Vehicles need gears

[Bee8190 10]

Again, it's not even about making this a race-sim within a mil-sim but aside of some obvious tweaks needed to the vehicle physx, the vehicles will never be believable enough without some basic gear system in place and seeing as vehicles are used a lot in this game, it should receive no less attention than the soldier on his foot. The problem is that the absence of gearbox is making vehicles constantly change their gears, even while going up steep-ish hills, which is unrealistic, annoying and simply not believable enough.

The models are beautiful as are textures, and seeing the development on the Marshall Av-7, the handling and physx are getting better but if the engine response (tied to gearbox) is not responding believably ( word realistically left out on purpose ) wouldn't it all gone to waste? Vehicles in my view are probably the weakest point in game at the moment.

Gearbox would help on eliminating the constant gear changes, help with more believable braking ,engine stalling while turning slightly turning left or right in tracked vehicles and sound should be tied to RPM, not speed.

[CHB68 10]

+1

I would also appreciate this.

[dav 22]

I have to disagree I think your asking too much, I mean are gears in the vehicles not going to over complicate the controls even more?

[Smurf 12]

Actual control over gears as any racing game I think is out of the question but the Q\E keys could be mapped to things like slow speed high torque (1st gear) and whatnot, while W remains for general driving.

[Sniperwolf572 758]

I have to disagree I think your asking too much, I mean are gears in the vehicles not going to over complicate the controls even more?

I don't think that they even have to be manual gears. While there is some sort of transmission system in the game, it doesn't seem to be giving the desired effect and it's a problem created by the awkward implementation of the automatic gearbox.

You can control vehicles speed with 3 keys: Q,W and E. But what it basically does is just controls the "limiter" of the vehicle, as long as you hold any of those keys, they will accelerate towards the limiter in an automatic fashion, what is bad about this, i'll explain in an example later on.

Now the following numbers are made up, but it will give you an idea of what's happening.

Q, the slow key, is "Limit to 33% of vehicles max speed"

W, the forward movement key, is "Limit to 66% of vehicles max speed" limiter

E, the turbo key, is "Limit to 100% of vehicles max speed"

Now while using those keys, the gearbox will work automatically and for level driving, it might be ok, but the problem becomes obvious on inclines.

For example, try going up the steepest hill you can find in Stratis in a Strider which has a visible gear shifter. What you'll observe is that the "autopilot" will try to drive as if it were flat land and eventually won't have enough torque to go uphill when it dumps the momentum (just like you can try to drive in fifth gear up a really steep hill, but eventually the engine will stall out on you), then as the vehicle slows down, loses torque and is about to stall out, it will shift into a lower gear that has enough torque to accelerate uphill and then in the next few moments the vehicle will go "oh, look i'm moving faster again, need to use the higher gear" and switch into it, once again losing toruqe and speed to revert into the lower gear and it will keep jolting between the two until you either stop or clear the hill.

I'll try to make a video to show what I mean.

[Kemeros 1]

Indeed you can use Q, W and E to go at different speeds. Gears could be cool but i'd prefer a cruise control type of control. So you could adjust the speed and it would keep the same speed without holding W.

[spanishsurfer 58]

Ability to manually change gears would be nice too, there were plenty of mods that did this in Arma2 and it worked very well.

[Sniperwolf572 758]

This is what I mean:

This is just spawning in editor and constantly holding the "E" key, no releasing or touching any other input. Interesting things to watch are the speed readout, the RPM dial and the gear shifter.

Now I've never driven a car with an automatic gears, but I highly doubt that they do this. On the other hand, I know that my car will stall out if I try to climb the incline to leave my parking lot in anything higher than 3rd gear and even in 3rd it will be on the edge of stalling out unless I have built up some speed for it to be a non issue.

Edited July 25, 2013 by Sniperwolf572

[liquidpinky 11]

Actually that is reasonably real to an auto when it spins up, shifts up, almost stalls as the tyres grip and the wheel-spin is over and shifts straight back down to compensate again if the speed is too low to warrant staying in the new gear.

Sometimes it will shift up and spin even harder depending on the traction available, keep your foot down at this point to turn your tyres into slicks.

Normally these are both compensated by the driver using throttle control and not just mashing his foot to boards constantly.

I think the gearboxes need to down-shift a lot sooner to reduce the speed loss on hill climbs and they have to allow left foot braking to work properly on standing starts. The latter being handy for getting moving on a steep hill to start with, and racing off course. :)

I may be guessing wrong on how they are set up, but the gearboxes seem (feels like) to use speed values to change up or down instead of RPM.

