Can I have Force Feedback through wheel on "clutch bite point"?

Hi!

I'm a driving instructor who was recently pointed to BeamNG by a student, and I'm having a lot of fun by making it feel somewhat like driving my actual car (a '21 VW Polo).

Other than the steering linearity which I needed to pinch, the most important change I made was the clutch deadzone and linearity, which really introduces that bite point "mechanic" if you will, and that makes it A LOT more realistic.

Now, all I would need to REALLY send it home, would be the option to simulate the rumbling of the car when the engine responds to the clutch pedal being released too quickly, or even more importantly, when releasing the clutch pedal while keeping the brake pedal pressed down.

This is, for instance, how I teach beginning students to do the hill-incline test at first, i.e.:
1) press brake and clutch pedals
2) keep brake pedal pressed
3) slowly release clutch pedal until the car starts to "rumble" (of course, this is the bite point, but I tend to avoid overly technical explanations to early students and focus on the sensory bits)
4) then keep the clutch pedal there, and move the right foot from the brake (should make the car advance slowly) to the gas, and carefully ease off the clutch pedal.

To simulate this, it is very important to be able to feel the rumble of a car when the engine is trying to force the clutch to rotate, but the line is blocked by the wheels not turning.

I'm using a Thrustmaster T300RS GT edition, and I know there is no FFB in the pedals, but okay... The rumbling of the car could be easily simulated through the wheel, right?

Is there any way to give the "car" (i.e. the wheel FFB...) a rumble while the clutch is engaging (i.e. between the deadzones of the clutch pedal) so you can really 'feel' that bite point?

I googled a lot, but all I find is topics explaining that there's no FFB in the clutch pedal, which I already know. If I'm missing something, feel free to point me in the right direction.

Thanks in advance, and hey, nice to meet you I guess

 

theoretically there are Pedals with FFB, they're just ridiculously expensive...
I think beamng even has support for them, so you might also be able to build something on your own

 

I was afraid so, but I was hoping maybe I wasn't the first one missing this jarring immersion breaker (at least to me), as it feels very weird to have *no* feedback from the clutch whatsoever, not even through the wheel vibrating. It's surprising that apparently I *am* the first one caring enough to bring it up, as any manual shift driver should notice that it's hard to realistically let the clutch pedal rise to the bite point and then hold it there for a bit, like you typically do in an IRL manual car. And I thought maybe a mod would already exist or something, that I just hadn't been able to find yet... Thanks anyway

Don't think I'm good enough of a programmer to create this myself

Yeah, I noticed, but I am not even asking for pedal FFB (which would be nice of course)... Just the wheel vibrating on the clutch bite point would already be great.

 

To be clear, what I'm talking about is not feedback to the actual PC game controller pedals, nor about forces that one would experience in the pedals of an IRL car.

I'm talking about the vibration, or rather the car shaking, generated when the energy coming from the engine towards the clutch, is greater than the energy the clutch is able to release to the rest of the drive train. (Hope my English makes sense here.) Whether because the wheels are blocked (brakes), or you're in too high a gear or you're letting the clutch pedal go up too quickly, whatever.

So in short, I think what would need to happen is to use two values:
PI = the power going into the clutch
PO = the power the clutch is able to release to the drive train

Then calculate (R = PI / PO), and if R is over a certain threshold value T, command some sort of shakiness to the FFB wheel (the shaky force as a multiplier by the difference between R and T).

Are these values PI and PO values that would be readily or easily available to a modder? I might finally have a reason to try my hand at my first game mod ever

 

Yes, I understand. The program would need to send FFB commands to the steering wheel, based on a custom calculation.

Thing is, I've never used LUA or done any game modding, but in a previous life I have done a lot of scripting in multiple Unix-based languages, scripting langues like AutoIt3 and AutoHotKey, and some application development in Python, Java, and JS frameworks like React and Angular. So I'm willing to look at a modding tutorial and seeing if little old driving instructor me still has it in him

I outlined the calculation I would need to do on which parameters (i.e. power going into clutch, and power that the clutch can release to rest of drive train) and the action I would need to take (i.e. make wheel go BRRR ).

Not asking anyone to do this for me! What I am specifically asking:
1) are these values that would be readily or easily available for a modding program to use, or would it be incredibly difficult to derive them?
2) is this something that a noob modder (though somewhat experienced programmer) could potentially do after following a few tutorials?

So in short... Do I have a shot at getting this done as a modding noob, in say like a weekend or two of learning and experimentation, or is this a learning curve that I'd have to become a professional for?

Thanks in advance for your guidance

 

Thanks for your efforts!

But I'm not sure what is not clear about what I mean to do

Let me try one more time, maybe it's a language barrier, or maybe it's my utter lack of knowledge about how BeamNG works, uhm, under the hood so to speak, or maybe I'm simplifying car mechanics.

I don't mean to change powertrain mechanics of any car, not at all, as the thing I'm talking about happens in *every* manual car IRL.

It has nothing to do with anything being out of balance... Every regular manual car will start to vibrate if you:
1) put the car in gear
2) keep the brake pressed
3) at the same time, slowly release the clutch pedal

... because the engine is trying to pour energy into the clutch, but the clutch can't release that power to the rest of the drive train because it's blocked by the brakes on the wheels.

If you let the clutch pedal come up too far, the engine will stall/stop/shutdown, but that slight moment before it stops, is when it will start shaking. That is where the bite point is. And that is the thing I'm trying to simulate, and as I see it, I would need to be able to derive the forces going into the clutch.

I really hope I'm being clear If not, well, then I'm probably missing something. Thanks again for bearing with me.
--- Post updated ---
So it's not about clutch pedal values, it's about clutch values, I guess... Which I simply would like to read and use to inform FFB commands, nothing needs to change.

 

Right. Yeah I meant every FWD car obviously RWD is a different story.

I thought I explained this in my OP, but maybe I wasn't clear there. The reason I would like this to be as realistic as possible is that this is how we teach beginning students to do a hill-incline-test without rolling backwards. It's practically a crude manual version of a simple hill-start-assist system that keeps your brakes locked until you have enough power to move forward.

What we tell our students is to "keep the brake locked while raising the clutch pedal, and once the car starts 'rumbling' a bit, don't move the clutch pedal any more and and slowly ease off the brake".

More advanced students don't need that approach, and obviously it is really bad for the clutch, but as I always say, if the car isn't happy, it shouldn't have become an instruction vehicle then I know many people like to use the hand brake instead of the foot brake, but in our experience, focusing on just the feet during these manoeuvres is just easier to get a student started.

Anyway, I've located the lua file, and the code looks entirely readable, so that is good news. I guess it's tutorial time to find out how to overlay my custom FFB commands over the existing ones, and how to read drive train information. I've started a few tutorials but they seem to be mostly about editing cars and car parts, nodes, materials etc..

Hey, thanks for your patience!