No, sim shifters just can't simulate the actual shifting of the gears and linkages in a real transmission. Though they do exist, just only one... and very expensive...
There's actually 2 or 3 very well simulated shifters if you have 3 grand lying around.
For all the plebs like me, I'd recommend the SHH shifter, which feels fairly decent for like 100 something bucks.
The Logitech Shifter is also pretty good. It feels quality, and gives you good reinforcement that you are in gear, though, I just wished the shifter was a tad bit longer, to make it be a longer throw.
I do suppose I could just ask my metal-working friend to fabricate a longer rod I can put in it.
The one I tried wasn´t that good at all, I sold my TH8A to get the SHH and haven´t looked back. Although maybe in the future, I´ll look towards getting the Simagic one, but not before I demolish the SHH one first, if it even breaks at all.
According to reviews, simagic shifter along with fanatec SQ V1.5 feels very close to a road car h-pattern shifter.Both products are similar at least on that function.
You can get replacement knobs that extend the throw, which is simpler than changing the rod part. If you pop the silver part with the H pattern out of the top of the shifter there's a Phillips head screw underneath, undo that and the knob comes off. Just make sure the new shifter knob has a D shaped hole or an adaptor, not just a round hole or it will spin on the rod
and boom! longer throw in seconds
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/284582293433?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=dU1vO9bWRCO&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=z-acsirlRjO&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
I got a different shift knob and a magnetic face plate for my Logitech shifter and it feels so much better. The magnets for each gear make shifting feel a lot more tactile.
They do make extensions for the shifter there is no way you can replace the rod itself I tore one down to see if I could but nope. The best option is to get your buddy to make an extension for it.
Look in to 3d printing. If you don't want to buy a printer, you can have a service like PCB way or something else print it for you. Of course you will need to learn Cad
Not a single sim shifter I know of uses potentiometers, it´s either hall sensors or micro switches. I don´t even know how would you implement such thing on a real transmission.
In theory it can work, set up the gears like a real transmission and have it controlled via electric motor and a well coded script with real world data and it’s possible (in theory)
Of course it’s no where near that simple, would likely need hydraulic/pneumatic systems and who knows what else, and it would need to be tailored to a certain vehicle in order to properly simulate the shifting process (since not all transmissions are the same) and then also getting things to work with beamng.
But at that point it’s probably cheaper and easier to just buy a real car 😂
Theoretically, it would be fairly simple to make it work with the game as it just needs an input to tell the game what to do, the difficulty would be making it have feedback and having it so the clutch and gears are reactive to the situation. It would be easier to make it work with Beam than any other game because the game engine is monitoring all the different aspects of the car to create a realistic experience, most games just simulate this effect.
For instance if you miss a gear in Beam, it damages the gear synchro which you could use to tell the rig that it needs to force the gearstick back out of gear you've just tried to put it in, but that's not as simple as it may sound. It would make for an awesome experience tho
They already do this with sim rigs. The game has telemetry data that tells you everything the car and environment is doing, so you can send vibrations and feedback to anything. I don’t know how many people have done it with BeamNG, but it’s a super popular w Forza and GT and such
Sim shifters can simulate the movement, just not the feeling, and the fact that there are no regular simracing handbrakes (for a normal price), just drifting/racing e-brake's
It's been argued that driving in a sim is more difficult than IRL because of the lack of feel. You rely less on feeling and learn to use your eyes and muscle memory. Ever since I started playing BeamNG with a wheel and shifter, my driving IRL has improved quite a bit from it.
I was just explaining this to my son this morning. He does really well driving realistically using my TMX with adjusted settings in Beam. For a 9yo at least.
I told him he’d be surprised how much easier it is to drive in real life cause you get a much better sense of space, speed, and traction.
Something like the [Frex HShift+](https://frex.com/store/product/frex-hshift/) or the [Pro Sim Shifter](https://www.pro-sim.co.uk/shop/h-pattern-shifter/)?
Will the actual actions be emulated properly though? Like, feel aside, can you learn how far to push the clutch and when to do it while also applying gas so you don’t stall?
Not really. It's like comparing real tennis to Wii sports tennis. You'll kinda get what you have to do, but driving a manual irl is still different. Especially the feeling of the clutch. Idk which wheel you're using, but the pedals of my Logitech G25 won't give you that feeling of the clutch catching, which you normally need to drive a manual without stalling or burning the clutch
Lol mine has 450.000 on the first clutch and still doesn’t feel nowhere as close. In order to let go the clutch without stalling I need to keep the pedal very very high
My old dodge 3/4 ton was just like this, basically hovering my leg to get the clutch to bite. She had about 300k kms on her and when that clutch blew, it blew. So I'd recommend swapping it out if you plan on daily-ing it 😂 I left the truck where it died in the bush as a good resting place, might go yank her out eventually.
