Custom gear ratio screen fatally flawed

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shirakawaa

shirakawaa

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I don't know if other people noticed it too, but the custom gear ratio screen has a serious bug carried over since GT4. This extremely annoying issue prevents to fully customize gears by limiting the possible ratio range for each gear. This behavior does not appear to be an intentional choice by PD, and I think it's the "UI issue" that prevented PD to make it appear at launch. Problem, though, is that it hasn't been corrected. A real example of lazy programming by PD.

Here's an example, using a fully tuned Daihatsu Midget II

* Select "Reset to default default"
With Max speed 120 - first gear range: 2.796-3.739
With Max speed 130 - first gear range: 2.615-3.504
With Max speed 140 - first gear range: 2.460-3.302
With Max speed 150 - first gear range: 2.326-3.129
With Max speed 160 - first gear range: 2.210-2.978
With Max speed 170 - first gear range: 2.107-2.845
Click to expand...
(notice that each time the max speed setting is changed, not only gear values change, but also the allowable minimum and maximum values)

* Select "Reset to default"
Change "Max speed" to 200 - fifth gear range: 0.546-0.734
Change Final gear to 6.000 - fifth gear range: 0.546-0.734 (still the same)
Click to expand...
Change Max speed from 200 to 190, then back to 200 - fifth gear range: 0.533-0.716
The allowed range has changed. This is due to having changed "final gear" as well while selecting different "Max speed" settings. This is actually exploitable to select values normally not possible (due to this bug). For example:

* Select "Reset to default"
Max Speed: 220 - fifth gear range: 0.496-0.668
Final Gear: 3.500
Max speed: 220->200->220 - fifth gear range: 0.832-1.119
Click to expand...
By exploiting this we can have a long first gear (racing gearboxes in real life usually have one in order to have other gears close together):

* Select "Reset to default"
Max Speed: 300
Final Gear: 6.500
Max Speed 300->290->300
First gear range: 1.272-1.768 (this is high enough to have a tall first gear and an acceptable top speed)
Click to expand...
Conclusion: the serious UI issues in the gear ratio screen carried over since GT4 have not been resolved yet. My opinion is that PD enabled custom gear selection due to public outrage (since it was disabled at launch) without probably even attempting to fix it. Not only this, but the gear chart is bugged too, showing overlapping gears where it shouldn't.

Even I could make something more usuable and technically correct in Java (really! I have attached it to this post in case you want to try) :

NtK0N.png


I guess PD simply don't care.
 

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JediRage
Ha, good find.

But don't worry. Yamauchi will fix it in his masterpiece, GT6.
Click to expand...
At this rate, GT6 will never get released.

I guess that since most of the time the auto-gearing is enough most people never notice it. (The Max Speed setting, however, does more than just adjusting the top speed/how tall the gearing is overall. Really, that should have been final gear's job). Hell begins when more control is needed, and in particular when a gearing suitable for racetrack driving is desired (a first gear tall enough to make wheels just barely slip under maximum throttle).

Again, this shows how much Yamauchi cares about people who want more realism and control over things. The same pro-casual attitude (slightly too complex or realistic for the novice, frustratingly simplicistic/not detailed enough for those who seek realism and control) is found in other game/driving details.
 
Nice program, doing it in .jar is also nice cause it works in Linux natively. Well done sir. :)

Off topic, but I wondered if it is really fully customizable then where is my reverse gear? :p
 
budious
Nice program, doing it in .jar is also nice cause it works in Linux natively. Well done sir. :)
Click to expand...
Well, it's really still just a sort of "proof of concept". You can't select the number of gears, shift points, tire size settings, or even see gear ratios yet (it does show this info in the console if you're running it under linux though). But I plan to add all that at a later time in addition to other things (thrust curves for example. That would be useful to determine the optimal shift points).

The point, though, is that if I can do it, why can't PD?
It's yet another oddity that makes me wonder if during the development process something went very wrong at PD's headquarters.

Off topic, but I wondered if it is really fully customizable then where is my reverse gear? :p
Click to expand...
Good point! I think in GT5 it gets automatically adjusted depending on other settings. I haven't checked in detail but I get this impression.
 
Yeah, I figured it was concept from the lack of everything that would be useful, but good work none the less; and I did notice the output and shift points in the console.
 
hmmm this would be great but I don't have any numbers on it only RPM and km/h... do I really need Java again... or wouldn't it be possible to implement it to the program or better would you be so kind and implement it, that it shows up in the box or in a new box? Of course I take it as well with shift points...
 
