Downshift protection removal

[Terry Rock]

How can I get rid of that blasted feature for good?
I've tried turning it off in menus and it still exist.
The darn thing does not work properly for me.
I can be in 5th gear going 60 or 70 mph, try to down-shift to select 4th gear and the gear won't select until I'm way below.
I absolutely hate that feature.

 

[Uff]

You just need to learn to drive properly. This will fix your issue.

 

[Coffer]

You just need to learn to drive properly. This will fix your issue.

Nah, being needlessly condescending won't solve anything, not to mention that you don't know if that's truly the case. I've been running into this issue too after the patch that introduced it and so have a few other people I know who absolutely do know how to drive. It's a lot easier to notice, but it also feels to me like the threshold has been lowered quite a bit. In particular, it now seems to be locking me out of downshifting for a short period of time even after dropping to a point where I could normally downshift, which I don't recall being a problem before.

 

[Brandon Wright]

I've been running into this issue too after the patch that introduced it and so have a few other people I know who absolutely do know how to drive.

Even Aris was triggering it and bitching about it in his tutorial streams. Now that I've adapted to it I very rarely trigger it, but like you said it does seem once it's triggered it kinda locks you out for a second or two sometimes.

 

[Coffer]

Even Aris was triggering it and bitching about it in his tutorial streams. Now that I've adapted to it I very rarely trigger it, but like you said it does seem once it's triggered it kinda locks you out for a second or two sometimes.

Yeah I've mostly adapted to it too, but when it happens it's very easily noticeable. If the lockout system really is real, it needs to be looked at.

 

[Radu Oros]

How can I get rid of that blasted feature for good?
I've tried turning it off in menus and it still exist.
The darn thing does not work properly for me.
I can be in 5th gear going 60 or 70 mph, try to down-shift to select 4th gear and the gear won't select until I'm way below.
I absolutely hate that feature.

With what car were you doing "5th gear going 60 or 70 mph, try to down-shift to select 4th gear and the gear won't select until I'm way below"?

 

[Ryno917]

I was one of those who really hated this after it was introduced. I haven't noticed it much lately, though.

Then again... I've mostly been driving cars with gated shifters, so that's probably why. Haven't spent much time in sequential/paddle cars in a while...

If anyone knows of a way to disable it, I'd like to know.

 

[Stereo]

To answer the question, it only exists on cars that have it irl, and it can't be removed from them.

 

[Gevatter]

How can I get rid of that blasted feature for good?
I've tried turning it off in menus and it still exist.
The darn thing does not work properly for me.
I can be in 5th gear going 60 or 70 mph, try to down-shift to select 4th gear and the gear won't select until I'm way below.
I absolutely hate that feature.

You claim sounds a bit unbelievable to be honest. Could you maybe post a video demonstrating your problems? If it is indeed buggy a video may help the devs adjust the settings for that specific car.

 

[Terry Rock]

You just need to learn to drive properly. This will fix your issue.

Should I?
nah!

 

[Coffer]

To answer the question, it only exists on cars that have it irl, and it can't be removed from them.

If F1 is anything to go by, it's much too extreme in AC right now. Look at Massa's pole lap in Austria in 2014 - he hits the downshift protection going into turn 4, but is able to downshift properly milliseconds later, way earlier than the game would allow you. I'd be very surprised if it was worse for other cars in real life, seeing as F1 is the kind of series where you currently need to save the engine the most.

You claim sounds a bit unbelievable to be honest. Could you maybe post a video demonstrating your problems? If it is indeed buggy a video may help the devs adjust the settings for that specific car.

You can't have driven many paddle cars recently if you haven't noticed it, frankly.

 

[Stereo]

If F1 is anything to go by, it's much too extreme in AC right now. Look at Massa's pole lap in Austria in 2014 - he hits the downshift protection going into turn 4, but is able to downshift properly milliseconds later, way earlier than the game would allow you. I'd be very surprised if it was worse for other cars in real life, seeing as F1 is the kind of series where you currently need to save the engine the most.

Sounds more like a case of Massa's talent being higher really... it'll let you downshift as soon as it thinks it's safe, there's no timed lockout other than whatever physical limit your controller hardware has (most won't send button presses more than for example 20 times per second). If you hit it milliseconds early, then you can hit it again after that short pause and it'll work fine. If you hit it a second early then you'll have to wait a whole second before it'll let you do it.

All it's doing is checking that when you are in the new gear you'll be under the redline. It's not like it's punishing you and letting other drivers get away with it.

 

[natedogg1867]

Yeah, no need to be needlessly condescending. DSP isnt perfect in any game that has it and there are minor issues with it here and there.

That said, there are also some completely legitimate issues that some cars had. The Exos (and S1 variant) both had DSP that was broken up until February or so. You would try to downshift, and it was simply impossible to rapid fire downshift in those cars. Contrasting it to the F138 and SF-15T, it was clear DSP was amiss in the Exos.

So, I put a bug report in on the official forum, and a few months later it was fixed. Thanks Aris!

