A long time ago you used to get damage when changing gears in cars with H pattern, sequential or paddle shifters even if you used the clutch. The bottom line was you had to run with no damage at all to avoid gearbox meltdown all the time. Maybe its a quick workaround fix till they get it all working right. For those of us that go that far back with the game would agree its better this way for now.
Gearbox damage works for me. 1-2 laps without using clutch and gearbox starts to lock on one of gears or randomly selects them.
ok so then it seems I did not drive long enough :-D only tested for 1 lap or so and went back to the garage
More on clutch, gearbox and shifting here: https://forum.sector3studios.com/index.php?threads/auto-clutch-question.4918/
I also feel like clutch is working fine in manual clutch mode. It behaves like I expect pretty much, at least in cars that have h pattern in real life, since in sequential cars I use auto clutch - can't comment on those. It think it's new that now even with the clutch depressed, if you down shift too early you get a grind, again even before engaging clutch. I really like that as it's training me a bit against a bad habit I have of downshifting too early when braking hard. NSU, DTM92,TourClassics, Group 5, Procar, I always use manual clutch now. Main thing with downshift is make sure you revmatch (aka: learn heel toe)
So it seems we're getting differing clutch behaviour. I would expect to not be able to change gear if not depressing the clutch but I can, same as every manual vehicle I've ever driven in real life. Curious if it's a PC hardware thing or you have driven some really wierd cars in real life that didn't need the clutch pressed to change gear?
In the link from Johnny Guttmann it says that this are Dogboxes... (gearboxes for racecars that can be upshifted without using clutch).. so eventually we cannot compare it to the gearboxes of a normal car. The gearboxes of racecars are straight cut (stronger, smaller, lighter, louder) and boxes from normal cars are helical cut (bigger, heavier but silent).
Ive just had straight cut gears fitted in my road car, get it back Friday. I'll try changing gears without using the clutch and let you know the outcome. Straight cut or not changing down the box will would need clutch.
To be honest, I have not really tried much shifting without the clutch on cars that normally require it, i just use the clutch to shift - so i may just be wrong there - but as has been noted, even in road cars, with rev matching you can shift without clutch. As for these race cars IRL i'd just be talking out of my rear as to exactly how they should respond, but just doing standard h pattern shifting w/ clutch feels good to me.
Been reading up on it and have to say I really was uneducated on the subject. Quite looking forward to giving this new dog box technique a bash.
Don't forget in RRRE there is a setting for clutch bite point. For a race car you want to set it 50% or less. Other than that blipping just takes practice. I've been doing it about 3 years now and I don't even think about it any more. The only damage I cause is when I miss a shift, which does happen from time to time.
Yeah I had only set it to 1 or 3. I couldnt tell a difference. But I have started to blip on downshifts by heel-toe. Just need more practice in faster cars doing it. I havent turned auto clutch off again to test how well i'm doing yet. But I can tell the car is a lot more stable when doing it. And seems smoother.