[pettka 694]

This reminds me that I should probably update Car config guide with some new parameters. Just to make it clear - there is a gearbox with specific torque curves and gears, shifting up/down the gears is based mainly on amount of torque provided at current speed by different gears - engine shifts if there is a gear with better amount of torque produced (if it has some significant difference, otherwise it would lose quite a lot of power and had to shift back) :icon_twisted:

The parameters in said guide may be better described in future, but I cannot promise anything as it depends on some external influences.

[Sniperwolf572 758]

...

Just to make it clear - there is a gearbox with specific torque curves and gears, shifting up/down the gears is based mainly on amount of torque provided at current speed by different gears - engine shifts if there is a gear with better amount of torque produced (if it has some significant difference, otherwise it would lose quite a lot of power and had to shift back) :icon_twisted:

That sounds much better than what I assumed, same as LiquidPinky that it's based on speed.

While the current system seems to work really well on flat land, could it be that there are some issues with torque/RPM calculations when going against more resistance, like going uphill or pushing an object? As you can see from the video, the gearbox seems to do this from a standing start and going uphill:

Neutral -> Adding gas -> First gear -> Reached 14 km/h and engine is revving at ~2.5k -> Second gear -> Speed drops to ~9km/h and below 2k RPM 
                             ^                                                                                             v
                             ^                                                                                             v
                             ^<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

And this happens until I clear the hill. Staying in the first gear would make more sense as it provides more speed/acceleration than the second gear. When I clear the hill and am on flat land again, this cycle breaks and eventually I enter the third gear.

Edited July 25, 2013 by Sniperwolf572

[BigBoss 10]

A manual gearbox would also help with keeping the pace with slow moving infantry. Q and E could be used to shift gears up and down.

[liquidpinky 11]

That sounds much better than what I assumed, same as LiquidPinky that it's based on speed.

While the current system seems to work really well on flat land, could it be that there are some issues with torque/RPM calculations when going against more resistance, like going uphill or pushing an object? As you can see from the video, the gearbox seems to do this from a standing start and going uphill:

Neutral -> Adding gas -> First gear -> Reached 14 km/h and engine is revving at ~2.5k -> Second gear -> Speed drops to ~9km/h and below 2k RPM 
                             ^                                                                                             v
                             ^                                                                                             v
                             ^<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

And this happens until I clear the hill. Staying in the first gear would make more sense as it provides more speed/acceleration than the second gear. When I clear the hill and am on flat land again, this cycle breaks and eventually I enter the third gear.

I think they need to put the torque peaks down to lower RPM like real deisel engines and use RPM to shift down into the higher torque band like a real engine would.

It seems like it is just a little (little doesn't equal easy) tweaking required though to get the torque into more useful RPM zones.

Also a fatal mistake I see a lot of games make or people tuning cars in GT for example is they put the first gear on too low an initial ratio as well, first needs to be drawn out and the latter gears get closer and closer as the vehicle is then fighting drag.

I think the problem is that a real engine deals out the torque and has a specific curve, the gearbox itself doesn't actually produce the torque itself but keeps the engine within the torque rev band as much as possible allowing the torque to be delivered to the final drive and drive wheels. BIS is doing it by calculating torque per ratio and it must be a ball buster to get the curves right for sure.

[pettka 694]

And this happens until I clear the hill. Staying in the first gear would make more sense as it provides more speed/acceleration than the second gear. When I clear the hill and am on flat land again, this cycle breaks and eventually I enter the third gear.

It is a bit more complicated than it might sound - you know by experience that staying on a lower gear would be a long-term gain but that is something hard to describe for an automatic gearbox. Take a look at this - it is the situation You have described. Second gear clearly has better efficiency than the first one and it is expected to be better even after changing the gear, but the slope is greater than expected during the gear change - I have seen automatic transmission doing such error even in real life :icon_twisted:

[ratszo 17]

Hydrostatic transmission allows for locking gears..., normally low gears.

Also, Hydrostatic allows for "locked differential" in lowest gear --where torque is locked to both wheels of each axle.

Standard tranny on wheeled heavy equipment, like scrapers, buggies.

[Sniperwolf572 758]

... I think the problem is that a real engine deals out the torque and has a specific curve, the gearbox itself doesn't actually produce the torque itself but keeps the engine within the torque rev band as much as possible allowing the torque to be delivered to the final drive and drive wheels. BIS is doing it by calculating torque per ratio and it must be a ball buster to get the curves right for sure.