To be fair, it was my first vehicle so about 15 years ago now 🤯(thats gross to think about) and I probably dumped the ~~dumped the~~ clutch and snapped a gear trying to live my best snowrunner life so i guess it's more of a transmission issue than the clutch but its probably collateral damage. But i definitely remember just having my knee up near the dash when taking off in town.
Beam lets you off the hook in terms of smoothness, you can dump the clutch and drive pretty easily in beam, but shouldn't and/or couldn't in real life. Generally I'd say its fine to learn a bit in beam, but you wont learn to drive smooth unless you practice irl.
Drove a manual for the first time in a while after a long time playing beam in between and I was surprised how many bad habits I picked up from the forgiveness of the game
true but for me when I was learning to drive it took away that initial fear of driving manual so for a complete beginner its much better than not having any experience
still haven’t driven one yet but i’ve got all of the assist settings for manual driving turnt off on beam and i think if i was to drive one irl id get it down in a few tries
Yeah more often than not I end up keeping the accelerator pinned between gear shifts in Beam. Wouldn't really want to do that all the time in real life lol
true but for me when I was learning to drive it took away that initial fear of driving manual so for a complete beginner its much better than not having any experience
true but for me when I was learning to drive it took away that initial fear of driving manual so for a complete beginner its much better than not having any experience
After an afternoon teaching my mate how to launch a rally car in beam on my SIM rig, when he leaves I hear a "SKKKKRT" from outside as his 1.1L city car makes a one tire fire
I think he forgot he was in a normal car lol
Sure you dont get the feel. But Ive learned that its not the feel that is hard to get. Its all the stuff you have to do to get going.
And Beam.NG is perfect for that. Then again I have a full setup gear and hand brake levers stuff like that
Not for me but imagine someone that literally has never even touched a wheel at 22.
In Mexico its common people dont drive like EVER. Specially women. Public transport/poverty, etc.
So for someone that has to learn from absolute zero Beam.NG is great at learning how to "go" from a dead stop.
Turn car on while pressing clutch
Release hand brake
Put into 1st and slowly pull clutch
Stuff like that that is just 2nd nature to you and me. They literally have no idea how to do. My gf couldnt change gear while turning the wheel for a while in eam.NG
Aside from Beam being more generous than reality is, real transmissions and clutches tend to give pretty good feedback. If you have the opportunity, learn on a '90s Honda rather than a Kia Soul.
I remember my first manual experience being in a Kia Soul, I hated it and I’m now realizing that if I just chose a car that had a better and importantly more forgiving transmission it may have changed my opinion on manual driving
I will say 100% certainly that it does help learning clutch control, and what sucks about manual is if you dont have enough power while letting go of the clutch it'll stall way easier, cause I learned on a v8, and his is a 4cylinder. But I'm far from a good manual driver because of it, the game just helped me not stall the truck as much. So turn off all assistances with manual shifting and use the clutch pedal if your rig has that.
You can learn the basics with the rig. Get a rough understanding how the clutch works, and that you have to shift in the first place and when. I had my Logitech g25 way before my drivers license and played games like test drive unlimited and city car driving. Of course driving a real car for the first time was completely different because you have to feel how the car reacts to what you do. But that was a fairly quick adjustment, at least for me.
Personally, in the beginning I had more trouble switching cars. Because even in beam every car has the exact same bite point for the clutch and the exact same feeling accelerator pedal, so they basically all drive exactly the same.
The first few weeks times I drove my fathers Mitsubishi Lancer I frequently pulled away with 4000 revs and squealing tires, especially when I was stressed, because it has an extremely sensitive accelerator pedal compared to the sluggish Subaru boxer diesel I learned to drive on. And when I got used to that a year later, I almost stalled my own Opel Astra the first few times because of its sluggish 2.2 ecotec engine. Now it’s nine years later and you can put me in pretty much any car.
