Flatspots

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by PLAYLIFE, Jun 17, 2013.

  1. Spinelli

    Spinelli Banned

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    Weird I have had two G25s over a 3 or so year period, and a friend of mine had one as well. With wheel pointed completely straight I had no FFB. Even in RFactor 1 with the FFB set to full to get the wheel vibrations simulating engine rev vibrations It would only kick in once I moved my wheel a few degrees left or right.

    Also, you may not feel anything in your real life wheel when its centred, but im sure you still feel bumps, rattles, g forces, locked brakes through your body and the car etc when your wheel is straight :). Sims arent 100% just translation of wheel forces, if they were then we wouldnt be able to drive these sims the way we do. 75% or more of real life car feeling does not come from the wheel, but the g forces, shakes, seat of the pants etc. Many of these forces are simulated through FFB in our sims in order to make up for all the forces we would feel in real life elsewhere not through the wheel. So we need forces in the centre, even if a real life car doesnt have much forces/feel through its actual steering wheel when centred.
     
  2. kaptainkremmen

    kaptainkremmen Registered

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    I don't want canned effects. My wheel rotates left and right, I don't want it to try and be a tactile transducer as well. It asks the motors to do too much and the feedback I want gets dulled.
     
  3. Lazza

    Lazza Registered

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    I wonder what your settings were, if that was the case?

    In Windows' game controller interface, where it shows the wheel and pedal positions, it has some 'canned' effects that are activated by hitting the POV switch and the buttons (testing just now with my G27, the POV gives left and right force, while all the buttons seem to do an identical 'tyre blowout'). The left- and right-pulling forces don't die at centre, nor does the blowout.

    In rF2 running over grass at speed gives FFB, and again this is as strong at centre as it is to either side. If it did nothing at centre the wheel would actually never be affected if you kept it straight, but it most certainly is.

    I can't remember if this was different with the G25 (and no longer have it to test), but I would have thought it wouldn't have changed in that area. I certainly don't remember feeling more forces when I switched to a G27, just that there was less underlying friction so the same forces were easier to feel.
     
  4. Lazza

    Lazza Registered

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    To be fair, a lot of what Spinelli is talking about is not 'canned'. When you're in a real car you can feel it get out of shape very early through the seat, you don't really feel anything in the wheel until it goes farther. If you produce only realistic wheel forces in a sim you completely miss that early warning you'd get in real life, so you either need a FFB seat/rig (using rotation to alert you to the situation) or have it put through the wheel if that's your only FFB device.

    I do agree you don't want overkill, and I never liked the engine vibration or brake lockup feedback, but I suppose that's personal preference. I think 'normal' wheel forces, plus some extra feedback for when things are starting to go wrong, is still pretty clean. rF2 does a good job of that in my opinion.
     
  5. Spinelli

    Spinelli Banned

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    Exactly, it's not "canned", It's just how the ffb output is related to the physics.

    If our ffb was as dead feeling as many real life steering systems out there, then we wouldn't be able to drive these cars the way we do.
     
  6. Marek Lesniak

    Marek Lesniak Car Team Staff Member

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    Yes, they are and no, we don't - sims are harder than real life... because in modern top sims you get no canned effects at all (well, in rF 2 you can turn on some but that is because want to). Everything goes straight from steering rack :)

    Oh, come on Spinelli, you probably know that already :)
    In our sims you get raw forces coming from tires through steering rack. There are no elastic parts in suspension. Suspension itself is 100% stiff in sims. Also, you get no power steering (and steering damper, which you might find in some road cars).
    Power steering is what dampens most of the forces coming from tires. Uniballs provides some damping too but if you have typical rubber inserts, they provide some more dampening. Sum all of that... you have the answer and the reason, why you don't feel as much.

    Take gokarts for example (even those supermarket amateur el-cheapos). There is no power steering. You basically get raw forces straight from tires and you can feel much more about what happens with front tyres.... but on the other hand, you don't have suspension.
    Suspension have it's own influence on how steering works. That's why with soft suspension you will get a better feeling for weight transfer than in a super stiff top of the shelf race car.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 21, 2013
  7. Lazza

    Lazza Registered

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    No, it's not just the steering rack. There is definitely a little 'help' when it comes to catching slides, and you'd never get that strong a reaction from an early slide through the steering rack. Most of the time there's probably nothing extra (and nor should there be, if you're within the limits anything you feel in real life is an expected reaction to your own inputs - adding FFB doesn't make sense) but in certain situations something is added to make up for the real-life -> sim shortfall.

    This is separate to actual canned effects, whether that's 'FFB' for locked wheels, engine vibe, rumble strip pull, or whatever.
     
  8. PLAYLIFE

    PLAYLIFE Registered

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    Cheers mate, will try those as my basis and tinker from there :cool:
     
  9. DurgeDriven

    DurgeDriven Banned

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    Off topic but try x7 wear at Zolder in a 1960s

    It is the place I slide a F3 more then anywhere so far and even x4 tears them to pieces. :)
     
  10. Spinelli

    Spinelli Banned

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    LesiU, I think you misunderstand part of my post. I know you feel MUCH, MUCH less in sims than you do in real life, that's exactly why a perfect physics sim will/should be more difficult than real life.

