Transmissions and diff's

[conan]

Hey, I could offer the alternative. Instead of the devs spending a shitton of hours adding a box that would add absolutely nothing of value to the game. Why don't you guy who wanted to see diff ratio value take about 30 seconds and just look it up in the lua file? It's not like you haven't found it already.

Because of course I did just that and now I'm wondering how my 1975 top of the range luxury saloon with 3 speed automatic and 5.12 final drive ratio would drive like. I mean numbers like 0-100km/h in 10 seconds, 80-120km/h in 9.7 seconds and quarter mile in 17.7 seconds it's currently showing are just meaningless number, right?

[Infiltrator]

The problem is that having the sliders as it currently is destroys the suspension of disbelief. Any work wether it is a book or movie or game has to draw the person into the world and make them believe that what they are seeing is possible. From that perspective, "Because it is more realistic" is an extremely strong argument for it to be done right.

Why gearing and not everything else?

To answer that we have to parallel the camshafts again. Only a very small percentage of highly knowledgeable people will know what the difference is between grinds so leaving that section a bit simplified and cloudy does not impact the suspension of disbelief. However that's not the case with gearing. Most car people know and fully understand gearing so not having it in there reminds them that its only a game. That's the last thing you want if you are trying to draw people into a world and keep them there.

The wheel's issue is a very good point. The first place to find a solution here is probably to look at the math.


Gear Efficiency - well say 95% for this example because its beyond the standard person how this works
Combined Gearing Factor = gear ratio * diff ratio
Wheel Circumference = Pi * Wheel Diameter
Top speed in a gear = rpm * combined gearing factor * gear efficiency * wheel circumference

rpm gear diff wheel diameter Speed
6000 3.98 2.85 600 56.83
6000 2.46 2.85 600 91.95
6000 1.58 2.85 600 143.16
6000 1 2.85 600 226.19

So by the time we get to the gearing page we actually have everything needed except for the wheel diameter. Now there are 2 solutions to this. The first would be to move the tire selection screen to be before the gearing screen. This way by the time we get to gearing the wheels are already done. This means that we are now free to use the sliders to come up with the top speed and spacing just as we are doing now or by choosing custom gears, without the issue as wheels have already been set. If people go back and change wheels again it will effect the top speed on the next page.

The second solution comes to light when we look at what happens when we go into the wheel page now. As soon as we pick a tire type, a default value is given to us as wheel diameter. If we change it so that a default tyre type is set when we enter the gearing page (thus also setting the current default wheel diameter) we can leave the order exactly like it is now and still have the sliders work.

Regardless of either solution, both give the ability to use the sliders to come up with a default gearing package and also give the option to enter custom real world figures if the defaults don't doo it for the user.

Either way, it can be solved so that we have suspended disbelief in the world created.

[Infiltrator]

Hey, I could offer the alternative. Instead of the devs spending a shitton of hours adding a box that would add absolutely nothing of value to the game. Why don't you guy who wanted to see diff ratio value take about 30 seconds and just look it up in the lua file? It's not like you haven't found it already.

Because its not really about seeing it but setting it from the game.

Because of course I did just that and now I'm wondering how my 1975 top of the range luxury saloon with 3 speed automatic and 5.12 final drive ratio would drive like. I mean numbers like 0-100km/h in 10 seconds, 80-120km/h in 9.7 seconds and quarter mile in 17.7 seconds it's currently showing are just meaningless number, right?

There is something out there that can kind of give you what you want. There is (or was) a plugin that would allow you to try out your engines in Beam NG. It won't give you the whole car but it will let you see how your engines perform.

http://www.beamng.com/threads/9960-All- ... -Converter

[TrackpadUser]

The problem is that having the sliders as it currently is destroys the suspension of disbelief. Any work wether it is a book or movie or game has to draw the person into the world and make them believe that what they are seeing is possible. From that perspective, "Because it is more realistic" is an extremely strong argument for it to be done right.

Being realistic can be a valid argument.

The issue though is that it must not make the game more complex w/o much added value, and at the end of the day, having a top speed slider or a final ratio gives the same level of adjustability, except one adds complexity for the sake of having a "real" number.

