Grinding Tranny Mod
Version 2.0 "High-heel and Toe Edition"
for rFactor by Richard Jackett (
hardjack79 at nogrip)
richardjackett | gmail | com
Using your H-pattern shifter, if you change gear without using the clutch and do not match the revs closely enough you will hear the gearbox grinding, and you will remain in neutral until you re-shift using the clutch (alternatively you can set the mod to accept just a re-clutching instead of a full re-shift, or even to have a fixed delay). If you use the clutch properly then your shifts will always be successful.
Features
- Detects when gearshifts should not succeed and makes the gearbox react accordingly, leaving you in neutral.
- NEW: After missing you need to make a full clutched reshift to get into gear (clutch-only and fixed time options are also available).
- NEW: Has its own sound engine to play grinding sounds (or optionally use rFactor's horn function to keep CPU load down).
- NEW: Driver name and control details are now automatically detected so editing of the ini file is no longer needed.
- NEW: Plugin can be turned on/off from within the upgrades menu, and can use different settings for each car (needs mod support).
- NEW: Real-time output of gearbox state (grinding or not grinding) so that hobbyists can add FFB to their gear shifters.
- IMPROVED: Telemetry can be written to a console and/or a text file to help you analyse your shifting technique (aka post-mortem).
- Automatically loads the current gear ratios for your car every time you hit the track.
- Highly customisable via an ini file, which is reloaded every time you hit the track.
- OLD: A developer that is very keen to hear about your experiences, suggestions, and bug reports to improve the plugin in future.
Installation
1. In your plr file you should have "Gear Select Button Hold" enabled, and "Auto Clutch", "Auto Blip", and "Auto Lift" disabled.
2. Download the Grinding Tranny Mod from NoGripRacing (registration required)
3. Unpack the archive to your rFactor installation folder (e.g. C:\Program Files\rFactor).
4. In rFactor, go to the Controller panel, and map a key to the "Neutral" function.
5. Also in the Controller panel, make sure Upshift and Downshift are unmapped, as these affect how rFactor treats shifts.
And you're done! To check the basic functionality of the mod, I recommend testing with a default car such as the rTrainer, which should work well without modification. If you want to tweak some settings the GrindingTranny.ini file is fully documented. For some addon cars, the car files may need to be edited to get the best results, see
this document for details. For general troubleshooting see
this document.
Uninstallation
rFactor\Plugins\ holds all the files you need to delete:
GrindingTranny.dll,
GrindingTranny.ini,
GrindingTranny_ReadMe.html,
GrindingTranny_Telemetry.txt (created),
BASS.dll,
Grind_Default.wav
Disclaimer
There is nothing in this mod that will intentionally do anything terrible to your computer or your rFactor install or your favourite of Newton's laws (although your lap times may suffer). However, should anything bad happen as a result of downloading/installing/using these files, I won't be held responsible for it. In other words, the choice to install is all yours, as is the risk.
Grinding Tranny Mod Version 1.0
The documentation from the original Grinding Tranny Mod is Ctrl-C'ed below:
Direct Download (1.5 MB rar) Support Page at NoGrip
1 Introduction
The Grinding Tranny Mod is a plugin that attempts to provide another dimension to the gearshifts in rFactor by monitoring your rev-matching and use of the clutch during gear changes, and then taking action if you get it all wrong -- you don't complete the shift. It certainly won't make you any quicker around the track, but it will definitely make you more careful about how you change gear and perhaps for the first time give you a real reason to use the clutch pedal while shifting. Ultimately I hope that it adds to your enjoyment of rFactor.
What is wrong with rFactor as it is?
The racing simulation rFactor will let you shift into any gear at any time regardless of the state of the clutch and throttle, or the relative speeds of the gears and output shaft. There are some very good reasons why ISI don't enable gears to be missed, but its not
completelyrealistic.
Race car drivers in real-life face the prospect of missed shifts when the dogs/teeth on the gears and the selector are spinning at different speeds and can't engage. Boxes with dog-engagement have an advantage in this respect, and as long as the shifting movement is swift (compared with the relative speeds of the two surfaces) then they usually engage. Boxes with toothed selectors need the destination gear and the selector to already be spinning at similar speeds before they will engage and are therefore a lot more difficult to use in a race (synchromesh is great in road cars, but doesn't cope with the quick shifts required in racing). With either type of selection it is possible to mess up a shift by some combination of accelerator, clutch, stick movement, or rev-matching error, and when that happens the dogs/teeth make a grinding sound, the gearbox stays in neutral, and the car cannot accelerate until a gear is successfully engaged. This mod brings some of that behaviour to rFactor.
Enough with this so-called "real life", what does this mod actually do to rFactor?