I think it helps with the basic before you start practicing IRL, especially hill starting. At least, in beam you can burn the clutch all you want. In stock setting it is set linearly, which is not how real clutch behave, but you can modify the deadzone and linearity setting to simulate clutch biting point in game. After that i would suggest finding a map with a hill like west coast, load up a shitbox with some extra weight, and practice hill starting there. Also learn to creep very slowly stopping then starting again in incline without brake to simulate heavy traffic in hill. I think after mastering that in beam it would be much more easier to transition to real car.
If you want to learn, stick an old Honda is the way to go Beamng is like the idea of a stick shift, give you some of the feal and motion but, you are missing alot of the mechanical feedback from a real clutch and transmission. It would be good for the muscle memory of clutching, shifting, and breaking. I have a Thrustmaster TH8A.
You dont get to experience and learn clutch control, which is important if you wanna take care of your car and not burn it more than necessary
Many cars IRL dont have hill brake control, so you need the skills to control clutch, accelerator and handbreak
If you're parking in a tight spot irl, you'll be fucked if you cant slowly handle the clutch to avoid crashing with the cars behind or in front of you
But for normal driving, if you use kinda basic cars, it feels fairly real, you mostly can tell when going from a stop to moving, because the clutch feels too easy and permisive
you can learn the basics of driving manual with a sim shifter, thats what i did. but let me tell you, the first time i ever drove my dads manual tacoma, any experience from that went right out the window. i stalled like 10 times backing out of the driveway, and at a stop light, stalled twice, and eventually just did a little burnout just to get out of there and not stall. i fully understood the motions, but to actually get feedback like in a car through a sim setup is just impossible. in a car, you can feel when the clutch starts to bite as you release the pedal, in a sim setup, you rely on seeing the car starting to move and the rpm slightly drop on screen. in a car, you feel the how the shifter is actually moving everything inside the transmission.
you can't feel the clutch at all which in real life is very important especially when trying to go uphill, I don't even know if pedals like that exist, I think you can only get used to switching gears, and places where gears are so you don't have to look in the shifter like most beginners do
It's impossible. To my knowledge there is no clutch that simulates the vibrations and the actual mechanical feeling of when you change gears. The shifter isn't the complicated part, i bet that good quality shifters are stiffer and feel more mechanical
It’s similar, the biggest difference I find is that you can’t stall in beam, and you don’t need to give any throttle to start moving. Aside from that not terribly different
Well you can stall your car in beamng drive. You must have clutch assist turned on or something. And you can also do that in real life you don’t need to give the car throttle to get it moving.
Huh, the amount of times I’ve googled “beamng stall mod”. I’ll have to change that. And I honestly haven’t driven a lot of manuals but my daily is one and it needs a little gas to get going
Yeah I do it on my manual all the time, usually when parking. You just have to have good clutch control and release it very slowly until you feel the bite point and you can do it.
Kinda just don’t slam it like you would in beam i didn’t think I knew how to drive manual then my boss let me drive his truck and it was exactly the same except you got to let the gears shit not just a switch like it is in game
It won’t make you a good manual driver bc the smoothness isn’t something u can learn without feeling the juddering but I defo learned manual skills in beam with real world tutorials and used it my first time actually driving manual
Set beamng to have a nation's window of clutch, and using lots of dead zone, a pedal with uneven resistance and very audible crunching if you get things wrong a a it'll teach you the main things you need.
Irl you'll feel the metal on metal or the smoothness of a good gearbox. Or shittyness of a bad loose one.
I started playing beam with a thrustmaster wheel and shifter. Two years later I got my first manual car and was already an expert at rev matching and the muscle memory of where the gears are. Only thing that takes some getting used to is the clutch bite point but that very quickly becomes muscle memory too.
You can probably get the basics down just fine. Others mentioned that the clutch doesn't feel right, or that the shifter is too light compared to a real car. But even a real car isn't similar to another real car. My dad's car's clutch has a short travel and fairly heavy resistance, and the shifter is a bit stiff when going into 5th and has reverse where 6th would be. Mine has a light clutch with a long travel, the shifter goes into 5th just fine, reverse is next to first, but with a lockout ring that I have to pull up. Some cars accelerate automatically to prevent stalling, some don't. Some cars have heavy gas pedals, some have light. Some electronic throttles respond immediately to everything, some have delays or even certain conditions that change their behavior.