Maybe it's not the right place to discuss about it (since the thread really is about the gear ratio screen bugs in GT5), but could you post a screenshot of what you see on your PC? Keep in mind that other than rpm and speeds in Km/h there are no other values shown there and that it needs Java SE6 JRE or above installed on your pc. Again, it's an experimental piece of software I was working on recently, still needs lots of improvements.
 
I can safely say that around 99.5% of GT5 players haven't noticed this, nor are very worried about it.
 
stpatty
I can safely say that around 99.5% of GT5 players haven't noticed this, nor are very worried about it.
Click to expand...

+1. I think only the experienced tuners may be annoyed with this.
 
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If you only make small adjustment to individual gears (and thus you are already one of the few people who don't use only the "max speed" adjustment) you will probably never notice this either. The problem arises when you want to optimize gearing by making, as I wrote previously, the first gear just tall enough for the slowest corner you can take or, if you want to optimize acceleration instead, tall enough to make wheels just barely slip under full throttle. Most of the time with the max speed/auto-gearing setting, the first or even first two gears end up being too short, and thus mostly unusable.

Without trying to exploit the bug, it's not possible to choose a suitable ratio without affecting the range for other gears (thus preventing proper gearing). The weird thing it that in GT1, GT2 and GT3 it worked correctly. Gear ratio customization was properly full, not limited in a very strange way (regarding this: it's true that in real life it's not possible to customize gears to any conceivable ratio, however the limitations in GT5 carried from GT4 don't seem to have any technical foundation behind them).
 
Well Ive been annoyed by this as well. I remember back in GT4 having to set the max speed (or auto I think it was called) then set the final gear ratio then you could set the individual gears in the range of adjustment you wanted. Then if you adjusted the max/auto speed you'd loose all your settings, quite annoying.

They also lack the individual gear speeds and RPMs, which even the earliest GT had, I believe.

More controll would be more better!
 
I noticed this too.. in order to get the lowest first gear and highest last gear, you have to set your "max" initially to some value to get the ranges in the proper places, and usually it means that your first gear isn't what you want (and near to your second gear, because you can't lower it any more). Although, you don't use first gear all that often, it would have been better if they set the range for the lowest gear to just go down to something arbitrary so we could set it to whatever we want.. it is kind of stupid that the min/max's range differently when you change your initial max speed setting.
 
I don't know if this is the same issue or not, but by changing the max speed setting, it limits the amount of movement one can place in each gear. If you set the max speed to the highest amount and then manually change the gears, you can get stated top speeds that are ridiculous. I saw it get to 648 mph or so (not that any car would actually go that fast in the game). It just goes to show how screwy things can get.

Was it GT3 or GT4 that you could get the Toyota 1 nearly vertical with the back wheels locked to the ground? I used to love to do it on the proving ground track to see just how fast I could go. It was always over 400mph.
 
Toronado
Wasn't this also the problem even back in GT2? I seem to recall something similar happening in that game.
Click to expand...
I think this problem was introduced in GT4 with the "auto-gearing" option which worked very similarly to the "max speed" setting in GT5 (basically there has not been much more than just a name change). On previous titles each gear ratio could have any value within a certain range. I'm pretty sure it was the case in GT1 where it was even possible for higher gears to have a shorter ratio than lower ones.
 
Basilea
I see the box, that you already posted a picture! Nothing more nothing less...
Click to expand...

You need to start it from a Windows Command Prompt to see the output.

Code: 
C:\Documents and Settings\Basilea\Downloads>java -jar Gearz.jar
 
I don't think the gear ratio screen is fatally flawed. Mainly because it does work. It just doesn't work the way the OP wants it to (and some others too).

But, I'm able to make the adjustments I want, so it does work for some people. For example, I wanted my GT 500 GTR to reach 100mph in third gear on Suzuka, but the other gears were fine. So, I manually adjusted 3rd until I could get to 100mph before hitting the rev limiter.

Gear ratio adjustment works OK for me.
 
SHIRAKAWA Akira
Even I could make something more usuable and technically correct in Java (really! I have attached it to this post in case you want to try) :
Click to expand...

NICE JOB Bros. !

I got same problem to adjust gearing, when Max speed over 380kph the Gearing UI is such a crap :guilty:

BTW will you update this tools soon?
 
TCSdisable
NICE JOB Bros. !

I got same problem to adjust gearing, when Max speed over 380kph the Gearing UI is such a crap :guilty:

BTW will you update this tools soon?
Click to expand...
I don't have any timetable, but if there's request for it, I'll keep working on it.
Any request for specific features in particular?
 
Do you know what formula GT5 uses to compute the gear ratios? It looks like it is "almost" a constant divided by speed. But in the lower gears, the constant increases and the increase is not quite linear.
 

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