It is a bit more complicated than it might sound - you know by experience that staying on a lower gear would be a long-term gain but that is something hard to describe for an automatic gearbox. Take a look at this - it is the situation You have described. Second gear clearly has better efficiency than the first one and it is expected to be better even after changing the gear, but the slope is greater than expected during the gear change - I have seen automatic transmission doing such error even in real life :icon_twisted:

Believe you me, I understand that translating experience and concepts like that to code and abstracting it to something usable is no small thing. :) Unfortunately I don't have experience with real life automatic gearboxes nor do I have much car experience so I'll take your word for it that they do make such mistakes.

As you say, going by the picture that replicates what I described, the second gear seems to be a clear winner by the number generated, but everything we see there is the end result of a calculation and our intuition would rather stick to the first gear. I'm not questioning results, since as you've seen I've concluded that the engine thinks that gear 2 is the best gear. Instead, I am saying that calculation itself that comes up with the "Effect" float might be missing something to help it get closer to our intuition depending on the situation. :p

Here's my thinking, which you're free to disregard as it's probably full of logical holes, but it might serve as a rubber ducky. :p

Real life driving experience you are the driver with analogue pedals with which you control the (presuming automatic) car itself. The car and it's gearbox has operates on the action-reaction method, the wheels slip, that means the friction is low and the result is the necessity to reduce the torque. The car doesn't know it's driving on mud, ice, tarmac or air, it knows what the wheels are doing, possibly it's gravitational orientation and adjusts with such information.

With the game, you are the puppeteer that has 3 keys which are digital input that you're handing to the combination of a driver and the vehicle. Now this is why I wouldn't take (and I don't know if you guys do) to replicating only the gearbox, but the combination of the driver and the gearbox. As someone who's writing code, you can get information about the environment and the vehicle that a real life car simply can't and that in real life the driver might possess to alter inputs that are given to the car.

This is supported by the fact that in the game, you can get the car in such situations where pressing any of the forward keys results in nothing happening, like:

- Hitting the gas while your bumper is in contact with an immovable object. In the game the wheels will slightly squeal and erratically spin, the car will not even attempt to rev up, and your inputs as the puppeteer will be mostly disregarded.

- When the car is falling, the game knows your controls will not have any effect and it doesn't do anything with them.

- When you are stuck on some rocks where I'm assuming wheel contact points are not in contact with whatever is considered ground beneath you you will be denied any acceleration control of the vehicle.

- During the amphibious transition from floating to driving mode, you will get stuck if you do not have sufficient momentum, giving any gas control will result in the vehicle doing nothing unless the waves or steering nudges you in a favorable direction.

- Sometimes even having as little as two wheels of an AMV off the ground will cause the game to give up and refuse to do anything with your controls

- Your gas inputs will be disregarded if you're holding the handbrake

This is different from what would actually occur in real life due to the fact that for each of the above:

- Car doesn't know you're hitting the wall, it would still rev up and potentially you'd mess it up quite a lot

- Car doesn't know you're in a freefall, you'd rev up and the drive wheels would spin, you could probably mess up the engine if you overdid the RPM's

- Car doesn't know you're stuck on rocks and that your wheels aren't touching the ground, high RPM and wheel spin again

- I've no clue how amphibians work, but I'm assuming the driver can decide when he's had enough of the propellers and needs to switch to the wheels

- Again, wheels off the ground wouldn't mean your pedal inputs would be ignored

- Handbrake starts are of course practiced often and taught in driving schools for starting on slopes, there's even specific feedback from the car to assist you (RPM's go up, front end starts to rise, you can release the handbrake)

Now going with the above, with our 3 limited keys, only simulating the gearbox end of the relationship sounds like the non-optimal choice. One option would be to do the following thing. Q would prefer higher torque over "effect", W would do something in the middle and "E" would prefer higher RPM or whatever.

And the other option of course would be to go over the "best gear" calculation and take into account as much of the world variables that can help emulate driver+car relationship instead of just car relationship. Because at this moment, I'm led to believe that the "Effect" calculation isn't taking into consideration the incline and surface.

Please note that I'm not saying anything here is simple, quick, "you must do it nao or i'll rage" but merely providing an alternate view and observations. :)

[Bee8190 10]

Great input everyone.

Now, my car got a manual transmission and i am happy but my father has got a sedan with relatively big engine (3.0 V6) and automatic gearbox with some sport features. ( like sport mode button) . The thing is, we obviously never ''climbed'' such inclines as can be found on stratis as its a road car with the ability to up or downshifting when the driver pleases but transmission on it's own certainly doesn't change gears as much, when you meet up with some rather steep, countryside road in the hills.

Basically while driving in town as any other folk, the transmission change the gears at around 3500 rpm and it's also pretty quick, keeping the momentum of the car engine. If you happen to go up some incline as mentioned earlier, in some country side, hilly road with up's and down's with sport mode enabled, it acts closer to manual transmission.