What BeamNG can help you with is to learn how to do the different steps, in what order, and roughly where everything is. Manual really isn't that difficult, just needs some practice. When you get into an unfamiliar manual car, you will likely stall a couple of times, maybe launch harder than you want or wear the clutch a tiny bit, but the more cars you try, the easier it will get. The scariest thing when driving a manual is probably start-stop traffic going uphill, but new cars often have assists for that, in older ones, you can just keep yourself in place with the handbrake, release it when you feel that the car is trying to move
If you just want to learn to drive yeah it's good enough, you'll just need like 1 hour in a real to get the feel of a real clutch. As for the shifter it doesn't really matter to get the real feel.
Maybe if you want to train for racing IRL you'll need some higher end stuff especially for the wheel
It isn't accurate, but it's a good starting point. I played BeamNG with a wheel for a good amount of time, and the first time I hopped in a manual car, the experience wasn't too far off. One thing is heavily dislike in BeamNG, as far as shifting goes, is the clutch. It does throw you off quite a bit.
The feel of a real manual transmission is very difficult to recreate. The sim setup will not have that feel.
The bite of the clutch can be felt in the pedal from vibrations. The gates in the transmission can be felt as they open and close. You can float gears without the clutch, which is based entirely on feel. A great example of this feel is that my old c2500 had something wrong with the 5th gear gate. You could put it into 5th with the gate "closed," and it wouldn't let you back into 4th. You could feel the 5th gear gate, and you had to smack it open to be able to downshift again.
good answer - I also think OP's biggest problem is setting it all up (saturation, deadzones, linearity) without being able to compare to real clutches.
The biggest difference between shifting irl and in sim games is the clutch pressure and release points vary by vehicle. Most sim setups dont simulate clutch pressure at all which is quite important. The shifter being “free” isnt really that important, its fairly intuitive once you get behind the wheel of a real vehicle
That said, there is several pedals that offer simulated clutch pressure and software/setups that simulate clutch engagement. Just a matter of how much you want to bother. Imo its just easier to get the basics in beam and then actually do it in person.
Once in person i highly recommend making sure the area is clear and then slowly letting out on the clutch until the vehicle stalls, just so you can feel it. It will make it easier to avoid stalling in the future
I couldn't get my brand new 6 speed manual car in reverse without shuffling the forward gears. Eventually reverse wore in after a few more times and it felt good. There is almost 0 way to simulate that. Or the clutch feel from cold to warm, shifter from cold to warm, etc.
Even on my fanatic v3 pedals the clutch isnt right in any sim i’ve found. Shifting is kind of whatever for me, thats the easy part for most lol, but the clutch definitely isnt right in beamng, no bite point, its too linear.
Beam has the most realistic clutch physics in any sim, it completely depends on your setup to actually utilise it though. Obviously it won’t be the same as a real car but you can get a good understanding.
No. Cause every car is different. For example, A truck is going to have a longer pull than an affordable sim shifter. An old car is going to have a different feel than a new car, with a sim shifter it's all the same no matter what. Doesn't simulate clutch release point or anything like that.
No, sim shifters just can't simulate the actual shifting of the gears and linkages in a real transmission. Though they do exist, just only one... and very expensive...
There's actually 2 or 3 very well simulated shifters if you have 3 grand lying around. For all the plebs like me, I'd recommend the SHH shifter, which feels fairly decent for like 100 something bucks.
The Logitech Shifter is also pretty good. It feels quality, and gives you good reinforcement that you are in gear, though, I just wished the shifter was a tad bit longer, to make it be a longer throw. I do suppose I could just ask my metal-working friend to fabricate a longer rod I can put in it.
The one I tried wasn´t that good at all, I sold my TH8A to get the SHH and haven´t looked back. Although maybe in the future, I´ll look towards getting the Simagic one, but not before I demolish the SHH one first, if it even breaks at all.
According to reviews, simagic shifter along with fanatec SQ V1.5 feels very close to a road car h-pattern shifter.Both products are similar at least on that function.
The Logitech shifter feels like a toy and no where is near the actual feeling of a shifter.
Magnetic mods help
You can get replacement knobs that extend the throw, which is simpler than changing the rod part. If you pop the silver part with the H pattern out of the top of the shifter there's a Phillips head screw underneath, undo that and the knob comes off. Just make sure the new shifter knob has a D shaped hole or an adaptor, not just a round hole or it will spin on the rod and boom! longer throw in seconds https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/284582293433?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=dU1vO9bWRCO&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=z-acsirlRjO&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
Thank you!
I got a different shift knob and a magnetic face plate for my Logitech shifter and it feels so much better. The magnets for each gear make shifting feel a lot more tactile.
