Heh, after 34 years of driving, 11 months, 19 days, 20 hours and 25 minutes of my riding/driving life, I still have the same questions about autos as then. I remember the guy driving, took his foot momentarily off gas pedal and thing shifted up? Or you dont have to do that? What do you do when you want to shift down? How do you start and stop? Do you need clutch? I had a long drive with a baby Merc A-class, are those old auto gearboxes the same as modern ones? Same as Smart's? (I drove that too with disastrous results, tried to clutch to shift up while at speed and pressed the brake as hard as I could, on the fast lane of a three lane highway)
You just slow down and it automatically shifts down when RPM's go low enough. If you want to force lower gear in cases like overtaking a slower car, actually what you do is floor the accelerator and it will change down Prepare for lift off if you have powerful car. I once drove turbocharged V6 with automatic, and it was quite interesting because it accelerated twice. First when it changed to lower gear and then soon after when the turbo kicked in. When overtaking you wanted to make sure not to be too close for the car in front of you Start is done so that you press the brake pedal down, then start the engine, then put the gear selector to D (drive) or R (reverse) and then you take your foot off the brake pedal and car starts to crawl. Then just press accelerator to go faster. You can't stall automatic car even when it is on gear. When stopping in intersection or similar, you don't have to deselect the drive gear, just keep your foot lightly on the brake so that the car doesn't crawl forward. When coming to a full stop you stop the car by pressing the brake and while pressing brake you put the gear into P (means park, I guess). Now you can shut down the engine and then take foot off the brake. True automatic cars don't have clutch pedals, just brake and accelerator.
Only issue with rFactor is that it works wrong way, floor it to keep it in gear there currently is and lift to allow it to shift down, also 'auto shift' in rFactor is missing some elements of automatic box, but I try my best to create feeling of such, trick to that is enough low clutch torque, mostly, but when racing those imperfections of rF are really not very noticeable as you usually have your foot down when shift occurs. Part throttle and off throttle are where limitations of engine mostly bother me when attempting to create automatic box feel.
Yes, there is a huge drawback with both versions of rF when it comes to auto shift. I am not aware of any game or sim that does it right, is there one?
Interstate 76 might be one, I did try to make one for RoR, but I missed few bits of programming ability and lack of support then made it to impossible for me to make working, however some others did attempt it after that I believe and I don't know if anyone has made it to really work. Can't remember if game called Driver had correctly working one, that game had some things often missing from other titles.
Enthusia: Professional Racing had simulation of true automatic gearboxes. It's a lovely game, too bad it was before its time, otherwise it might not have flopped so hard.
My new weekend project coming along nicely Some of you probably already see what this is, but yes it is '23 Ford based T-Bucket style Hot Rod
BeeGees where what? early 70"s? Beatles with "I want to hold your hand" was about '63, Beach boys started bumming around in about '62? I was in 5th grade then. Besides, I can't warm up to dragging a "T" around while listening to eight track playing "BeeGee's"
a true confession here! 5th grade at 62? dont tell me you were around while Harry Truman presented? Dont do this to me? (whats a "T"? Google doesnt make much sense...)
For running around in a T-Bucket, you can't be listening to CCR, it has to be the Beach Boys, Jan and Dean or even a few of the Beatles hits.
I have been playing Chuck Berry lately, such cars just need some tunes to be playing when driving and he was jamming already at early 50's, made hit Maybellene 1955 and he still has it, will be 86 next month:
