so I have noticed some problems with the damage you get - it is set to simulation

1. sometimes you are not charged for minor damage when someone hits you in some cases I lost my back bumper and still nothing to pay at the end of the race

2. so down shifting to fast can hurt the trans on most cars some are more delicate than others - but shifting into Reverse while going 70 mph causes no damage at all? - and hitting the rev limiter doesn't cause damage?

3. you can jump the car pretty high and cause no damage at all but if on Laguna Seca at the corkscrew if you go to fast and the fromt comes down not nearly as hard as it does in some tracks that you actually jump in and you get suspension damage - I have watched the replays and you jump way higher

4. no damage for driving off road at over 150 mph on grass or dirt even gravel although you slow down fast or rim damage for hitting the Red/White or Blue/White stripes while drifting sideways


so why not have the option to turn off damage (for everything other than body work and radiator and tires) without points loss since the damage makes no sense anyway - don't get me wrong this game is great to play and looks OK I got GT4 for the PS2 and it plays in 1080i as well - I got to say it looks just about the same really I will take some pics with my camera and post them side by side just less jagies but not mush the cars look a little better in F2 but GT4 is still a top player for me just wish I could use the 360 controller (if this can be done PM me please)

Hitting the rev limiter won't cause damage in a real car. I use a multi step rev limiter to launch my real-life Eclipse. The rev limiter is there to prevent damage.

Its there to try to minimize damage by not letting the engine go even further, not prevent it. If you overrev a engine in any racing series in real life that I'm familiar of besides modern F1 where its impossible these days, you run the risk of causing damage.

There are two types of over-rev. One is from down shifting at too high a speed. A rev limter will not prevent the mechanical linkage between the wheels and the engine from over-revving your engine.

But when you are sitting still and free-revving your engine or if you forget to up shift while accelerating, a properly programmed rev limiter will prevent the engine from going past the speed at which any damage will occur.

Often times, a rev limiter is programmed to be a little higher than the "red line" that is painted on the tach. My Eclipse's engine, for instance, has a 7000RPM red line. But its rev limiter is programmed to be 7500RPM when it is stock. I can re-program the rev limiter to be as high as I want, though. When I drag race, I set the rev limiter to be 8500RPM because if I hit the rev limiter, my drag pass is wasted. I know from experience from other people that 8500RPM is actually safe with my engine. Plenty of people are still making power up there. But my engine doesn't actually make any power up there. I shift at 7500RPM. If I put in stiffer valve springs, had head work done, lightened up the valve train, and got a larger turbo to feed all that extra air, I could probably shift even higher than 8500RPM. Lots of people go to 9000RPM or more.

A stock Eclipse's engine won't even make enough power to make it worth while to shift past 6500RPM. So most people will shift well before the rev limiter because they can sense that the car isn't accelerating as hard past 6500RPM.

I do know that there are some cars out there where the rev limiter and the red line on the tach are the same RPM. Kindof a pain, since it doesn't really give you any wiggle room. But then again, the red line is just a number.

I guess what I'm saying is that hitting the rev limiter shouldn't over rev an engine. Manufacturers want to prevent over-rev damage because over-rev damage can cause warranty claims. So the both the engineers and the bean counters that want to keep the company from incurring too many warranty claims set the rev limiter to an engine speed that is below the point at which damage will occur. Of course, this may not be true for absolutely every car. But for most performance vehicles it absolutely is, since it is in the best interest of the manufacturer. And same goes for most ordinary vehicles, as well.

yea hitting the rev limiter might not cause damage BUT shifting into reverse at 70 mph will cause major damage to the gear box unless there is something preventing you from actually shifting but in a normal manual I am not aware of any such thing

also if this "high tech" racing gear box can prevent me from over reving my engine then it can prevent me from down shifting at all if it would cause damage

yea hitting the rev limiter might not cause damage BUT shifting into reverse at 70 mph will cause major damage to the gear box unless there is something preventing you from actually shifting but in a normal manual I am not aware of any such thing

also if this "high tech" racing gear box can prevent me from over reving my engine then it can prevent me from down shifting at all if it would cause damage

I haven't driven a lot of different manuals (Volkswagen, Nissan, Hyundai, Toyota) but the ones I've driven had mechanisms to prevent shifting into reverse once at speed. For example, in a Jetta, you had to push the shifter down to even attempt to shift into reverse but the shifter won't allow you to do it once you're moving forward. A Nissan Sentra required your to "click" over to shift into reverse, but you can't click over when moving forward. However, my Nissan NX2000 would have a slight crunching if i was slowly rolling forward in neutral and then tried to shift into reverse, but I didn't try to go past the crunching sound out of fear for damage.

As for overrevving the engine, I never actually tried to do it in a real car but I know my pseudomanual automatic shifting IS300 will not allow you to downshift if the speed is too high nor will it let you over-rev the engine. But the IS300 indicator is lame. It may say you're in gear 2 on the indicator but actually be in a higher gear to prevent overrevving. I don't know if this is actually the case (only read about it) but I haven't been able to overrev when I was in "manual" mode.