[Russell Sobie]

I'm not the slowest on the track usually... but I'm only the fastest when our more talented drivers are sound asleep on the other side of the planet. So when I do happen to be in a race where someone has a good 5+ seconds better lap times than I do, I usually make it a point to watch their replay to see where I can start shaving some time off my racing line, or braking zones, or whatever.
What I have noticed a few times is that some drivers SEEM to be able to down shift at much higher revs than I can due to the downshift protection functionality of some cars. Most notibly right now is the Audi TT Cup. It seems like downshifting sooner would squeek some milliseconds off of my braking time on tight corners, but whenever I try to do this I find myself butting up against this protection and subsequently LOSING time since my brain is now wondering why pressing my paddle did nothing but make a beeping sound and now I'm still going faster into this corner than I want to.
I know you can remove the downshift protection NOTIFICATION in the View options in AC, but I'm wondering if there's a way to remove it from the car itself.
Is this possible to do? Am I just seeing super-expert downshifting right at the right time by these faster drivers, or are they doing something I'm not aware of?
I've googled this and all I see is a bunch of smug sim nerds talking down to other folks like myself that are just frustrated with the beeping and seeming lack of controller input. And no answers.

[James Blint]

I think what gives you better entries is rather braking at high revs, so you have more engine brake on the attack. I guess you can toy with the differential at some point as well.

[Russell Sobie]

That's what I'm trying to achieve by downshifting while braking, right? Downshifting puts me into higher revs which then allows for harder breaking. The problem here is that I seem to always be clicking downshift a millisecond (or 10) early, and instead of the transmission screaming about it but doing it anyway, it simply disallows it entirely. Then the time it takes for me to register that what I did did nothing, I'm WELL late on downshifting again now that I'm certainly at low enough revs.

I guess if I were going to program a gearbox to have downshift protection, I would queue up inputs that come when downshift protection would be engaged, and if after less than a second the RPMs were low enough for a safe downshift, I would immediately trigger the downshift. If instead I did not detect the RPMs going low enough in a short enough time span, I would then ignore the input.

Video games do this sort of thing all the time for button inputs... cars makers haven't figured this out?

It's looking like I just need to retrain my brain to make sure I'm just a teeny bit lower RPM before trying to downshift.

[James Blint]

That's what I'm trying to achieve by downshifting while braking, right? Downshifting puts me into higher revs which then allows for harder breaking. The problem here is that I seem to always be clicking downshift a millisecond (or 10) early, and instead of the transmission screaming about it but doing it anyway, it simply disallows it entirely. Then the time it takes for me to register that what I did did nothing, I'm WELL late on downshifting again now that I'm certainly at low enough revs.

I guess if I were going to program a gearbox to have downshift protection, I would queue up inputs that come when downshift protection would be engaged, and if after less than a second the RPMs were low enough for a safe downshift, I would immediately trigger the downshift. If instead I did not detect the RPMs going low enough in a short enough time span, I would then ignore the input.

Video games do this sort of thing all the time for button inputs... cars makers haven't figured this out?

It's looking like I just need to retrain my brain to make sure I'm just a teeny bit lower RPM before trying to downshift.

What i meant was, if you manage to get the right gearbox setup to brake at the highest possible rev in most corners of a track, you can stay on your entry gear a bit longer so you prevent the downshift protection and still get the engine brake that you need. So this also comes down to how you set your gear box, personaly i look more into that aspect than staging the gears for perfect power range, it's a trade or you do the trade yourself by hitting the limiter like half a second, instead of having to downshift one more into the braking zone, since there s also that as well, sometimes it's not an rpm prevention but just trying to downshift too much gears in too little time. But i ve also had hard time with that in the TT, i was feeling for no apparent reason it wasn't kicking it down.

[Matthias Rudolph]

[quote='Russell Sobie' pid='10281' dateline='1519738386']

What I have noticed a few times is that some drivers SEEM to be able to down shift at much higher revs than I can due to the downshift protection functionality of some cars. Most notibly right now is the Audi TT Cup. It seems like downshifting sooner would squeek some milliseconds off of my braking time on tight corners, but whenever I try to do this I find myself butting up against this protection and subsequently LOSING time since my brain is now wondering why pressing my paddle did nothing but make a beeping sound and now I'm still going faster into this corner than I want to.
I know you can remove the downshift protection NOTIFICATION in the View options in AC, but I'm wondering if there's a way to remove it from the car itself.
Is this possible to do? Am I just seeing super-expert downshifting right at the right time by these faster drivers, or are they doing something I'm not aware of?
I've googled this and all I see is a bunch of smug sim nerds talking down to other folks like myself that are just frustrated with the beeping and seeming lack of controller input. And no answers.
[quote]

There´s no way to remove the downshift protection. Well, probably there is, but it would lead to a checksum failure.

You just have to try whats possible, which means practise, practise and you guess it, practise.
Don´t switch cars every 20 minutes, get used to the car.
If you´re practise hard enough, you don´t need a rev gauge or apps to see your rpm´s, you hear exactly when its time to press the paddle.
The notification/beep was the first thing i deactivated after it´s release btw.

On h-pattern cars without downshift protection, driven with an h-shifter, there´s another story.
Shift whenever you like, and use any gear at any speed.
Sometimes this works only once though, from 6th to 1st at 200km/h isn´t the best idea :-)

Greetings Matthias

[Russell Sobie]

To me the notification is required from a user experience point of view. If we were in actual cars it would probably be similar, but in a video game when you push a button and do not get some sort of feedback (whether or not what you wanted to do actually occurs) is a requirement from a design standpoint. Doubley so for sims where quite a few of us have cobbled together a mish-mash of gear for a control setup where fiddling with it and having things stop working is a rule, not an exception. How am I supposed to know when my paddle switch has shit the bed on my new Thrustmaster T300RS if whenever I hear the click, nothing happens?

As far as switching cars a lot, I typically don't. Right now I'm only racing in two series this season: the Audi and the Simpit DTM90s (where I'm in the Alfa Romeo). Not a whole lot of gearbox setup in either.

@James Blint: Yeah, gearbox setup on cars that allow it I always tune it based on corner entry/exit as a higher priority than making sure the power bands are optimal for the longest straight or the slowest corner. There's just nothing to do in the Audi with a locked gearbox. I just have to do 2x as many practice laps on a new track to know where I need to avoid the downshift protection.

[Matthias Rudolph]

Quote:
How am I supposed to know when my paddle switch has shit the bed on my new Thrustmaster T300RS if whenever I hear the click, nothing happens?


XD, I never thought about it that way.
Thanks for the nightmares :-)

[Michael Butler]

I miss shifts in the Audi too, don't feel by yourself, i just keep clicking till it happens..lol...brake earlier....about the replays, let me be perfectly clear on this......what you see on those replays, is not what actually happens in realtime, gearing and braking. The pedal app always shows full brake in replays i know this. and just the way the cars are erratic in driving on replays is not whats actually happening on their side, it's close tho.

[Russell Sobie]

I want to say the quality setting has an effect on how accurate other drivers elsewhere on the track from your car are. I leave mine on high quality, and the only cars that look a bit erratic are those that have questionable connections to the server in the first place. In a lot of cases, apps are only going to show information for YOUR car, even if you are in the POV of another driver. I've only recently noticed that Helicorsa and Car Radar both actually work on the car you are spectating (which didn't used to be the case?).

All that said, I typically glean a number of tips and tricks from faster drivers via replays, even if it isn't a perfect representation of what they are doing.

[Michael Butler]

I love watching replays, it just always seems like other cars brake faster and later than mine