Guide: Optimal FFB settings for rFactor 2 - The key to being in the "Zone" :D

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by DrR1pper, Mar 26, 2014.

  1. jimcarrel

    jimcarrel Registered

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    I've got the lowly DFGT (but I like it) I've come to rest on 0.15000 on the minimum torque setting. I mostly drive the URD Darche and set it at .90 torque.
    Just for funnsies I tried setting wheel to friction instead of damper in controller.ini and found it to be a little notchy or rachety feeling (okay, supply your own word) so I went back to damper setting.
    On another thought.. I can remember back in GPL days when you could mess with the ffb and get the car to where, when you were setting still with wheel turned at an angle, it would straighten the wheel out when you hit the gas (the way it should). With default ffb settings it wouldn't do this quite right. you could correct this with a lot of fiddling with settings.
    While playing with rF2 ffb settings I checked for this response and it works as it should. rF2 may not be super perfect yet, but race sims have come along way in their history.

    One question on dampening in the user control panel. I know it is defaulted to 9, I've always set all my cars to 4 and am fine with it there. Why should it be 9?
     
  2. DrR1pper

    DrR1pper Registered

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    What do you mean by "dampening in the user control panel" jim?
     
  3. smithaz

    smithaz Registered

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    I have to say that following this advice is an absolute revelation. Like others have said it transforms the steering feel from great to awesome.
    The minimum steering torque setting is a biggie, it really tightens the wheel up and makes it feel a bit more realistic and it gives feedback sooner, meaning you can feel those micro slides a split-second sooner and hence react quicker. I can imagine this extra tightness in the center being a big advantage when the karts arrive.
    This, in combination with tweaking the multiplier, has re-vitalised rF2 for me and it feels all the more satisfying to tear around a track.
    For the record my settings are 70% in driver, 3%minimum torque, around 0.75 multiplier and 0 ffb smoothing.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Mar 26, 2014
  4. jimcarrel

    jimcarrel Registered

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    I'm sorry, meant to say FFB smoothing.
     
  5. DrR1pper

    DrR1pper Registered

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    Ah ok, well you could call it general ffb dampening then actually, lol. It defaulted to 9 for you i think because when you hit the "detect" controller button in the settings page, the game saw that you're using a dfgt and loaded the pre-defined dfgt settings which included a default value of 9 for smoothing (chosen by isi). It is only advised that you should use the default of 9 (by isi). Using 0 gives you the completely raw ffb output from rfactor 2. Whilst that is ideally the best for the purest and most realistic ffb experience, it can cause a lot of unwanted rattling in older wheels (dfgt and g25/27 most commonly) when doing something as simple as driving over a pretty flat road with minimal track surface imperfections....i remember old spa turned my g25 into sounding like a machine gun. Adding some smoothing simply smoothens out the high rates of change in ffb direction and magnitude (which can go a long way to reducing the rattling issue).
     
  6. hexagramme

    hexagramme Registered

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    Thank you so much for this great thread and not least your latest reply to me.
    Right now I'm living in boxes (I'm between apartments) but when I'm settled in my new place, I'll start applying the tips you're suggesting and see what it does. I'm very excited about it!

    Also a bit worried, but I guess it's just a matter of getting used to the new feeling. I have an idea that I can't be fully in control if my wheel is not extremely heavy. But then again, if I'm missing out on a lot of information due to clipping, I might be even more in control. If I can gain a couple of tenths that way, I'm all for it.

    I'll try it out and post my various settings along with my initial impressions, and then maybe you'll comment on it?

    Again, thank you very much.
     
  7. c.pucher

    c.pucher Registered

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    Wonderful post DrR1pper, thank you very much!
     
  8. DrR1pper

    DrR1pper Registered

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    Thanks guys and sure hexagram me. I completely understand where your coming from since I had a g25 and know how weak it is in ffb and before using these settings and being aware of ffb clipping I too would increase the ingame ffb multiplier to increase the stiffness of the wheel for the very same reason you just gave. However, I never got to try them on the g25 so I cannot speak how it will feel with this settings from experience but there are others here who have and you may wish to pick there brains.
     
  9. Guimengo

    Guimengo Guest

    Any users here with a Fanatec GT3 v2 running at either 90 or 100% FFB on the wheel? Yesterday I downloaded the plugin but wasn't able to run rf2.
     
  10. jakobdylan

    jakobdylan Registered

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    Please you can share the Right values for G25?
    I would like try them .......
     