    I disagree though that sims just have a simple "ffb from steering rack, set it and forget it, easy, simple, programming done" method of ffb. If they did then they wouldn't all have such massively different feelings, and massively different variances from car to car, sim to sim, etc. Also, we feel things in the sim through ffb that we wouldn't feel in real life if you concentrate only on the steering feel.
     
  11. clevytr6

    clevytr6 Registered

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    I believe I said something like " on a level or smooth road". Anyway, I'm not arguing any point other than saying I feel bumps, g forces, and locked wheels going straight on my G25. All the above would effect steering components and are translated to my wheel. Default FFB is vague to me and I turn it up the multiplier to 2-2.5, depending on the car. I can feel the flat spots more when the filter is turned down below 2, but I felt it allows too much feedback and placed it on 4. Need to test more. Since I've owned this G25 for so long, it is possible I do not realize what I'm missing with a more modern wheel and improved drive system.
     
  12. Marek Lesniak

    Marek Lesniak Car Team Staff Member

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    Those differences come from different suspension geometry, parameters, different tyres, mass, CG etc.
    Actually, that's the reason for such different behaviour - all of that has an impact on resulting force feedback.

    Which things you don't feel in a real car (but without any kind of power steering), which you do in a sim?
     
  13. kaptainkremmen

    kaptainkremmen Registered

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    Can you give me some examples to test?
     
  14. Spinelli

    Spinelli Banned

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    In my experience of F1600s, F2000s and some other stuff, I could feel in a high speed corner the rear end doing tiny little slips, re-grip, slip, re-grip, so small that you dont even have to correct them yet with the steering. I can feel (not all the time lol) when the brakes are close to locking. I can feel, in a high speed sweeper, when the rear (or front) is very close to sliding, but its not actually sliding to the point you have to make any corrections yet. I can go on. All of that can be felt in real life, BUT, it was not felt through the wheel, but through the chassis/seat/seat of your pants, through g-forces, and through pedals as well. So there is TONS you dont feel in the steering wheel itself of a real car, that you do feel in sims.

    There is TONS you feel in real life that does not come from the wheel. Infact 75% of what you feel in real life does not come from the wheel, but the chassis/seat of your pants and g-forces. Not only that, but that 25% that you do feel in the wheel, gets felt later than the seat of the pants, and also later than your real life visual cues.
     
  15. Lazza

    Lazza Registered

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    A member in our league set up his FFB wheel properly for the first time in rF2 just the other day, having spent years driving rF1 without FFB at all, then for a short time with FFB and rF2 but with basically just a centring spring rather than actual FFB. Having stepped him through some of the basic configuration options the first thing he said was:

    "When you get the arse-end out in a corner the wheel pushes into the slide, doesn't it?"

    A real wheel in a real car, with or without power steering, doesn't react that quickly to what the back of the car is doing. Yes, as the car gets more sideways the wheel will tend to pull in the same direction, but it's not as sharp or as early as you feel in rF2 (it'll be a more gradual drop-off of force, pretty much exactly the reverse of turning into a corner because that's effectively what's happening). It's a perfect example of adding a little to the raw FFB in an effort to make up for what you can't feel through the seat.

    At the same time it's not harsh enough that a new simmer will stand up and say "this is BS! I don't want help with my steering!", and that's a good thing.
     
  16. kaptainkremmen

    kaptainkremmen Registered

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    Interesting. Not sure I agree with you :).... but interesting nonetheless.
     
  17. Spinelli

    Spinelli Banned

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    Post #54. Hard to test because it's based on real life F1600, F2000 and some other cars, but you can get the idea through a road car and a kart. Tons of what you feel in sims is also felt in real life, however unlike the sim, it's not really (if at all) felt through the steering wheel in real life, but from the "FFB" of your body being connected to the car, and also g-force feelings.
     
  18. kaptainkremmen

    kaptainkremmen Registered

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    I understand this part.

    I am having problems determining how or when RF2 communicates more than real life via the FFB in my wheel.
     
  19. Wawotsch

    Wawotsch Registered

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    Somewhere I must have modified my FFB settings in a way that I don't feel any flat spots (no clue anymore what changes, was against too heavy rumbling in the grass). Good FFB elsewhere.

    Now: how fair is a feature that can be turned off so easily? In a way that is hard to be called cheating, because it is officially open to user side modifications?

    I remember flat spotting in nKpro as a good measure to avoid all these clouds in the braking zone, it would be nice to detach it from any client side FFB setting.
     
  20. Lazza

    Lazza Registered

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    Some people have non-FFB wheels, and have had for years out of preference (probably started in GPL or similar when FFB wasn't as common, though doubt that covers them all). There is sometimes the argument that they have an unfair advantage because they can put the wheel where they want, whereas with FFB you'll always have a little unwanted movement. To balance that, obviously a large part of the purpose of FFB is to actually feel more about what's going on, so it's always a question mark how those 2 compare.

    Flatspots I would say are less of an issue. Sure, it might affect your car slightly if you have a wobble/vibration through the wheel compared to someone who doesn't, but the main performance effects of the flatspot (cornering/braking performance, car instability) are equal with or without the FFB.

    *Compare this to your mentioned clouds in the braking zones - people can elect to turn smoke down or even off completely. That's a much bigger discrepancy than some FFB.
     

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