Perhaps note which particular car you are having an issue with... because it may be a legitimate issue aside from poor driving technique.

However, often people just try to downshift way too fast in cars where you arent supposed to downshift rapidly like F1. So, there is a lot of user skill that goes into downshifting properly.

 

[Coffer]

it'll let you downshift as soon as it thinks it's safe

Doesn't line up with what I've found unless you're right about the hardware limitations, but there's no way anyone who isn't specifically testing for it is going to hit the 20 times per second limit unless it's a lot lower than you're saying, and this doesn't particularly look like a case of doing it too many times.

All it's doing is checking that when you are in the new gear you'll be under the redline. It's not like it's punishing you and letting other drivers get away with it.

Easy as it might be for you, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it when there are several people mentioning it, and as I said, it does not line up with what a friend (who, again, clearly knows how to downshift correctly) and I have found in a lot of cars. It would be easy enough if I was mashing the paddle too much or too early, but I specifically checked in these cars and I'm not.

Contrasting it to the F138 and SF-15T

To be fair, it also does seem to be much too lenient in the F138, and a slight bit in the SF15-T as well. It's very easy to damage the engine as in these cases the DSP stops kicking in way earlier than in games like AMS (which normally has okay DSP) and seemingly in real-life (again, judging from Massa's pole lap in the FW36, which falls in between those two cars year-wise). This makes me think that the DSP threshold is hardcoded for each car and doesn't necessarily care about the redline as it can be lower or higher than that, which would easily explain the old Exos bug. And yeah, I noticed that one too.

 

[Gevatter]

You can't have driven many paddle cars recently if you haven't noticed it, frankly.

Of course I run into the DSP occasionally when I mess up my downshifts, but I never noticed not being able to go from 5th to 4th going 60 or 70 mph like @Terry Rock said. That was the claim I was responding to. If that's indeed happening it's a bug and needs to be fixed, but we need evidence of that happening or least we need to know in which car that happened, so that others can test this.

 

[Terry Rock]

Go drive the Audi R8 LMS at the Nurburgring.
Just as you'd start down-shifting for the fast right-hander at turn six, is where I experienced it.
The right-hander is off-camber and slightly downhill, so you really need to 'bleed' the speed at least until the transition is complete and the car is straight.
Only then, can you really give it full throttle.
This means you have to get out of the throttle almost immediately after making the slight left at turn five..after the main grandstand.
So no throttle...really low revs....one, two, three pulls of the down-shift paddle...indicator stays in 5th gear...go sailing into the sand trap due to under-steer.

 

[Gevatter]

I'm going to try that and report back. Just to check, is that with standard gear ratios or did you change something? On a side note, in the AC controller options, what is your gear shift debouncing setting set to? The standard 50ms or higher?

 

[Rob Every]

The thing is with this silly idea, it seems a trifle inconsistent.

Sometimes you feel like you really buzz your motor, say at Nurburgring Gp into the first bend or into the final chicane, yet you are OK.

Yet others you get the dreaded thing come up when you seem to have merely shifted down a bit early.

Just seems a trifle inconsistent to cut in at times. But inconsistency is a theme in AC really so no shock.

 

[Radu Oros]

The thing is with this silly idea, it seems a trifle inconsistent.

Sometimes you feel like you really buzz your motor, say at Nurburgring Gp into the first bend or into the final chicane, yet you are OK.

Yet others you get the dreaded thing come up when you seem to have merely shifted down a bit early.

Just seems a trifle inconsistent to cut in at times. But inconsistency is a theme in AC really so no shock.

Why is it so hard to actually give objective feedback for devs to analyze and then work on it. That would be a more efficient path wouldn't it? People prefer to talk in riddles, criticize/insult the game and the devs, write vaguely, instead of contributing to make the game you're interested in, better.
Unless you consider your post a source of great feedback and devs can in this moment work on a fix for a possible problem that is bothering you.

Do you want to use your power as a customer and criticize the product you bought because you're entitled to that action? Then write something valuable towards what you consider a problem and think "if I were a dev would I be able to work with this information".

 

[Coffer]

Why is it so hard to actually give objective feedback for devs to analyze and then work on it. That would be a more efficient path wouldn't it? People prefer to talk in riddles, criticize the game and the devs, write vaguely, instead of contributing to make the game you're interested in, better.
Unless you consider your post a source of great feedback and devs can in this moment work on a fix for a possible problem that is bothering you.

Do you want to use your power as a customer and criticize the product you bought because you're entitled to that action? Then write something valuable towards what you consider a problem and think "if I were a dev would I be able to work with this information".

Believe it or not, a lot of people don't have unlimited time on their hands to use on endless testing and analysis. A lot of these findings are made during casual driving, while, you know, playing the game as opposed to being an unpaid bug tester. That does not make their findings any less valuable, and these threads exist for a good reason - to point out their findings and see if they are verified or denied by others. One person may not be able to or have the time to figure something out on their own, but with others they might just be able to. Simple as that.