  11. DrR1pper

    DrR1pper Registered

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    Well, it's relatively easy to try this yourself jakobdylan and i would urge you (and all) to do so because the act of going through the motions of testing it yourself will make you realise what is happening and you will come to understand it that much better and be better equipped to make any finer adjustments for your specific setup of the controls.

    Start with an overall effects strength of 100% (default) in the logitech profiler and use "0.75" for the ingame "car-specific ffb mult" value. Then start with a value of 10% (which equals "0.10000") for the "steering torque minimum" value in the controller.ini file. Test if the wheel oscillates/vibrates when you move the car a little (trust me you will know when it does). If it does or does not, increase/decrease the value by maybe 3% and test till you get a refined value. Then drop it down about 0.2% and you should be fine.

    If you do share settings for the same wheel, note that any difference in your Logitech profiler settings will affect what the "steering torque minimum" should be for each user. For example, increasing the "overall effects strength" in the Logitech profiler will reduce the deadzone a bit which means the amount of deadzone that remains to be removed with the "steering torque minimum" amount could be different for different users. This is why i urge you to not only ask others for what values they are using but to couple it with your own testings to confirm they are right for you too. Perhaps share what your logitech (or whatever wheel you use) profiler settings are if your going to share the values you use on your specific wheel please.
     
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  12. jakobdylan

    jakobdylan Registered

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    Thanks so much for your advices I am going to try them.
     
  13. GCCRacer

    GCCRacer Banned

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    Okay, I'm going to drop the most stupid question here in this thread:

    I run a Thrustmaster RGT Clutch which certainly is not the greatest wheel available, maybe that's the reason. The thing is: I don't feel how FFB gives me any feedback I might actually use during driving.

    Yes, I can feel the front getting light when I block the wheels during braking, that's about it. The wheel "moves" a bit or might feel heavier or lighter sometimes, but certainly not in any way defined enough to tell me what my grip level is... especially for the rear do you get ANY feedback from the wheel?

    Obviously there is a science and skill to work with FFB so it actually becomes an assist, right now it's a gimmick for me.
     
  14. DrR1pper

    DrR1pper Registered

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    Not a stupid question at all.

    I don't know whether it's because your wheel is old (thus much weaker in ffb force compared to newer wheels) but for sure ffb is useful but this is not to say you cannot drive well without it but i would argue that you can drive better and closer to your fullest potential with it. The simple reason being that ffb (when setup correctly...which is a crucial requirement to the truth of what i say next) adds an additional sensory input from the game. This is no different to how the monitor is a sensory input for your eyes which allows you to see everything in the virtual world and how to navigate it and see with visual cues how the car is changing in pitch, roll and yaw (i.e. car balance) and speed and grip (visually see if the car is sliding or not), etc (also sound is just another example of a sensory input). Without ffb we rely on the visual cues alone (well sound as well but not all sensory input's are equal and visual is arguably the most important of all) as the only source of information/data input into the predictive models (we all intrinsically have and use to navigate the real world) in our minds of how the car is handling at present and how it will change into the future and to future inputs (be it from the user or the environment...e.g. some combination of turning the wheel/braking/accelerating or if a wheel were to touch the grass). This allows us to anticipate what the car will do (based on the sensory information available) and we all do (subconsiously in our everday lives) is essentially make a "best guess" calculation as to what is the correct input for our desired future path.

    The better the quality of the sensory information available (e.g. less visual lag/delay and less motion blur in the monitor or smoother-performnce/higher-fps in the render, etc) the better our anticipations and the better our "best guess" calculations for the correct input needed to direct the car on our intended path. The same can also be said for the quantity of sensory information available as our input and force-feedback is just one such additional sensory information delivery mechanisms to tell our brains (subconsciously) how the car is behaving. Also, when the brain receives more direct information, it requires less guess work to fill in the gaps. This is the same reason why I argue that full body motion platforms (again that must be setup correctly) will almost always increase your performance potential and again only last Thursday i saw this in action (again) when i offered my time to a student requiring volunteers to spend time in a fixed based full body jet-stream cockpit simulator with full panoramic displays (his project is unrelated to this though, was to do with pilot concentration and fatigue levels which incidentally lends itself quite well to this example I'm giving). I found it tricky to maintain my attention to the various instruments whilst flying and trying to keep the aircraft straight and level and hold a stable altitude of 10,000 feet in the harsh weather conditions (set in his experiment) simply because i lost my normal bodily sense of balance that would otherwise be there to help me keep the plane balanced with much greater ease and alertness in the full motion body simulators. (For those of you wondering, his experiment wasn't compromised because of this....everyone had the same loss off sensory input and the test was about fatigue in general so this only expedited his results in the 1 hour of flight).

