Hello! At this point I've figured it's worth writing a post about clutch damage and how it works. For starters to enable clutch damage, you need to have mehanical failures enabled. The basic variables of clutch damage are temperature and wear. You accumulate wear by slipping the clutch. If you apply more pressure (as in press clutch input in less), it'll wear faster as long as it's slipping. Also how fast it slips as in the RPM difference between clutch's gearbox-side vs engine RPM has a big effect. And depending on the car and clutch, it can wear faster if it's slipped when the gearbox-side is spinning fast. This is a concern when driving an h-shifter car and not letting the revs match before dropping the clutch - or even not lifting throttle at all between shfits, which is very bad. This isn't really a concern with sequentials if they have autolift. Wear won't instantly start degrading clutch performance (how much torque it can hold, how fast it "bites"), but it will become more sluggish after extensive wear and eventually slip from sudden jolts or if you don't let it settle after a shift. And with a lot of wear it can't hold the engine's full torque at all. Wear is a long term issue if you mostly drive the car normally and especially with sequential gearboxes. The first ill effect you will get if you slip the clutch a lot with major pressure is overheating. Easily achieved if trying to gain a better start with too much clutch slip in cars that do not handle this - more on this below. This will make the clutch slip prematurely and cause a lot of wear in a short time. Never let it slip like this, but instead baby the throttle and let the clutch cool down. You'll notice that it's possible to destroy the clutch like this in seconds. If you believe your clutch is gone, go to the pits with mechanical damage repairs on and they will handle it. One more thing is that carbon clutches like on F1 cars (F-Classic onwards atm) have more bite when they heat up. This also works if you have mechanical failures disabled. It'll make them a bit tricky to launch with slip technique unless you're aware of this increase in bite after brief slip. --- Clutch limits per car Some context for sudden clutch damage. Race cars don't necessarily handle clutch abuse all that well. They can take moderate abuse - which racing always brings - but not really more than that. Racing clutches tend to be as small as possible to remove driveline inertia while holding the engine's torque. This also enables mounting the engine lower which improves CoG. As you can imagine there is a lot of torque and heat, and not that much heat capacity involved when slipped for even a second with strong pressure. As a rule of thumb, F1 clutches are designed to do a standing start with some clutch slip to prevent bogging down in low RPMs or starting too big of a burnout from dropping the clutch too harshly. GT3s are not designed for this. However since standing starts are popular in practical gameplay, GT3s in AMS2 are designed to do a decent standing start. The clutch shouldn't fail if you simply start with moderate RPMs and throttle, and quickly release the clutch input. It's a compromise between a gentle start and not bogging down too much in lower RPM. If you dare, you can disable traction control and try letting the tires most of the abuse with a small burnout which helps keep RPMs up until the car is moving along nicely. --- Clutch temperature and wear monitoring As for cluch damage info, this hasn't been added yet to any built-in HUD. But it's available through the latest shared memory header. --- Too weak of a clutch? If you feel some clutch fails too easily, please tell us why you think that is and we'll consider tweaking it. We're of course also taking notes ourselves as this is still a new feature . As I'm writing this there are some tweaks waiting for the next beta build already. For example auto clutch shouldn't cause any heat and wear when it's doing something as it doesn't behave as well as a good manual driver - but this is only if you don't add any manual clutch input yourself.
Great summary. I do have a couple question in regards to the clutch's bite point and range. With the big variety of pedal setups out there (and depending on the cars of course), is the clutch bite point gonna be put at an earlier depression point (high input level) and will the grip increase range be extended to make clutching more forgiving on entry level pedals? I ask because right now I have little feel for when I reach the bite point and the range feels very short/direct. Of course this could also be my perception since we're driving race cars with race clutches (for the most part) and that I have G29 pedals with pots that I need to dust off every couple months.
This is a good idea and I have thought about it as well. I understand the challenge with various hardware. For racing clutches it kind of works as it should right now as generally speaking they are not known for their ergonomics which is where organic and kevlar clutches shine. Indeed for regular organic road clutches it'd be good if there was a gentler curve around the useful torque capacity range as it increases with less clutch input (= clutch engaging more). I would like there to be this kind of clear difference in drivability between clutch types so there are ups and downs with each within the sim.
Probably I should post here oez said: ↑ I've written about clutch damage here: https://forum.reizastudios.com/threads/clutch-damage.24692/ oez said: ↑ Some context for sudden clutch damage. Race cars don't necessarily handle clutch abuse all that well. They can take moderate abuse - which racing always brings - but not really more than that. V1.3.5.6.1990 isn't the release candidate I hope, I can't make a single pit-stop without burning my clutch in the Formula-Classic-Gen3. There is no way they can handle a little abuse. The clutch is good enough for one use, than it s gone. Is this the state we can expect when released? I hope we get an indicator of clutch wear in the HUD together with the release,I think I need it to learn how the new clutch works
That one is getting a slight upgrade. But Mansell did slip and almost ruin his clutch at Austria on the second start. I forget the exact year, but that’s the reality when you make them as small as possible. Afterwards he said that they aren’t really designed for multiple starts. Mind you I noticed that I couldn’t do a single hard start so atm it’s indeed too weak.