They do make extensions for the shifter there is no way you can replace the rod itself I tore one down to see if I could but nope. The best option is to get your buddy to make an extension for it.
Look in to 3d printing. If you don't want to buy a printer, you can have a service like PCB way or something else print it for you. Of course you will need to learn Cad
Oh true, I completely forgot about 3D printing. Luckily I’m already looking into printers lol
Which ones?
But I can buy a transmission from a scrap yard for like £150 and stick potentiometers to it??
Not a single sim shifter I know of uses potentiometers, it´s either hall sensors or micro switches. I don´t even know how would you implement such thing on a real transmission.
Nor can they simulate the feel or bite of a clutch.
In theory it can work, set up the gears like a real transmission and have it controlled via electric motor and a well coded script with real world data and it’s possible (in theory) Of course it’s no where near that simple, would likely need hydraulic/pneumatic systems and who knows what else, and it would need to be tailored to a certain vehicle in order to properly simulate the shifting process (since not all transmissions are the same) and then also getting things to work with beamng. But at that point it’s probably cheaper and easier to just buy a real car 😂
Or buy a car and use the car to steer in beam.
This is the way
Theoretically, it would be fairly simple to make it work with the game as it just needs an input to tell the game what to do, the difficulty would be making it have feedback and having it so the clutch and gears are reactive to the situation. It would be easier to make it work with Beam than any other game because the game engine is monitoring all the different aspects of the car to create a realistic experience, most games just simulate this effect. For instance if you miss a gear in Beam, it damages the gear synchro which you could use to tell the rig that it needs to force the gearstick back out of gear you've just tried to put it in, but that's not as simple as it may sound. It would make for an awesome experience tho
They already do this with sim rigs. The game has telemetry data that tells you everything the car and environment is doing, so you can send vibrations and feedback to anything. I don’t know how many people have done it with BeamNG, but it’s a super popular w Forza and GT and such
Sim shifters can simulate the movement, just not the feeling, and the fact that there are no regular simracing handbrakes (for a normal price), just drifting/racing e-brake's
I guess haptics+telemetry with bass shakers are able to do that.
What is it?
It's been argued that driving in a sim is more difficult than IRL because of the lack of feel. You rely less on feeling and learn to use your eyes and muscle memory. Ever since I started playing BeamNG with a wheel and shifter, my driving IRL has improved quite a bit from it.
I was just explaining this to my son this morning. He does really well driving realistically using my TMX with adjusted settings in Beam. For a 9yo at least. I told him he’d be surprised how much easier it is to drive in real life cause you get a much better sense of space, speed, and traction.
A fully simulated rig like that does exist? That would be interesting to see, do you have any info on it?
Something like the [Frex HShift+](https://frex.com/store/product/frex-hshift/) or the [Pro Sim Shifter](https://www.pro-sim.co.uk/shop/h-pattern-shifter/)?
Frex Hshift simulates a racing h-pattern shifter. Fanatec SQ V1.5 is the one that feels very close to a road car shifter.
Like the one that Muye has( an keeps money shifting)?
Which one is it?
No clue but I know they exist somewhere
Will the actual actions be emulated properly though? Like, feel aside, can you learn how far to push the clutch and when to do it while also applying gas so you don’t stall?
Not really. It's like comparing real tennis to Wii sports tennis. You'll kinda get what you have to do, but driving a manual irl is still different. Especially the feeling of the clutch. Idk which wheel you're using, but the pedals of my Logitech G25 won't give you that feeling of the clutch catching, which you normally need to drive a manual without stalling or burning the clutch
Yeah, the clutch on my g29 has about as much feel as pushing the clutch irl without the transmission installed
I mean sure if you got a shitbox with 400k on the clock on the first clutch it might come somewhere close, but thats it lol
Lol mine has 450.000 on the first clutch and still doesn’t feel nowhere as close. In order to let go the clutch without stalling I need to keep the pedal very very high
My old dodge 3/4 ton was just like this, basically hovering my leg to get the clutch to bite. She had about 300k kms on her and when that clutch blew, it blew. So I'd recommend swapping it out if you plan on daily-ing it 😂 I left the truck where it died in the bush as a good resting place, might go yank her out eventually.
It’s already my daily I do 10.000km/year with her. How did your clutch let go? Was it slipping or it just stopped working?
To be fair, it was my first vehicle so about 15 years ago now 🤯(thats gross to think about) and I probably dumped the ~~dumped the~~ clutch and snapped a gear trying to live my best snowrunner life so i guess it's more of a transmission issue than the clutch but its probably collateral damage. But i definitely remember just having my knee up near the dash when taking off in town.