    In summary, if your wheel is weak in ffb and/or setup incorrectly then i can completely see how it would appear to be a gimmick to you. I now use a t500 and all i can say is that i would not want to use it without ffb (and with the improvement of avoiding ffb clipping and removing the initial ffb deadzone issues, now more so than ever). Taking corners is so much easier at the limit now because with the additional sensory information from ffb i get to know what the car is really doing and i know before it happens that the traction is about to be lost and by how much (etc) which means my inputs are not only better but it means i can anticipate earlier and make better decisions earlier of how i will approach the situation and more preemptively reactive instead of it being too late. (which you could call my reaction and reaction timing improving essentially).
     
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  15. kimikaze

    kimikaze Registered

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    Fantastic thread specially for all newcomers. Excellent job.
     
  16. tarros

    tarros Registered

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    hello to everyone for my g25 standard I found the "magic number" that guarantees linearity.
    i plot in a Cartesian graph delta degre of the wheel,
    The curve reproduced has a R-squared (index of linear fitting between 0 and 1) equal to 0.9912 ...
    (r ^ 2 = 0.9912)
    the setting of the profiler are as follows
    ffb strength 90
    shock 0
    shock absorber spring 0
    centering spring 0
    900 degrees
    Allow the game to fit the setting
    back on the "magic number" here are the results of the R-squared with respect to the percentage of the FFB setting profiler
    101% = 0.9855
    100% = 0986
    95% = 0.9906
    93% = 09 891
    90% = 0.9912
    85% = 0.9854
    Note that the values are not proportional to the reduction in the strength of the FFB, but there seems to be an optimal range, in my case between 90-95;
    [​IMG]
    Pros:
    Have an R-squared value for the series DeltaXdeg close to 1 means that the curve is close to the linear trend and simply forces are distributed linearly to vary the degrees of rotation.
    FFB is linear and sincere respect to the forces generated by the physics engine (ref chart deltaX90 ) and that communicative feedback .
    If R-squared < 1 , it means that the curve moves away from the trend line. The forces are more emphasized between 25-110 degree compared to the previous settings , where the curve is closer to the trend line ,
    With the settings to 101 ( less linear ) forces seem to be compressed between 150-160 degrees ( red circle in the chart).

    Cons:
    the price to pay is that using lower values of ffb you increase the "hole in the center" (Grey circle in the chart) .
    That is to say, a scientific explanation for the differences that I feel with the two different settings , especially in the situation of the limit ( understeer, oversteer, long ecc. ) .
    In 90% forces linear and clear feeling.
    A 101 % everything is muffled and awkward in feeling
    Of course ffb in game must be set to not clip ( never red bar forces during cornering and transfers of load).
    If I made some mistakes in the mathematica approach i'll happy to be proved wrong .
    P.S. normal setting is independent from the simulator but it is a check on the HW -> steering wheel
    Scuse for bad english my 2 cent.
    Andrea
     
  17. DrR1pper

    DrR1pper Registered

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    Very nice Andrea, what a fantastic initiative on your part. :D

    You might want to delete the deadzone region when you measure the r^2 correlation factor because visually i can see it takes this into account but remember that once you find the correct "steering torque minimum" value, you will no longer experience the deadzone region (removing that "hole in the center" - grey circle in the chart). If you re-ran the graphs with the deadzone region's for each removed you might find a different result. Also, it is interesting to see that lowering it from 101% to 90% did not produce a noticeable difference in the maximum ffb force output on your g25 (only around 3% reduction from 101% to 90%).

    Thank you for doing this showing us your work. I think will spend a little time tonight doing to find the same for t500 users. ;)
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Mar 27, 2014
  18. tarros

    tarros Registered

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    The goal of "study" is linear response of wheel no matter on center hole because U can override with minimum steering torque
    The result is when in limit situation wheel respond linearly with force so U can feel raw and clean informati
    on
    Ps the study starting from AC experience
     
  19. DrR1pper

    DrR1pper Registered

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    But doesn't the r^2 calculation include the deadzone region? I know that visually we can see that 90% has a tighter grouping even with the deadzone region but i'm curious if the r^2 included it or not because as you can see the deadzone region reduces with higher ffb strength in the profiler.
     
  20. tarros

    tarros Registered

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    Yes r^2 calculation includes dead zone but U must read results as test on hw despite the sim We use... Mamy sims doesn' t have setting for center dead zone override
    Probably if you remove data in calculation you will have a different results for r^2 but this settings isn't right out of rfactor2
     
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