rec.autos.simulators

Making the stick press up and down buttons would not allow for skipping
gears.

The individual keys of a keyboard is a good idea (one key for one gear),
but as long as they make it so the key MUST be PRESSED to get the gear.
That way, no keys pressed can be nuetral.  Of course, that would have to
be configurable since I don't think you want to have to press a key with
one finger and try and drive with the other hand.  It would have to be for
decoding purposes only.
--
-------------------------------------

Who has time to*** with the keyboard when you're
trying to brake, apex, then NAIL THE BASTARD.

Wheel, joystick, gamepad my ass.

Can't you guys click a button fast enough to
put you in 2nd gear or 1st( good for starts ONLY )
unless gear ratios come into play ?

More Canajan 2 cents ;-)
= $0.05 American

Steve

Oops... I missed a decimal
$0.02 cdn = $0.005 usa

this is a very good, quick and easy to implement solution... for
the programmer:) But hacking out the innards of a programmable
joystick to get a programmable h-shifter would be a bit difficult
for all but a few hardward wizards out there.

i've got a solution that is fairly simple for both programmer
and hardware person. Using 3 of the joystick button wires, you
can get 8 possible combinations:

 button
 1   2   3   gear
off off off  neutral
off off on   1st
off on  off  2nd
off on  on   3rd
on  off off  4th
on  off on   5th
on  on  off  6th
on  on  on   reverse

building a h-box to activate these certain combinations of
buttons in each gear slot is dead simple.

an advantage of my button technique is taht it lets the computer
know that we are in neutral while we have the shifter out of
gear. but this is probably easily done with the keyboard technique
too?

The downside is taht you only have 1 other button left to use
on the wheel.

If a game could be configured to use the usual way, programmable
keys, or specifiable button combinations, then we could do which
ever we want.

I vote for the programmable button->keyboard presses technique
though.... if only a wheel manufacturer would produce a programmable
wheel!  and to make it the ultimate sort of wheel, we could have
detachable/swappable shifter units, so we could swap the h-shifter
unit with a sequential unit when we're in our touring car sims. or
plug in some paddles on the  wheel for in F1. and a clutch pedal of
course. and a plug-in hand clutch paddle, which would just be an
analog paddle like on a GP1, for those of us who would prefer to use
left foot braking while still having a clutch. or for in a motorbike
sim or kart sim. etc. etc. and with really good FF too, of course:)
not just resistance to turning the wheel, but the wheel itself should
be able to move in and out, to simulate the chassis bumps of driving
over a rough road. and ff on the pedals too... for proper brake fade,
broken accelerator return springs, etc...
man, this wheel would rule:)

I look forward to an h-shifter someday. then i can go straight
into reverse or 1st when i spin, or i can change directly into
1st while at full speed.... :) or even reverse!

Shall we all get together and jump up and down at the wheel
manufacturers and sim programmers to get something started?:)

Grant Reeve. /feeling silly after that rant and rave.

Sorry, Dan, but I think you are thinking of drum brakes when you state
that overheating caused them to fail.

All of these cars used very efficient disc brakes and overheating as
such was not a cause of concern insofar as brake opeartion was
concerned.

By 1967, F1 cars had been using disc brakes for 10 years.

"Heel and toe" ,and also "double-shuffle" (or "double de-clutch") mean
the same now as they did then.  I still practise the method as one of my
cars (circa 1966) has no syncromesh on 1st.gear and it's on the way out
on 2nd.!  Only by "heel and toeing" can I safely brake and make a smooth
down-change at the same time.  If the syncro was operative, there would
be no necessity to "heel and toe" or "double de-clutch".

--
Regards,
Bruce.
----------
The GP Legends Historic Motor Racing Club  is located at:-
http://www.netspeed.com.au/brucek/legends/

Correction.
That should have read "almost 10 years"!
Cooper led the charge, in 1958/59, if I'm not mistaken.
(Jaguar had introduced disc brakes several years before, on their Le
Mans-winning 1955 cars).

--
Regards,
Bruce.
----------
The GP Legends Historic Motor Racing Club  is located at:-
http://www.netspeed.com.au/brucek/legends/

well, if i was to want to model brakes properly, then there would haev
to be FF on the brake pedal - so then i could do things like air
bubbles getting in the brake lines and causing the pedal to go all
soft and spongy, or even brake line failure where pushing the pedal
results in no responding force at all.
The only use for FF on the accel that i can think of is modelling
the pedal return spring. then i could have that spring break one
day and the accel pedal would just go floppy and cause hell trouble:)
but that's getting over the top, so just FF on the brake pedal would
be fine.
Then people in the sim can sit there and fiddle with the simulated
braking system to have larger brake cylinders, or more or less
brake pedal ratio, and would get corresponding amounts of force and
movement from the pedal.

but using FF on the wheel and both pedals would allow for a very
cool feature: when watching replays the wheel and pedals could
turn/move themselves to match the replay! would that be weird or
what? you could get some unknowing poor sod in and show them the
"ghost that races cars on my computer" while pointing them at a
replay.

Grant

Uh, no one wants to "dick" with the keyboard.  The
point is that allowing different keystrokes for
different gears would make an "H" gearbox easy
to design.

Absolutely true if you are talking about producing
some considerable volume of these.  I'm a mechanical
engineer working in a sea of EE's, so I naturally
think that electronics are messy :)

I was talking more about someone home-building
a shifter.  The electronic design part would
be far beyond the average person (the problem
even stumped a EE that I work with).  On the
other hand, any mechanically-inclined person
(with too much time on their hands) could yank
some switches out of an old keyboard, mount
them inside some kind of shifter, and patch
the whole thing into a keyboard connector

This is a great idea!  It would work perfectly.  As
you said, though, using up 3 button inputs would be
a drawback.

You are right, I didn't consider neutral (not used to having
it available).  That will take another switch or two.  Here
is my idea - put a switch mapped to the neutral keystroke
at each end of the neutral area.  You would have to move the
stick to one end or the other to actually trigger neutral
(as seen below), but that shouldn't be to much of a
problem, should it?

                  2   4   6
                  |   |   |
                  |   |   |
N-switch ==> ]-------------[  <== N-switch  
              |   |   |   |
              |   |   |   |
              R   1   3   5

Options, options, options!  That is what we need.  GP2 was
one of the best in this department.  CPR was really bad,
because of the limitations of DX5 I guess.

(clip)

It's possible to do now if someone can figure out the
circuitry.  It shouldn't even be that difficult.

I'm sure they've already got something in the works.  Hey
Trev, how does you shifter operate?

--
Pat Dotson
IMPACT Motorsports
www.impactmotorsports.com/pd.html

Hi Pat, we have three different "H" pattern gearshifters in the works,
not sure what one we'll go with yet though, next is the clutch for GPL
:).

Trev