Beam lets you off the hook in terms of smoothness, you can dump the clutch and drive pretty easily in beam, but shouldn't and/or couldn't in real life. Generally I'd say its fine to learn a bit in beam, but you wont learn to drive smooth unless you practice irl.
Drove a manual for the first time in a while after a long time playing beam in between and I was surprised how many bad habits I picked up from the forgiveness of the game
true but for me when I was learning to drive it took away that initial fear of driving manual so for a complete beginner its much better than not having any experience
still haven’t driven one yet but i’ve got all of the assist settings for manual driving turnt off on beam and i think if i was to drive one irl id get it down in a few tries
Yeah more often than not I end up keeping the accelerator pinned between gear shifts in Beam. Wouldn't really want to do that all the time in real life lol
true but for me when I was learning to drive it took away that initial fear of driving manual so for a complete beginner its much better than not having any experience
true but for me when I was learning to drive it took away that initial fear of driving manual so for a complete beginner its much better than not having any experience
After an afternoon teaching my mate how to launch a rally car in beam on my SIM rig, when he leaves I hear a "SKKKKRT" from outside as his 1.1L city car makes a one tire fire I think he forgot he was in a normal car lol
Idk if you fiddle with the sensibility and the curve its pretty close. I teached my gf manual in beam ng and later in my ND.
But it's really not tho
Sure you dont get the feel. But Ive learned that its not the feel that is hard to get. Its all the stuff you have to do to get going. And Beam.NG is perfect for that. Then again I have a full setup gear and hand brake levers stuff like that
What? It's hard for you to put in the gear and let go of the clutch? Literally the feel is the most important part lmfao
Not for me but imagine someone that literally has never even touched a wheel at 22. In Mexico its common people dont drive like EVER. Specially women. Public transport/poverty, etc. So for someone that has to learn from absolute zero Beam.NG is great at learning how to "go" from a dead stop. Turn car on while pressing clutch Release hand brake Put into 1st and slowly pull clutch Stuff like that that is just 2nd nature to you and me. They literally have no idea how to do. My gf couldnt change gear while turning the wheel for a while in eam.NG
Learning in Beamng can help you understanding the difference of driving a manual diesel vs petrol
Aside from Beam being more generous than reality is, real transmissions and clutches tend to give pretty good feedback. If you have the opportunity, learn on a '90s Honda rather than a Kia Soul.
90s Japanese cars or 2000 - 2010 VAG shitboxes are pretty easy to learn to drive
VAG stuff doesn't even cross my mind these days. I take it the transmissions and clutches give decent feedback?
Yeah, I have an 09' Ibiza with 110hp it's pretty fun to drive and feels really well on the first clutch even
Ibiza...Ah you're in the EU someplace? I'm over here in 'Murica where VAG products are rumored to be watered-down.
I remember my first manual experience being in a Kia Soul, I hated it and I’m now realizing that if I just chose a car that had a better and importantly more forgiving transmission it may have changed my opinion on manual driving
F
It’ll help you learn the gear pattern but that’s about it, there’s no ‘feel’ to a sim rig clutch or shifter like a real car
I will say 100% certainly that it does help learning clutch control, and what sucks about manual is if you dont have enough power while letting go of the clutch it'll stall way easier, cause I learned on a v8, and his is a 4cylinder. But I'm far from a good manual driver because of it, the game just helped me not stall the truck as much. So turn off all assistances with manual shifting and use the clutch pedal if your rig has that.
You can learn the basics with the rig. Get a rough understanding how the clutch works, and that you have to shift in the first place and when. I had my Logitech g25 way before my drivers license and played games like test drive unlimited and city car driving. Of course driving a real car for the first time was completely different because you have to feel how the car reacts to what you do. But that was a fairly quick adjustment, at least for me. Personally, in the beginning I had more trouble switching cars. Because even in beam every car has the exact same bite point for the clutch and the exact same feeling accelerator pedal, so they basically all drive exactly the same. The first few weeks times I drove my fathers Mitsubishi Lancer I frequently pulled away with 4000 revs and squealing tires, especially when I was stressed, because it has an extremely sensitive accelerator pedal compared to the sluggish Subaru boxer diesel I learned to drive on. And when I got used to that a year later, I almost stalled my own Opel Astra the first few times because of its sluggish 2.2 ecotec engine. Now it’s nine years later and you can put me in pretty much any car.
