A Message For ISI

When you are in control and you hit the brakes, you subconsciously resist the gforces. Same goes for shifting and turning. Have you ever driven aggressively with a passenger and noticed they look all dramatic with their heads flying all over the place? As a passenger you have no warning of what is going to happen so you get thrown all over the place which makes judging the limits of the car more difficult. Being a passenger with someone driving aggressively is terrifying (even more terrifying when it isn't on a racetrack).

I am sure the lack of wheel feedback adds to this disconnected feeling, but at about the same ratio that it would impact the driver.

 

This is an good point. It reminds me of the EnduRaces mod where they went for realism on the tire skid/scrub sounds which made it very hard to tell when you were close to the limit when turning and braking. If you changed the skid/scrub multi in the sfx file the mod instantly became easier to drive. But in a real car I could very easily drive very close or even past the limit with ear plugs in or headphones turned up very loud. It would definitely impact my abilities. But not as much as removing gForces would.

 

+ 1000

This basic point is missed or misunderstood by all the engineering-minded folks out there striving for perfection in simulation.

The best sim is one that combines almost realistic inputs and factors, but massages things just enough that our brains and bodies can relate to it properly. This becomes so much more challenging as the hardware that's available (triple screens, motion simulators, etc., etc.) becomes so much more diverse than in the olden days when everyone was forced to use a 13" monitor with a joystick.

 

Right but race tires don't screech and squeal like they do in most mods, hell decent street tires hardly even screech like most mods. But this is something we have to have to compensate for the lack of gForces.

 

My grandfather do this to me. And he does not drive "aggressively". Its just scary no matter the speed.

 

I went back and watched some of my AutoX videos and your right, they make more noise than then a recalled. Mine aren't even close to the level of sound I hear in your video though. Maybe because I was on tarmac and you were partially on grasscrete. Not sure what tires you were on. I ran Dunlop Z1 Star Specs the last time I raced. They are very quiet. Anyways, my point is that most mods seriously exaggerate the sound, which is a good thing. I don't think anyone will argue that.

 

After your explanation I better understand what you meant Lazza. However those inputs, as reaction of the car, etc, that you are talking about are also in the sim. Aren't they? For sure with the added difficulty of noticing that you are losing the front or the rear makes it more difficult.
As I saidbefkre, human brain is far more advanced than getting sensations from just one source. It will adapt to almost anything. When you walk or ride a bike the equilibrium is based on many sensations. Blind people can ride a bike on an open field in terms of maintain equilibrium. They lack one important input as it is sight, but the g forces and the equilibrium within the ears can compensate. Maybe it will not be as precise. However they can correct their position to avoid falling. Besides these people further develop the remaining sensors than a normal person such as hearing and smelling and sensing. Can you read braille? I can't but with practice you start distinguishing the dots.

I think that sim racers also develope these other sensings such as hearing, FFB and view to compensate for the lack of g forces. However it takes time and we all have seen our improvements not in driving itself but also knowing how far from the limit we are at each moment.
That's the reason why I think that having a real FFB will definitely help a lot in this perception. As you said some people can be fast even without a good FFB or even without any FFB but I dont think they are as fast as when FFB is awesome.

In rf2 I like FFB a lot compared to any other sim that I have tried. From what it has been said, it is because they better simulated the steering rack itself. I didnt read anywhere that the improvements come from tweaking FFB to compensate for the missing reactions in the butt. I would love to see ISI's technical approach on all this FFB subject. Maybe Tim can gather this information from the department responsible of it.

To the one mentioning the engineer type minds or whatever he said and supporting that FFB needs to be faked.

Answer please why one FFB device is better than another one... is it because it provides a better fake to help driving compensating lacks or because it provides a more realistic sensation?

You know my opinion about it.

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That's because they aren't. It is directly connected to the suspension.

I agree with your argument about the brain adapting to feedback. But this just supports the idea of providing canned or fake FFB over realistic. I personally vote for realistic forces but exaggerated. As others have stated, most cars don't provide that much feedback in the wheel. It's mostly car dependant. Take your power steering belt off and go for a spin if you want to see the contrast. Really what it comes down to is people really don't rely on the wheel feedback that much because gforces are so much more valuable so the wheel feedback goes unnoticed. If you took gforces away from a real car then wheel feedback would become more important. Kind of like you said about a person who is blind having better hearing than people that can see. Is it that they really hear better or is it that their brain gives sound a higher priority?