V1.3.5.8 Clutch wear is usable now (F-Classic Gen3M2), Indicator is still welcome I could do several starts but still burned up my clutch by letting it slip for a while
You have made my life a living hell with this, I can no longer abuse my clutch. Oh how karma has come back to strike me Great stuff Oez and thanks for the write up. Its very helpful having information like this for us users who don't realise they have been burning out the clutch
You are known to destroy a clutch or two on your streams so I see where you're coming from . If anyone runs into a broken clutch after many laps, I'd love to hear about it! For sure many will overheat their clutch initially when abusing it as is habit with sims in general since there's no penalty (although there are at least two other sims that have punishing clutch damage) running into this feature. And our door is still open if you think some car shouldn't have it as fragile as it is. But what's interesting is if you get trouble after many laps. I know Donny here did with the C3R when it was still one of the handful cars in the initial clutch damage rollout a couple months back.
I think I had some clutch damage with a P3, but not sure. Perhaps I was in the wrong gear. The acceleration was suddenly a little slower than usual, but once I noticed this, and swapped gears a few times it was all fine. But I suspect I was daydreaming and in the wrong gear.
Hi, congratulations on the great functionality and simulation on the clutch, I don't know if you can answer this video. many people to get a better start, do this, accelerate to the maximum with the gearbox in neutral, and engage the gear once the light is green. Such a thing in reality would be impossible, for obvious reasons, one of all is the wheel spin that wastes a lot of time, subsequently it is not possible to do this without the clutch being severely affected, also you should put a rev limiter block when the gearbox is in neutral. can you solve this?
I assume it is the new clutch damage but I have done two races now in the Porsche GTE and both times I have ended up with the car revving whilst in gear but not going anywhere. My start procedure was to have hand clutch in, car in gear and revs up high, then let the clutch out off the line and the car revs away without picking up speed, I can change up through the gears bit the car doesnt pick up speed. Hasn't happened with any other cars yet.
For those interested, go to 1:35:10 of the video in the link below. Its the last 4 minutes of that 30 minute C3R race where I expeience clutch slip due to wear. When I shift up the gears, lift my clutch pedal and try to get on the throttle quickly, the clutch itself doesn't release properly and I over rev in the higher gear. I think even going over a crest caused the clutch to slip a bit at one point too.
You can get away with that if you let the clutch out quickly. A go to way in Porsche Cup cars from what I read (comment from a real Cup driver) to just let the wheelspin do the slipping with that great 911 rear traction. This might require you to bind it to an analog control though, because it lets it out slowly when bound to a button. But I do agree and see a point here. It shouldn't be possible to switch from N to gear like that. @Marc Collins pointed out the same thing to me earlier. Alas at the moment it's the only way to get a good burnout if you don't have any analog control to bind your clutch to. If not for the clutch burning, in some cars with high 1st gearing, letting the clutch out too slowly also avoids driven wheels breaking away at high RPM so you may not get a burnout started that way. I tried it locally with clutch bound to a button so it won't even let it out as fast as I would prefer, but it's still in half a second or so. I can still manage four launches like that back to back. Fifth one gets going initially, but then slips. If there's more time between launches, the clutch cools down and you can get away with many more. I tried with both TC on and off. Are you sure your hand clutch doesn't partially engage the clutch? So when it's in it's actually at 100% input. If not and sitting at 75% for example, that could do it with enough time given to preheat the clutch. FWIW it uses the same clutch model as all other GTEs and GT3s.
I understand that those who don't have an analog button are more penalized in the start. But unfortunately, many Sim racing also look for this detail, and seeing what many do to accelerate to the maximum with the gearbox in neutral and engage the gear without even pressing the clutch button, since there is the anti-stall on the GT3, not is the best. also because in this way there is also a better start than those who use the analog clutch, and therefore basically if you want to start well you have to do this trick which is not at all realistic and makes the starts arcade. It seems to go back many years, in the grand touring parades in the start of the race.
Well I did try it with clutch as a button (911 GTE) and it works the same for me without burning the clutch. I've tried to make it so that slipping the clutch any more than that is bad so there isn't really an advantage from a proper clutch input with GT cars. Maybe there still is though, it's a fine balance between proper penalty for slipping the clutch on purpose and burnt clutches for no reason. But I agree that going from neutral to 1st with full revs is indeed suspicious to say the least.
yes you are right, maybe insert a rev limiter when it is in neutral, or once you switch from neutral to 1st gear, to lower the revs to a minimum and to enter the 1st gear, it would not be bad.
I m happy I finally Found an explanation on what s happend to me sometimes. ( Stock on the starting grid with gear engaged but no forward move at Rev up). I usually use the clutch ( analog pedal) to limit the wheel spin and have a good and fast start as I was doing when I actually raced. However, with GT3 mostly, sometimes F1, I get stuck on the grid with AMS2. It explain also why sometimes pitstop takes long Time whitout any obvious damage.( With damage repair ON). As I never raced IRL such category of car I never noticed this behavior. Indeed a clutch wear Indicator could be cool.. but stressfull at the same Time. Never had any Clutch issue otherwise than at race start,.this is why I.was suspecting my pedal box software or so . Glad I sorted it out. Thanks for the detailed explanation
Hello, if I'm doing anything wrong, please let me know, I will learn to drive a car if it makes sense. I used my clutch to start into the race with the Corvette GTE. Quickly it got broken. Happens to me many times and so I lost nearly 300 points in ranking. Very disappointing. But take a look and I'm happy to get this explained...