[Mick240]

I found the numbers to be confusing, i saw videos of people messing with various flywheels,etc... but there is none of that, if it was already in game, maybe consider adding the cam,valves,ratios and various other things after release for the more hardcore gearheads out there, be it a free update or a DLC I know I would pay a bit extra for the added "realism"

[nialloftara]

Look this game is a tycoon car company game, it has a pretty good engine and car builder in it but the point of the game is to build a company and market cars. They had to dumb down some aspects of the realism to make a game playable to a wide audience. I'm a diesel engineer by trade and really just like engines, I would love to get into intake runner lengths, throttle body sizes, ignition mapping, cam angles and all the rest of the nitty gritty, but this is a game, and I get that. The transmission is just as detailed as it has to be to allow for customization without really needing to understand gearing. If you do understand it you should be able to think of 4.11 gears as a few ticks lower top speed than a 3.71, remember you do not build gear boxes for your company in this, each gearbox is calculated via engine torque, so it's pointless to get in depth for a one off piece. *edit* Well maybe not totally pointless, the suspension is fairly involved... It was a compromise move on the Dev team to reduce the "realism" of the gearbox, kudos to them for having tried a individual ratio editor, I wish I was a part of the community back then and had a chance to try it, but from most reactions I've seen from the old timers it bogged down the build speed and enjoyment.

[Sayonara]

The important thing, to me, is this post:

That's kind of the point. The slider is the diff ratio so simply displaying what the multiplier is wouldn't be that much more coding. if the coding time is the real issue, this would be by far the easiest and quickest method to resolve this part of the issue (as the diff ratios are calculated internally anyway, as there is a field in the model files that contains it.)

so when you slide the top speed slider up and down, it updates both the top speed text box and the diff ratio (multiplier) text box.

Adding this little box in addition to the actual slider doesn't complicate the gameplay - especially since, according to others in this thread, it's calculated already. It's a nice bit of immersion for transmission nerds to nod and murmur about and take from the game to compare with an existing car - final drive ratio is one of the key specifications of a given vehicle's transmission. So in that sense, it adds enjoyment and gives some satisfaction to people who understand what a final drive ratio is, and people who don't can just ignore it and happily get on with building their cars.

If that small bit of immersion is pointless, then the Compression Ratio and Mixture values shouldn't be shown either. Absolutely nothing of value there. Waste of UI space. You can just dig into the LUA file and look it up in 30 seconds, after all.

I suspect this is what the crowd wanting full ratio options really wanted - a few real-life figures that they can take out of the game's context and compare to an existing car.

[USDMFTW]

Ive seen and commented on threads like this ever since ive been on these forums. And im going to comment again.

The current system works and is very simple, you simply adjust the top speed of the car and it effects all gears, which is literally the effects of the final drive ratio. Then you can use a second slider to somewhat tune the other gears. Is it perfect, no.

But my argument for having full transmission customization options is quite simple. We have an engine designer with good complexity and design choices, with alot of ui space that honestly has little effect on the overall performance and design of an engine, such as ignition and fuel mixture and intake, which have much smaller effects on performance than a fully customizable transmission would.

Its not about realism, its not about more tinkering or anything. To me, why spend hours upon hours on an engine, fine tuning it. Then spend 45 seconds in the transmission tab where your transmission is going to honestly be an unoptimized piece of trash for your engine anyways.

Compared to the engine designer, the transmission "designer" is severely lacking.

And before someones quotes me and says says DEVS HAVE BETTER THINGS TO DO WITH THEIR TIME WHY DO THIS CHANGE NAOW blablabla. I would not expect this change anytime in the near future anyways, tycoon is first.

[ArnRno]

Because of course I did just that and now I'm wondering how my 1975 top of the range luxury saloon with 3 speed automatic and 5.12 final drive ratio would drive like. I mean numbers like 0-100km/h in 10 seconds, 80-120km/h in 9.7 seconds and quarter mile in 17.7 seconds it's currently showing are just meaningless number, right?

Zero-to-sixty and quarter mile times are a lot less meaningful to me than gear ratios when I imagine how a vehicle performs. I have never once in my life driven a car from a stop to 60mph (or 62mph, whatever) flat out, most days I don't even hit that speed at all, and that's including the interstate - I'm not even going to mention a quarter mile. As has been said time and time again, these are NOT race cars, these are regular production cars - even if some of these companies end up being sportscar/supercar companies, I think that the gear spec is more useful, again, than knowing how quickly it would get down a track - honestly, who puts a Ferrari on a drag strip, hmm?

It's now glaringly obvious that there are definitely two camps on this issue, and sorry to keep beating this poor horse, but hell, to me I'd rather have gear ratios listed than acceleration and quarter-mile times, or top speed.

I have never once, with any of the 30 or so cars I've owned, known the top speed or the 0-60 times, seriously, not one single car... But I have definitely known the final drive ratios for most of them, and its something I think about on a regular basis.