First of all
you must be manually shifting using an H-pattern shifter (Fanatec wheels, G25, etc) otherwise this mod is not for you. With the mod installed, if you change gear using the clutch then you will always shift successfully (see section 3.7). If you are attempting a clutchless shift and you match the revs closely then your gear change will be successful, but if you do not match the revs closely enough you will hear the gearbox grinding, and you will be held in neutral for a small amount of time to simulate the missed shift. A real gearbox would refuse to enter the gear properly and you'd feel it, but because this mod can't mechanically pop your H-shifter back out of gear we have to make do with forcing the car into neutral for a short time before letting it accept the gear you have physically selected.
Any features worth bragging about?
- Detects when gearshifts should not have been possible and makes the gearbox react accordingly
- Automatically loads the current gear ratios for your car every time you hit the track (not foolproof, but pretty good)
- Customisable experience via the ini file
- Loading of parameters from the ini file every time you hit the track so that you can quickly try out different settings
- Uses rFactor's own (mostly unused) horn function to generate the gear thrashing sounds, which keeps CPU load down
- Choose from a range of gear grinding sounds provided, or substitute one of your own
- Sneakily over-rides the gear-selected messages coming from DirectX to force the gearbox into neutral
- Telemetry can be written to a console and a text file to help you analyse your shifting technique in detail (aka post-mortem)
Anything else I should know before I install it?
- The rFactor horn sound is replaced by the grinding gears sound, so effectively you no longer have a horn. Think of it as a weight-reduction
- For some addon cars, some car files may need to be edited to get the best results (see section 4: Troubleshooting)
- It is possible that for some addon cars the gear ratios will need to be manually entered in the ini file (although I haven't come across one yet)
- As for any rFactor plugin, the extra code will require additional CPU cycles, which may lower fps on older systems (unlikely, but see section 4 for tips)
- Installing and using this mod won't cause any online mismatches (yay!). However for some addon cars you may need to edit the <model>_Upgrade.ini file to get the mod to work optimally, which may cause online mismatches (boo!).
That's really all you have to know about what it does. If you are up for the adventure then follow the installation instructions below, and if you run into any problems check out the Troubleshooting section. If you feel like learning a bit more about how it works or want to customise it to your needs then read through the Tuning section.
Finally, if you enjoy using the mod or have suggestions (or heaven forbid, bug reports) then email me or leave me a message on nogrip, I'll be very happy to hear from you.
2 Installation
I have tried to make installation as easy as possible, but there are few things you must do to get the mod to work properly.
Note: You must be manually shifting using an H-pattern shifter (any Fanatec wheel, Frex, G25, etc). In your plr file you should have "Gear Select Button Hold" enabled, and "Auto Clutch", "Auto Blip", and "Auto Lift" disabled.
Warning: The standard horn sounds in \rFactor\GameData\Sounds\Secondary will be over-written. A backup of the original rFactor horn wav files will be installed to \rFactor\GameData\Sounds\Secondary\Horns_Original.zip. No other files will be over-written or altered by installing this mod.
2.1 Unpack the archive to your rFactor installation folder (e.g. C:\Program Files\rFactor).
2.2 Open the GrindingTranny.ini file from \rFactor\Plugins and complete the field "PLRName" with your player name. The mod uses this to find the tempGarage.svm file in the \UserData\<Player Name>\ directory, so make sure it matches that path exactly. There should be no space between the equals sign and your player name.
2.3 Also in the GrindingTranny.ini file, set the "NeutralKey" parameter to the keyboard key you would like to map to activate 'neutral' in rFactor (use lower case). The default is 'n'.
2.4 Start rFactor, go to the Controller panel, and map the key you defined in step 3 to activate "Neutral" (it will appear as upper case, but don't worry about that).
2.5 To check the basic functionality of the mod, I recommend testing with a default car such as the rTrainer at first and following the trouble shooting guide below if your experience does not reflect what was described in the introduction.
2.6 Disclaimer
There is nothing in this mod that will intentionally do anything terrible to you or your computer or your rFactor install or your favourite of Newton's laws or anything else that I could list. Your lap times may suffer, but other than that you should have no worries about installing and using the files supplied. However, should anything bad happen as a result of downloading/installing/using these files, or acting on any information contained therein, I won't be held responsible for it. I'll be very keen to hear about it, but you'll still be on your own. In other words, the choice to install is all yours, as is the risk.
2.7 Associated Files
\Plugins\ holds
GrindingTranny.dll,
GrindingTranny.ini,
GrindingTranny_ReadMe.html (this file),
GrindingTranny_Telemetry.txt (created)
GameData\Sounds\Secondary\ holds
Grind_Sounds.zip,
Horns_Original.zip, and
horn*.wav and
Grind_RJ*.wav files
3 Tuning
The ini file contains most of the information you need to tune the mod to your liking, but I will go over the main tuning features here because I have the luxury of a bit more space to describe how things work.
3.1 Telemetry
The telemetry output is written to the console in realtime, and logged to a text file. It is really useful to find out why you are missing some shifts, and for troubleshooting the mod if you have problems during setup (more on this in the troubleshooting section). Setting 0 or 1 recommended.