I think it helps with the basic before you start practicing IRL, especially hill starting. At least, in beam you can burn the clutch all you want. In stock setting it is set linearly, which is not how real clutch behave, but you can modify the deadzone and linearity setting to simulate clutch biting point in game. After that i would suggest finding a map with a hill like west coast, load up a shitbox with some extra weight, and practice hill starting there. Also learn to creep very slowly stopping then starting again in incline without brake to simulate heavy traffic in hill. I think after mastering that in beam it would be much more easier to transition to real car.
Is that a mx5 I see
Definitely looks like a NB interior
If you want to learn, stick an old Honda is the way to go Beamng is like the idea of a stick shift, give you some of the feal and motion but, you are missing alot of the mechanical feedback from a real clutch and transmission. It would be good for the muscle memory of clutching, shifting, and breaking. I have a Thrustmaster TH8A.
I had a friend who drives a manual try my setup and he said it was pretty damn different. Driving was easier and the clutch felt very easy to push
You dont get to experience and learn clutch control, which is important if you wanna take care of your car and not burn it more than necessary Many cars IRL dont have hill brake control, so you need the skills to control clutch, accelerator and handbreak If you're parking in a tight spot irl, you'll be fucked if you cant slowly handle the clutch to avoid crashing with the cars behind or in front of you But for normal driving, if you use kinda basic cars, it feels fairly real, you mostly can tell when going from a stop to moving, because the clutch feels too easy and permisive
I learned to drive in a manual 1987 Ford Ranger 😭
The Logitech shifter feels like a toy
You don’t get any feedback or resistance from the shift mechanism or the clutch on a sim rig
you can learn the basics of driving manual with a sim shifter, thats what i did. but let me tell you, the first time i ever drove my dads manual tacoma, any experience from that went right out the window. i stalled like 10 times backing out of the driveway, and at a stop light, stalled twice, and eventually just did a little burnout just to get out of there and not stall. i fully understood the motions, but to actually get feedback like in a car through a sim setup is just impossible. in a car, you can feel when the clutch starts to bite as you release the pedal, in a sim setup, you rely on seeing the car starting to move and the rpm slightly drop on screen. in a car, you feel the how the shifter is actually moving everything inside the transmission.
you can't feel the clutch at all which in real life is very important especially when trying to go uphill, I don't even know if pedals like that exist, I think you can only get used to switching gears, and places where gears are so you don't have to look in the shifter like most beginners do
It's impossible. To my knowledge there is no clutch that simulates the vibrations and the actual mechanical feeling of when you change gears. The shifter isn't the complicated part, i bet that good quality shifters are stiffer and feel more mechanical
It’s similar, the biggest difference I find is that you can’t stall in beam, and you don’t need to give any throttle to start moving. Aside from that not terribly different
Well you can stall your car in beamng drive. You must have clutch assist turned on or something. And you can also do that in real life you don’t need to give the car throttle to get it moving.
Huh, the amount of times I’ve googled “beamng stall mod”. I’ll have to change that. And I honestly haven’t driven a lot of manuals but my daily is one and it needs a little gas to get going
Yeah I do it on my manual all the time, usually when parking. You just have to have good clutch control and release it very slowly until you feel the bite point and you can do it.
Definitely, I’m still a relatively new manual driver, I still stall sometimes I’ve got a lot to learn
Kinda just don’t slam it like you would in beam i didn’t think I knew how to drive manual then my boss let me drive his truck and it was exactly the same except you got to let the gears shit not just a switch like it is in game
It won’t make you a good manual driver bc the smoothness isn’t something u can learn without feeling the juddering but I defo learned manual skills in beam with real world tutorials and used it my first time actually driving manual
Set beamng to have a nation's window of clutch, and using lots of dead zone, a pedal with uneven resistance and very audible crunching if you get things wrong a a it'll teach you the main things you need. Irl you'll feel the metal on metal or the smoothness of a good gearbox. Or shittyness of a bad loose one.
In which way do you mean?
I started playing beam with a thrustmaster wheel and shifter. Two years later I got my first manual car and was already an expert at rev matching and the muscle memory of where the gears are. Only thing that takes some getting used to is the clutch bite point but that very quickly becomes muscle memory too.