As for one motor being better than another I would say torque but more important (IMO) would be latency. Latency would be more dependant on the controller though I would think. The G27 is weaker but is said to have less latency than say the T500RS. But the way the test was performed (-100% power followed by +100% power and clock the time it takes to change direction) the latency could have been skewed by the fact that the T500RS has a larger (and most likely more massive) wheel and the fact that the T500RS has more torque so the rotational speed would probably be higher therefore it would be harder to change direction. Although the extra torque could also help with changing direction.

Boy this thread is going all over the place. hahah.

 

I also feel more comfortable with intense FFB but I am not sure how strong would it be to drive a real F1 car. In ISI formula masters I dont feel it harder than what I would expect and I would bet it is quite hard in a real one taking into account that as on a kart the ratio of the steering is quite low compared to a touring car or a gt. When they crash they release the wheel to avoid wristle breakage. I have never perceived that kind of sensation on a sim. And I dont mean that we should break our wristles of course for obvious safety reasons but at least that we got a gentle turning effect when it happens.
370z has low ffb in my opinion but I dont know it is simulating power steering that could explain it.

Exagerating effects would not confuse the brain I think because it is just scaling up the same forces. It is the same effect as when the sounds are reduced due to helmet and earpads wearing or when people play with a small monitor and receive an unreal view since putting correct FOV to it would result in tunnel vision. However what I understand by tweaking is providing some type of corrections. Brain can easily handle scaling but providing non real components to feedback would cause incompatibility between different inputs which are not in line. Have you ever tried to drive with forcefeedback reversed? We probably all of us have experimented it sometime when setting the wheel and it completely sucks and it is certainly hard to drive when FFB is so incorrect.

There are also several examples that when incompatible inputs are coming to the brain it messes it up completely. One clear example regarding vision is when you look into a mirror and try to cut your own hair you trend to move your hand in the opposite direction when you try to get further and closer. This example is quite extreme but there are others much more sutile and interesting to realuze how complex our brain is and how it processes available information.

Finally I would like to arise a question
From those who have tried motion cockpits could you provide some feedback regarding its help to determine if the car is in the limit or not or if it is just sometging nice to have due to a better immersion. I have always wondered about this since I think it is extremely hard to simulate forces even assuming that the scaling is a must due to the limitation of having to use gravity forces to imitate lateral and longitudinal accelerations.

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I did some laps in a motion sim once and IMO it sucked, felt nothing like a real car, was very lagged and was very distracting. But like you say, the brain has an amazing ability to learn and adapt to things. With time maybe I could adapt to the feedback it was giving me. But in the 5 laps or so I did, it sucked. Really really sucked.

 

And comes with a waiver that you have to sign and fax back saying that you will not sue them if your 3 year old kid puts his hands in the spokes. Hahaha.

 

Most are set up very badly with over exaggerated movement that can make one feel sick
There are some exceptional ones out there though, mine is lag free
( none noticeable that is) very natural movements etc, ones for public use usually leave a lot to be desired

 

Sure tires squeal, and very commonly on street cars. The main contributor to the squeal is terrible suspension geometry and poor compliance. Street cars are not intended to have good road holding power, they are built to go over curbs and not spill your coffee. Squeal happens when large sections of the tire become lightly loaded and maintain a high degree of slip.

As for feel, soft cars with high center of gravity and low or even high grip offer lots of feel to the driver, but still not nearly enough to pull all drivers to the same lap time. In a stiff, light weight race car with downforce and massive grippy slicks, feel becomes far less pronounced.

If you put your monitor close to your eyes so that almost your whole field of vision is covered, then you will start to get very good feel from the sim. FFB from the wheel even on a spring is good, what we have in rF2 is really great.

 

I have an Integra GSR (about 2400lbs without driver) with 900lbs sprigs in the front and 1100lbs in the rear and I notice more feel in the wheel with race tires verses street tires. It is very logical that if the tires have more grip that they would transmit more force to the wheel.

 

Actually meant to comment more on the tire squealing and its use in the game. It's completely expected that you get more force at the wheel with race tires and also possibly more definition in feel since treaded street tires have very bland lateral force curves. But really, feedback from the wheel gives some clue as to whats going on but its only a small part of the experience.

From the original article it really makes no sense to state that one turns a car by applying a force to the wheel or by giving a certain degree of turn to the wheel. The same car can have different feel on the wheel for any given configuration and at any given time. Every driver moves the wheel through a certain angle to whatever position needed and applies whatever force required BASED ON WHAT THE CAR IS DOING. it's funny how the original article contained a lot of insight into steering dynamics then completely tried to reverse the FFB system from one that mimics reality to one that makes no sense.

 

But still intresting read and funny is more the wasted breath on the Topic, because nothing further will Change, while the FFB in rf2 is still the best so far, i'm not sure of the Need of fundamental changes on it.