0 -- None Console not displayed and no information written to txt file
1 -- Low Console displays information when entering realtime and then only during gear shifts. Also written to txt file.
2 -- High Console displays full information after every frame. Also written to txt file -- generates big files fast!
3.2 Enable Sound
If you are sick of hearing the grinding sound every time you miss a shift then set this to 0. Often you will still be able to hear a pum-pum-pum sound as the car tries to shift back into the gear.
3.3 Activate Neutral
If you want to learn how to match revs without the punishment of actually missing the shift (wimp), then set this to 0 and the gearbox will not be forced to neutral, but the grinding gear sound will still play (if you have it enabled).
3.4 Time in Neutral
This is the number of seconds that a missed shift will be delayed by before the gear finally engages. I think a value of about 1.0-1.5 second feels about right, but play around with it.
3.5 Sound Duration
This is the length of time (in seconds) that the grinding sound will play for when you miss a gear. Depending on the particular grinding sound you have installed, you may need to play around with this to get it right.
3.6 Key Repeat Rate
More of a troubleshooting option, this is the time (in seconds) between the push and the release (and then the re-push) of the virtual neutral key. It should be as low as possible, but if its too low the keypress might not be recognised at all. If it is too long then it won't be able to over-ride the gear-engaged messages being sent to rFactor from your wheel's H-shifter and you'll see and hear the gears switching between engaged and neutral very rapidly.
3.7 Clutch Threshold
With the clutch (mostly) disengaged the engine is no longer applying (much) torque to the layshaft, and therefore the ratios are able to be (forcefully) matched to the output shaft. In practice it should still be possible to miss a shift with the clutch disengaged if the dogs/teeth were very poorly rev-matched, but for this mod if the clutch is disengaged I assume you smashed her into gear hard enough to get the dogs to engage no matter what their respective revs are. This parameter determines the point that we consider the clutch to have disengaged, as a fraction of the raw clutch pedal travel: 0.0 is unpressed, 1.0 is pressed to the floor. For example, the default of 0.7 requires the clutch pedal to be depressed to 70% of its maximum travel before you can guarantee that the shift will be successful. However you still have to
time the clutch press correctly, don't blame me if you're getting on the pedal too late or coming off it too soon! (Tip: use full telemetry to study your timing during gear changes, and also check out 4.8)
3.8 Rev-Match Tolerance
Rev-matching is all about correctly judging what engine revs will be required to match the speed of the output shaft for the next ratio. Too many revs, or too few, and the differential between the speeds of the gear and the selector will be too much, the dogs/teeth won't engage, and you'll be left in neutral. This parameter defines how close is 'close-enough', and the change will be successful if abs(GearRPM/OutputRPM - 1) <= RevMatchTolerance. Think of RevMatchTolerance as the fraction above or below the ideal, within which the matching was good enough. The smaller this number, the harder it will be to match the revs closely enough to make the shift. A value of about 0.2 (+/-20%) is probably a good place to start, and you can adjust it as you become more skilled or to model a different type of gearbox. Note: Dog-engagement boxes are much more forgiving than tooth-engagement boxes.
3.9 Upshift /Downshift Tolerance Factors
These factors enable you to increase/decrease the Rev-Match Tolerance to behave differently between upshifts and downshifts. They multiply RevMatchTolerance in the equation in 3.8, so setting one of these above 1.0 makes that direction shifting easier, and setting below 1.0 makes that direction shifting more difficult. The default for downshifts is 1.0, and for upshifts is 2.0 to reflect that with a fast movement its relatively hard to miss an upshift with a dog box. You might find that you are never challenged by upshifts but downshifts are a nightmare (or vice versa) for a given RevMatchTolerance and this is the way you can even that up a bit.
3.10 Ratio Detection Method
This will mainly be used for troubleshooting badly behaved mods, so you should only need to change this if the gear ratios are not being correctly detected automatically.
Method 0 Force use of user defined ratios (use this only if methods 1 and 2 fail)
Method 1 Only works for ratios that are stored as decimals, but is
slightly more precise than method 2 (4sf vs 3sf)
Method 2 General use, works with ratios stored as either decimals or fractions (recommended setting)
If you happen to only use cars that store their ratios as decimals then you can use Method 1, but I really recommend you stick with Method 2, which will work with either fractions or decimals. The final gear ratio can be read using either method as long as it is decimal. If it is not recorded as a decimal then the mod will do its best to include the final ratio in each of the gear ratios and set the final ratio to unity. If both of the automatic methods fail to determine the gear ratios correctly then you probably have an issue with how your Player Name was recorded (section 2.2) or a particularly belligerant mod, but you can always set the ratios by hand in the bottom of the ini file and use Method 0. Every time you change car or gear settings you'll need to edit the ini again before you rejoin the track.