This is a cool new feature. It would be nice if you could force so it is only possible to go into neutral from first gear. Today I managed to press both paddels at the same time at a high gear (during downshift I think) and the car jumped into neutral by misstake.
Your suggestion would seem to negate the intention of the feature, the idea being to provide a fast and deliberate way to get to neutral from any gear when using paddle shifters so you can shift to first or reverse to get moving again. This supports spin recovery when using sequential shifting so you don't have to run though all the gears to get to N if you're off in the grass. To some extent it's nice for stopping at your pit-box too. But, as can be seen from the next line feature, ISI can provide variations for features, not just on and off (1, 0). The feature then might perhaps look like this: Alternate Neutral Activation="2" // whether to select neutral if shift up & shift down are pressed simultaneously 0=disabled; 1=from any gear; 2=from 1st only; 3 from 1st & R only. That would provide easy access to N via the paddles when also activating Stop Sequential if Neutral Configured rather than having to rely upon another button or key for neutral selection and allow you to prevent accidental neutral selection from any other gear. Personally I think that accidentally activating any feature that requires two deliberate actions would be too rare to consider this actionable. The Stop Sequential if Neutral Configured line allows you to prevent downshifting accidentally past 1st to neutral when entering a tight turn (been there; done that. I am not sure though, why one would want to prevent getting to N sequentially from R). Stop Sequential if Neutral Configured="1" // whether configuring neutral prevents sequential shifts into neutral from 1=1st, 2=reverse, 3=both, or 0=neither This of course requires that you have another means of selecting neutral if not via your downshift paddle. At least you can make it an out-of-the-way key if you're going to rely upon the Alternate Neutral Activation. If you wished to do without the Alternative Neutral Activation via a simultaneous pull of both paddles while also having Stop Sequential if Neutral Configured activated to prevent sequentially downshifting into neutral, I suggest that you assign reverse gear to a detent in a gated shifter if you have one. That way you have a fast way to get to reverse from any gear and for neutral - just pop it in and out of R to the neutral gate. BTW, although the Stop Sequential if Neutral Configured is new to RF2, the Alternate Neutral Activation is not. It's been implemented in RF1 for as long as I can remember, though I'm fairly sure it was a later update rather than the original release, and it's one of the first manual changes I made to the controller.ini file in the first build release of RF2. If it's now defaulted to ON (="1"), that might be new.
As the comment in the line says "prevents sequential shifts into neutral " I believe that is the intention and not fast shifting into neutral from any gear which it currently does. The solution is simple and can be to uncouple it from Alternate Neutral Activation or as you propose: As of now, if you make a mistake and shifts to neutral you have to slow down before you can engage first again which makes this option worthless. I rather disable it then and risk shifting into neutral from first.
Other solutions might be: (1) Introduce "timing" into the equation, i.e. Alternate Neutral Activation="1" // whether to select neutral if shift up & shift down are pressed simultaneously for more than 1 second 0=disabled That might make accidental activation much less likely. This could be similar to similar to Repeat Shift detection in the .PLR file which has user-selectable timing. (2) Prevent selecting neutral via sequential and Alternate Neutral Activation above a certain speed, say 3m/sec (≈10km/h). That way you'd prevent accidental selection of neutral at racing speeds but you'd be able to if the car was stopped or nearly stopped. Speed dependent activation should be doable; about 20 lines before the Alternate Neutral Activation line you'll see it is done for low- speed steering-lock override... Steer Ratio Speed="0.00000" // Speed at which low speed steering lock override ends (for pit navigation, units are meters/sec, 0.0 to disable)
In some racecars, they have countermeasures for this as well which I have found pretty nifty: - below 60 km/h, you simply can't downshift in neutral, and can also not press the neutral button to go there - above a certain rpm, same thing - if you actually want to force going to neutral, for example when a gearbox is failing or some other problem, this can be done by what I believe to depress the clutch pedal and hit the neutral button, and do a downshift, not sure I remember correctly on this one.
oh, I have just discovered now why sometimes my car was going to neutral, I thought it was on the long rF2 bug list, thanks, now I will try to remove that