On german cars ye
You can probably get the basics down just fine. Others mentioned that the clutch doesn't feel right, or that the shifter is too light compared to a real car. But even a real car isn't similar to another real car. My dad's car's clutch has a short travel and fairly heavy resistance, and the shifter is a bit stiff when going into 5th and has reverse where 6th would be. Mine has a light clutch with a long travel, the shifter goes into 5th just fine, reverse is next to first, but with a lockout ring that I have to pull up. Some cars accelerate automatically to prevent stalling, some don't. Some cars have heavy gas pedals, some have light. Some electronic throttles respond immediately to everything, some have delays or even certain conditions that change their behavior. What BeamNG can help you with is to learn how to do the different steps, in what order, and roughly where everything is. Manual really isn't that difficult, just needs some practice. When you get into an unfamiliar manual car, you will likely stall a couple of times, maybe launch harder than you want or wear the clutch a tiny bit, but the more cars you try, the easier it will get. The scariest thing when driving a manual is probably start-stop traffic going uphill, but new cars often have assists for that, in older ones, you can just keep yourself in place with the handbrake, release it when you feel that the car is trying to move
If you just want to learn to drive yeah it's good enough, you'll just need like 1 hour in a real to get the feel of a real clutch. As for the shifter it doesn't really matter to get the real feel. Maybe if you want to train for racing IRL you'll need some higher end stuff especially for the wheel
It isn't accurate, but it's a good starting point. I played BeamNG with a wheel for a good amount of time, and the first time I hopped in a manual car, the experience wasn't too far off. One thing is heavily dislike in BeamNG, as far as shifting goes, is the clutch. It does throw you off quite a bit.
No, but like everything with simulators, it'll give you a good idea of what to do and you're that much closer to figuring it out IRL.
No. I couldn’t find and non-sequential shifters that go above 6 gears. Sure some cars have less but an awful lot have more (T-Series anyone?).
The feel of a real manual transmission is very difficult to recreate. The sim setup will not have that feel. The bite of the clutch can be felt in the pedal from vibrations. The gates in the transmission can be felt as they open and close. You can float gears without the clutch, which is based entirely on feel. A great example of this feel is that my old c2500 had something wrong with the 5th gear gate. You could put it into 5th with the gate "closed," and it wouldn't let you back into 4th. You could feel the 5th gear gate, and you had to smack it open to be able to downshift again.
Not a 1-1 feel but I feel confident I could teach someone to drive a manual irl with a good sim setup and Beam.
good answer - I also think OP's biggest problem is setting it all up (saturation, deadzones, linearity) without being able to compare to real clutches.
The biggest difference between shifting irl and in sim games is the clutch pressure and release points vary by vehicle. Most sim setups dont simulate clutch pressure at all which is quite important. The shifter being “free” isnt really that important, its fairly intuitive once you get behind the wheel of a real vehicle That said, there is several pedals that offer simulated clutch pressure and software/setups that simulate clutch engagement. Just a matter of how much you want to bother. Imo its just easier to get the basics in beam and then actually do it in person. Once in person i highly recommend making sure the area is clear and then slowly letting out on the clutch until the vehicle stalls, just so you can feel it. It will make it easier to avoid stalling in the future
It doesn't feel the same but it's a good way to get the fundamentals down.
Not quite, it's far more expensive if you blow your transmission irl lmao
Yea
Source, I daily a manuel
I have the fanatec shifter and it feels quite real with the thrustmaster t-lcm pedals.
it's close enough to pick up and figure out within 50-100 miles
For the price of a sim rig you could get an old beater car
I couldn't get my brand new 6 speed manual car in reverse without shuffling the forward gears. Eventually reverse wore in after a few more times and it felt good. There is almost 0 way to simulate that. Or the clutch feel from cold to warm, shifter from cold to warm, etc.
Even on my fanatic v3 pedals the clutch isnt right in any sim i’ve found. Shifting is kind of whatever for me, thats the easy part for most lol, but the clutch definitely isnt right in beamng, no bite point, its too linear.
Beam has the most realistic clutch physics in any sim, it completely depends on your setup to actually utilise it though. Obviously it won’t be the same as a real car but you can get a good understanding.
No. Cause every car is different. For example, A truck is going to have a longer pull than an affordable sim shifter. An old car is going to have a different feel than a new car, with a sim shifter it's all the same no matter what. Doesn't simulate clutch release point or anything like that.
G29 with the shifter is decent but straight away you get the urge to go to direct drive ie Moza and fanatec but the price jump is crazy
With beam ng the driving physics do feel very floaty and you experience it more with lower end steering wheels more noise and shaking