The engine revs are used all the way it can go, till the limiter steps in and gears are also used in their entire scale - ratio ( as liquid P, mentioned ) so that the every next gear that follows, is as close to the optimal torque of the engine and then makes its way through thanks to horsepower. In case of off road vehicles, I believe that's the same case, except there's something added in; the wheel spin, lose of traction. The transmission doesn't work that way, as in - wheels spin so I will just throw in another gear to get more traction, because the chances getting stuck due to stalled engine are then fairly high. It may torture the engine but as long as the wheels spin or have not enough traction it won't change the gears. I believe automatic transmission doesn't work purely on engines rpm but speed of the wheels and possibly other factors are considered.

Military vehicles don't play on economy ( funnily enough that's how I would describe how the transmission currently works ingame - trying to be economic ;) ) and I'd also say it's safe to assume most modern military vehicles have sequential gearbox. ( its fully automatic but with the ability to change gears on drivers input ) not to mention all kinds of differential locks.

Now I think the issue in game is that the transmission is not only linked to speed of the vehicle but its somehow related to terrain as well. to me it looks like the terrain supposed to simulate the typical obstacles of off road driving can meet with, like heavy grass, wet grass mud and so on and therefore whenever a vehicle leave the road, it simulates all of the offroad stuff at once, by simply slowing down the vehicle.

Another thing I am confused about is the gear ratio to engine power as in - the vehicle barely moves but the transmission already sticking in another gear, even on flat road. Now I can only imagine what it takes to get all the values done correctly but I am not worried about that, as I am sure we'll get there and I also hope my feedback is constructive enough.

Here can be seen how much the vehicles are tortured - On thing I'd like to highlight is the drama. Our (engine) samples are great quality and it could be again related to gearbox but currently I am also concerned about the lack of any drama that these big powerful engines are capable of showing. Currently all engines are so...dry and boring, there is no drama which is 50% of the vehicle enjoyment :p

[tremanarch 6]

what if the vehcile has a special climb gear that kicks in 30% steep?

just a case

[liquidpinky 11]

Possibly the easiest thing and "authentic" is to have the sprint or turbo button act just like a kick-down on an automatic, either forcing down if the lower gear is still possible or holding the current gear right up to its maximum revs before either shifting up or maybe even holding in gear till the key is released.

A lot of Bees observations seem quite good, the impression of economy driving over trying to get up a hill as quickly as possible id the exact feeling it gives me while driving as well. It seems straight out of the miles per gallon milking handbook.

The feeling of it not sustaining a gear for long however is how a heavy vehicle will operate, it takes a lot to get tons and tons of metal to gain momentum. I have personally once driven a Seddon Atkinson towtruck and it had around 20 gears, all manual and no power steering to boot. Like One of these bad boys

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3578/3500317995_43a790e286.jpg (144 kB)

It was a workout and a half.

[KingScuba 1]

well, why not code in a quick HI/LO gear? When climbing hills, people can have the option to knock it into low gear, so they can keep their torque up, and force the engine to not go past the 1st gear, then hi gear acts like normal.

You can probably code in a certain button (say F, since the driver doesn't use that) to force the car into the lower gear. Hit the button again, and it resumes normal speed.

I realize it would be awesome to have a true shifter in game, and many times would make life easier, but the resources to make this are desperately needed elsewhere at the moment (For example, new items, fixing issues, etc).... Maybe down the line when BIS is into full game can they have someone concentrate on making a true transmission, while leaving us the option for automatic

I think that this would be the best problem solver, as pettka has shown above, we already have independent gears. Coding in a button like that hopefully would be fairly easy. I don't know much about coding, but making a gearset that's triggered by a button to give us all 5 gears/only 1st gear shouldn't be too hard.

@Bee awesome demo vid man, I'd love it if our stuff worked like that :P

Edited July 26, 2013 by KingScuba

[Bee8190 10]

Possibly the easiest thing and "authentic" is to have the sprint or turbo button act just like a kick-down on an automatic, either forcing down if the lower gear is still possible or holding the current gear right up to its maximum revs before either shifting up or maybe even holding in gear till the key is released.

I agree having this ability would further engage the driver ( sometimes boring commitment ) and would be nice thing to have. I'm thinking page up and down could work as upshift or downshift or, perhaps ideally Q for upshift and E for downshift. maybe even mouse wheel scrolling?

A lot of Bees observations seem quite good, the impression of economy driving over trying to get up a hill as quickly as possible id the exact feeling it gives me while driving as well. It seems straight out of the miles per gallon milking handbook.

