transmission fails completely engaging certain gears becomes harder, it's a nice touch I think.

 

Did you experienced such a thing?

 

depends on the nature of the damage, a tooth could have come away and be loose around the box, you could get lucky and that bit stays out of the way or it could find it's way inbetween some other cogs which could result in the entire box exploding into bits

I've had two teeth being stripped in my box, luckily I was a low speed and pulled over immediately so nothing else damaged, if it had happened at motorways speeds they'd have been a few more pieces to replace

 

Well omitting gears is the most common problem.
Glad you were OK and not at high speed.

 

Blip/rev match doesnt prevent damage in the long run.

What prevents damage is the use of the clutch. You can shift without using it only bliping on downshifts without taking damage, but it must be spot on, otherwise it will slowly wear the gearbox.

Just won a 312T race where the leader´s gearbox gave up in 20min, he was left foot bracking and bliping. I h&t all the way and finished with no damage at all after 60min.

 

Good to know it's possible! I tried to downshift without clutch but I got the grinding sound and damage popup every single time and then soon gave up on it.

I also did an 60 mins race lately but in a car with a syncromesh gearbox. It was no problem to flatshift and downshift without revmatching all the way. In reality I think the syncro-rings would have given up at some point but I have no idea if that would be within only 1 hour of racing.

 

@Hany you are dead man now!

 

Before 1.0rc I was using the clutch only for upshift and just blipping when downshifting. Now I use clutch in upshifs and downshifts. Clutch less downshifting is still possible but u need to hit the perfect spot every single time. the best car to test this out is with the cobra. After 4 misshifts your gearbox will be gone. Atm the lotus 98t, ferrari t312 and the alfa romeo don't suffer damage from clutch less downshifting.

To fully avoid gearbox damage u need to use the clutch in up and downshifting.