[Killrob]

*sigh* yes there definitely are two camps arguing for and against it, this discussion has happened many times already, too, and honestly I'm about as tired of it as "make cam profiles more complex", it's the same story.

Engines in the game are more complex because that complexity was FUN to play with when we tested it and obviously is something people enjoy. Fuel mapping on the other hand is super boring after you've done it once (haven't done it myself, but Andy and Cas have and sigh whenever someone suggests it), just imagine to do it for all say 200 cars your company makes during its time on the market. Gear ratios, final drive, etc. are really important, which is why we wanted to have it in the game. It turned out to be tedious and not fun, so we found an elegant way around it.

Individual gear ratios will never come back to the game, period. Been there, done that, it sucked. If we ever get around to making a racing manager expansion they would most probably come back because for performance applications they are very important and very much needed. I highly doubt though that most of you get how much you can do with those two simple sliders and I think you are exaggerating when you say that it becomes poorly optimized by default.

The only thing I think we easily could do is to indeed have a final drive field showing the number calculated in the background. It will change whenever you change tire size, but if that is something that people want I see no big reason why we can't put that there, it's not taking long to do that and doesn't interfere with the game's flow in any way. The only argument against having that is information density, which the game suffers from already in a big way, but I guess one more number doesn't change that by much.

Edit: Another thing I could think of as being acceptable would be to have the ratios and final drive to be shown in a tooltip while you change the sliders, that would give a bit more immersion while keeping the UI clean, at the disadvantage of giving higher information density on screen by a significant amount.

[ArnRno]

Is there a way to make it so that the gear ratio remains constant when the tire size changes, but the effective top speed is the variable that moves? Or no, because THAT'S the constraint of the programming as it sits? The ratio in the window would just be "solve for X," instead if the top speed. I get it now.

Either way is fine from my spot in the camp - just getting to know the ratio means the world to me in this matter.

Edit: And yeah, floating took tip idea sounds awesome.

[randomone]

I'm fine with the simplification of the individual gear ratios, but I still think we need a way to simulate using the same transmission between multiple models to reduce engineering costs at the cost of unoptimal design in both durability and ratios. I want to say you could just add an "import" button that just simply copies the transmission from one model to another and then locking the sliders, but I'm not sure how you could make that intuitive enough to the player.

Maybe you could make it a separate tycoon submenu that would also allow you to rip suspension and/or brake components wholesale from one model to apply to the new modal, with all the advantages and disadvantages that would imply.

[conan]

And as I expected, the rabbit hole is getting deeper.

You know what I expect next? People will complain why their lineup full of trim with one different being the final drive ratio. Because back in the 60's the car company offered different diff ratio as an option so why can't they?! Why having every unique 42 trims (number much lower than reality btw) is bringing their company down!

And you know the only 3 numbers that is the direct result of the final drive ratio? Acceleration, top speed and fuel economy. The devs can replicated that quite well already. What they won't be able to replicate is your BUTT DYNO.

Yeah. This is going very very well.

[HighOctaneLove]

The only thing I think we easily could do is to indeed have a final drive field showing the number calculated in the background. It will change whenever you change tire size, but if that is something that people want I see no big reason why we can't put that there, it's not taking long to do that and doesn't interfere with the game's flow in any way. The only argument against having that is information density, which the game suffers from already in a big way, but I guess one more number doesn't change that by much.

Edit: Another thing I could think of as being acceptable would be to have the ratios and final drive to be shown in a tooltip while you change the sliders, that would give a bit more immersion while keeping the UI clean, at the disadvantage of giving higher information density on screen by a significant amount.

I'm all for either of these ideas; it gives those who care the extra realism they desire and the general user remains unaffected. This change doesn't even cost the devs much time or money (as far as I'm aware) as the figures are already calculated so, IMO, this is a classic win/win scenario, everybody wins! (except the dev coding the info box/tooltip )

I wouldn't want to see the return of the detailed gearbox editor however as, from my experience playing many variants of Gran Turismo, the results aren't worth the time invested (unless you're doing a replica). Since this is a tycoon game and not a car simulator, having so much detail for such a small pay-off will only get in the way of the fun!

[stm316]

Combined Gearing Factor = gear ratio * diff ratio
Wheel Circumference = Pi * Wheel Diameter
Top speed in a gear = rpm * combined gearing factor * gear efficiency * wheel circumference

Except, you forgot to allow for expansion as the tyre/air heats up (i found a value of 2% per 100km/h somewhere). *Chuckles to self*