The feeling of it not sustaining a gear for long however is how a heavy vehicle will operate, it takes a lot to get tons and tons of metal to gain momentum. I have personally once driven a Seddon Atkinson towtruck and it had around 20 gears, all manual and no power steering to boot. Like One of these bad boys

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3578/3500317995_43a790e286.jpg (144 kB)

It was a workout and a half.

Again agreed, some heavy vehicles like trucks or firefighter vehicles can have easily 15 or even 20 gears but the Patria AVM for example, got only 7 forward gears and a single reverse gear I believe, as its engine is entirely on different level in delivering the massive torque and power.

well, why not code in a quick HI/LO gear? When climbing hills, people can have the option to knock it into low gear, so they can keep their torque up, and force the engine to not go past the 1st gear, then hi gear acts like normal.

You can probably code in a certain button (say F, since the driver doesn't use that) to force the car into the lower gear. Hit the button again, and it resumes normal speed.

I realize it would be awesome to have a true shifter in game, and many times would make life easier, but the resources to make this are desperately needed elsewhere at the moment (For example, new items, fixing issues, etc).... Maybe down the line when BIS is into full game can they have someone concentrate on making a true transmission, while leaving us the option for automatic

I think that this would be the best problem solver, as pettka has shown above, we already have independent gears. Coding in a button like that hopefully would be fairly easy. I don't know much about coding, but making a gearset that's triggered by a button to give us all 5 gears/only 1st gear shouldn't be too hard.

@Bee awesome demo vid man, I'd love it if our stuff worked like that :P

Glad you enjoyed the video as I did :)

Again, probably ideal solution would be to have standard, automatic transmission like we just have, only with the ability to down or upshift on user input. I believe a lot would change to better as soon as the engine is linked to gearbox instead of gearbox to speed of the vehicle in game as it appears is the case right now.

[DaRkL3AD3R 1]

I really wish we had an option for manual transmission and Q = downshift, E = upshift. It would make vehicles not only far more interesting, but it would add another element to skillful driving. If air pilots can have advanced craft to demonstrate their prowess, why not give ground vehicles at least an option to be more thoughtfully controlled? The current implementation of automatic transmission is really broken. If I punched the gas (pressing the E key) in a quad on a 20* slope there's no WAY it would upshift. Because the speed isn't there to warrant it. The fact that I'd be punching the gas and still struggling to speed my way up the hill would be apparent to the transmission that it needs the power of first gear to continue to climb.

What's really messed up though is even on flat ground the transmission on the quad is STILL terrible. Try this, setup the editor with the player spawned next to a quad on the Stratis runway. Then hop on and press the max throttle button (E) and watch how SLOW it takes off. I could sprint faster than how fast this quad, supposedly stomping on the gas, is going. This is terrible and needs some serious tweaking before the game goes live. Quads are meant to be beastly machines for off-roading. The throttle is supposed to be very responsive. I know because I've driven them before and if I stomped on the gas that thing whipped and ripped away. It was so fast you'd have a tough time holding on.

So hopefully BI is aware of vehicles current ultra slow, unbelievable state and plans on fixing them before the game goes gold.

[x3kj 1247]

Currently the vehicle handling is outright terrible. Sometimes it feels like they have no torque whatsoever (and their sound is terrible - no sense of torque either). Additionally some vehicles have very weird brakes. Like the Opfor APC. It breaks from 60 to 0 in about 2m or something like that last time i tried it.

The automatic transmition should only shift if the Speed / rpm demands it

Also regarding the Q W E speeds - wouldn't it be better, if those would mimic the gas pedal instead of maximum speed? maybe 10 50 and 100% gas. If you want to drive slow - you use 10% gas. The top speed will automatically be lower, additionally your engine won't make as much noise (well at least that's how it should be). But you can also drive faster then as if you had an artificial speed limit. To keep a certain speed you could implement a cruise control action (like helicopter autohover) or better as hotkey option. It automatically keeps you at the speed it was when enabled. If you brake or accelerate it disengages.

I'm all for adding optional manual up/downshifting options to make the vehicles drivers life a little bit more interesting and enyojable.

[Bee8190 10]

I am delighted BI, delighted with the new civilian 4x4 engine sample, that is ( V8 rrroaarr )

Thank you for that. I also like how the collision physx works so far. Going to leave more detailed vehicle observation for later as I spent far too long toying around with the civi 4x4 and should have been in bad like an hour ago :cool:

[On_Sabbatical 11]

Even though i don't think it will bring something to the gameplay ,but at least it will be a way to solve the problematic of the speed of vehicles off roads !