Dev Log

P3 Milestone 1

As this project is shaped out to be a stick shift driving simulator, we first had to get the groundwork set up. For milestone 1, we aimed to get a product that can be playtested with a very barebones feature set. Although it is possible to recreate these driving sims with expensive rigs which are also most often geared towards racing enthusiasts and to be used recreationally, this product aims to teach the basics of stick shift driving to a newcomer and can be implemented within a driving school's ecosystem. There is still a large market outside of the US for stick shift cars, and many students' first time trying to learn a stick shift is with an instructor in a real car, where the stakes are much higher than in VR. Having taken inspiration from Gearbox Software's “Desert Bus VR”s vehicle handling mechanics, we look to come up with something that's a useful educational tool. For those reasons, in the first sprint for our project, we've created a rough version of the parking lot-esque structure and the vehicle in which our user will sit in. We have also implemented logic to be able to accelerate, brake, and turn with respect to the car's turning radius. One issue we're in the process of fixing is that the car object is closely attached to the VR camera which causes some issues when looking left-to-right, causing the car to rotate in the Z axis along with our camera. We are also currently turning with the joystick, but we expect the former problem to be solved once we implement turning mechanics with the steering wheel object, which is planned for the upcoming milestone. With this project, we aim to reach out to driving schools within the US and/or outside the US to get their feedback on feasibility and potential product fit, to rapidly improve / modify our current project goals.

P3 Milestone 2

For milestone 2 we focused on getting the core functionality we needed for our final product. Our main goals were to make driving the car feel more realistic, add a working stick shift, and make progress on our grabbable steering wheel. Our product is meant to be purchased by driving schools or individuals who would like to learn how to drive a stick shift without putting themselves or other drivers at risk. Thus, being able to provide a realistic driving experience is core to our user's experience as it makes the transition from our simulator to a real car as seamless as possible. This week we added an engine idling sound and an engine revving sound that plays when you accelerate. An accelerometer was also added to allow the player to gauge their speed and understand when they need to shift gears. The stick shift model was added and can be interactively grabbed and positioned to affect the speed of the car in the future. In the coming weeks we want to complete our steering wheel implementation and integrate gear changes to how we handle the speed of the car. We also want to start planning out different levels that emphasize usage of the stick shift.

P3 Alpha

As we near the end of the project, the mechanics of our car are much more realistic. For the alpha version of Stick Shift Simulator we put in significant work into the steering wheel. The steering wheel now turns smoothly in either direction instead of the abrupt 45 degree turns it was making earlier. Additionally, it now actually changes the direction that the car is moving in fairly accurately in an almost true to life manner. Once the steering wheel is released it also normalises back into neutral position when moving as an actual car's does. The next thing we turned our focus to was the actual stick shift. The new stick shift logic now affects the RPM i.e. the speed of the car. This means that the player can only reach a certain max speed in first gear, a little higher in second gear and so on. The reverse gear also works as expected. Based on feedback from Milestone 2, there is now some basic UI in the form of a HUD that displays the car's current gear along with the RPM. Additionally, the status of the clutch is now displayed and when its off, the stick shift becomes ungrabbable. A small but noticeable improvement (not noticeable in video) is that the car now accelerates with haptic feedback on the VR controllers. The intensity of this vibration scales with the speed of the car. Additionally, the gear of the car set by the stick shift now controls how fast the car can go. This completes the development of the mechanics of the car. The next step is to develop multiple different maps and an actual tutorial. There have been some changes made to the website too. All placeholder (read made-up) sections have been removed for now until we have actual content, which we expect to have up in the next couple of days. Our pricing model is still a work in progress and we expect to have that locked in within the next few days too.

P3 Gold

With Stick Shift Simulator all but ready for release, we've focused our last sprint's efforts on realism and immersion. We have built out a larger city map for users to be roaming in, we have also made significant improvements to how RPMs are calculated, to keep our values in a realistic range and allow for users to shift gears in accordance to their RPM figure. We have added a controls UI, alongside with a tutorial on how to drive a manual transmission that made our product self-descriptive, which was a point of feedback during previous playtests. Building on our educational aspect, we added a real-time notification to when users should be shifting up and down, giving them visual cues instead of relying on static text. We have made the gear shifter much more realistic, which is now locked in place when grabbed. To implement the feedback we received on the HUD, we have moved the HUD elements onto the car directly. As a long-forgotten feature, we have also added the neutral gear in this iteration of the product, allowing us to mimic real driving conditions even more. The stick shift can only be grabbed when the clutch is engaged and gas and clutch cannot be used at the same time to teach drivers best practices. We've fully touched up our website, replacing the placeholder content with actual content, solidifying our pricing structure which now includes a limited feature-set free tier. With that, we are ready to announce the first fleshed-out standalone version of the Stick Shift Simulator. Enjoy!