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

I have already tested a numorous of stm sets, from 0,04 to 0,18 and nothing feels as 0,0. When i was referring to clipping i didnt think about oscillations. I mean that setting stm on any value will make the wheel to give forces not lower than this value, so basically u are loosing some low force feeling.
Tbh i dont know how to explain this, it is just my feeling on hands. When i set any stm value and for example start oversteering those low forces are very important. If u have stm set for example to 15%, and the car starts oversteering lest say the game want to give u the feeling of for example 8%, but u cant feelit since u are still feeling those 15% constatly, u will feel te oversteering when there will be a moment when a game wants to give you 16%.
Maybe i am wrong, but i can clearly feel it bymy hands.
Of course i have massive deadzone, which is uncomfortable on low speed corners, but man, that feeling of my rear on high speed corners is just to egaging and important to give it up

Maybe it is because g27 has a deadzone in the middle,but if the wheel is not in the middle position there is no deadzone at all

 

W Lukas, It sounds more like you don't quite understand what the setting is doing. If you go into oversteer and the game wants to send you 8% ffb, your G27 will transmit 0% to your hands because it has roughly 15% ffb deadzone with 100 profiler strenght. If you set STM to 15% as it "should" be, the game will instead send roughly 23% (15 stm + 8 from physics) and you will feel in your hand roughly 8% (23 from game - 15 physical wheel ffb deadzone). The whole point of the STM is to move those forces that are too weak to overcome friction in your wheel higher on the curve, so that you can actually feel them. With STM set to 0, any game output below ~15% will be completely lost for you, it will feel like 0% FFB.

(There's a lot of a "roughly"s in there because nothing is perfectly linear and I don't know the details of how ISI remaps the FFB output when STM is used.)

 

Yep u are right, it should be like this, but i cant just feel it in this way. i ve been compering lap by lap lot of stm settings, and just feel oversteering much more sooner when it is set to 0.

But i am still talking about high speed corners. There is big deadzone on low speed corners

 

Well feel is what's most important. Maybe you feel the oversteer sooner because as the FFB signal drops, it dips below 15% and your wheel goes light earlier than it would if everything was perfectly linear?

 

Actually when oversteering the wheel is getting stronger and stronger

 

Awesome top post. Used it and feel better about my driving now. Thanks!

 

This is not how the stm works with the final ffb output sent to your wheel. If you set the stm to say 10%, then when the game calculates 0% ffb force it actually sends the baseline 10% ffb force (because of the stm=10%). If the game then calculates a 1% ffb force then it sends a 10.9% force....not an 11% force. Why? Because the forces are all scaled to fit the new range of ffb output. So if you used an stm of 10%, that leaves 10-100% to act as the new 0-100% ffb force range. A 50% ffb force becomes 55%, 90% ffb force becomes 91%, 100% ffb force ofc still becomes 100%.

So as long as you do not go over the initial ffb deadzone value by inducing oscillation/vibration with the stm value, you won't ever come accross this issue of not feeling a force of 8% because with an stm of 15% (providing that this is the correct stm value for your wheel) then what you feel at your wheel will be 8% of force above the deadzone amount which is basically the same as saying that you feel at your wheel 8% ffb force.



(fyi, the deadzone amount shown in this graph for the t500 for stm use is incorrect, but the g25 value is not far off)

This is very confusing. stm should not affect your ffb sensations in the high speed corners one single bit. The high speed corners produce forces in the high end so why you say that you find it affects the sensation in that region puzzles me.

All this screams something else is at play here causing your issue but i don't know what.

 

You mean setting stm back to 0?

 

No, I am referring to following the top post instructions. Did it about 3 weeks ago and love the results.

 

Very interesting post, since this is what i was looking for.
But can u describe why after applying stm 15% i get clipping, if at 0% there was no at all. If what u described is true there should be no deference between 15% and 0%in high forces

Are u sure the forces are scaled?

 

Ah, ok, cool.

Not a big deal ofc but "opening post" is better suited to refer to the first post.

 

That depends. First of all, are you referring to ffb clipping that you can feel or visually see on the pedal plugin (or both) after setting stm to 15%?

Not exactly. With an stm, you are affecting the entire range of the ffb that you feel (but more so in the low end). The sensation is more of a bunching up of all the forces because you have removed that deadzone. To explain better, without an stm to remove the deadzone, your wheel's range of ffb output (i.e. the range of ffb output that you can feel) is only of the 15-100% force outputs from the sim. This means you have a greater difference in the felt ffb forces for forces in the 15-100% force output range in the sim. Then you add a 15% stm and suddenly the entire range of 0-100% force output from the sim uses up the same range of ffb output from your wheel. The result is less difference between changes in force.

This is the best explanation i can come up with with what you've told me thus far.

If you post again, i'll likely be asleep and end up replying back tomorrow.

side-note, you should be adding an stm value that still produces that same "looseness" in the ffb as it does when the ffb is outputting 0% with no stm used.

 

Tbh i cant tell u know if i was more focus on the plugin or on the feeling. Probably was more looking on the plugin noticing if the bar is turning red.

U might accidently described why i think i can feel oversteer sooner/more.

"The result is less difference between changes in force."

 

And this is an unfortunate dilemma of using such a method to check if the ffb is clipping or not. TechAde actually produced another tool/plugin to record rf2 data when on track that included ffb output telemetry. You could then use it to check the ffb output from the game after driving a near identical lap of a track of your choosing with and without the stm applied. I've been meaning to use it to test different ffb multi settings to get a clearer picture of how much clipping occurs but you could use it to check for yourself if the ffb output suddenly starts to clip with stm applied.

edit: here is that plugin for you if you're interested - rF2 Telemetry CSV Plugin v2

If so, there's nothing you can do i'm afraid other than to remove the stm or get a stronger wheel. I take it your using a g25/27 which i know from experience is much weaker compared to a t500. And because the range of physical ffb force outputs is much less compared to a t500, you feel "less difference between changes in force" compared to a t500 user (like myself who has not issue with using stm).

I see why you called this something like a "low end ffb clipping" now because it has a similar (but opposite) effect as the high end ffb clipping whereby the difference in felt forces at the wheel become magnified for the low end forces because you've clipped all the high end forces. Which makes for a great feeling and well defined ffb wheel sensation down the straights but becomes completely clipped once you start to turn the car into corners.

 

Will try this tool. Thanks for ur time and patience.

 

Any time.

 

I think something is not being accounted in this thread.

All the wheels are not the same. I don't just mean different models but the current degradation state of each wheel. I've seen some G27s where the dead zone was huge because of teeth wear from very aggressive driving causing play and backlash. When that happens you can try to compensate it but it will never be the same as with a new wheel.

Regarding to STM, some minimum value should always be used since in reality friction exists and you need also to overcome it to move the wheel.

This could be introduced in the overall FFB calculation which I don't know if it is, or if it only depends on STM parameter.

We could be talking about this for ages. There were also other very nice threads about FFB where people were throwing their opinions and experiences. The ones programming it, never appeared to put some light into the subject and tell exactly how FFB calculation is being done.

Come on ISI!!! Help us a little bit with these subject.

enviado mediante tapatalk

 

I think you raise a good point that needs consideration for those who use g25/27's because they tend to have a physical deadzone/play due to gaps between the gear teeths which means if there is a very low end force being applied (and providing it is above the ffb deadzone) there can be a delay before feeling it. From memory i think this is something i could feel in my g25 when i was using it in rf2.

But then again, using an stm should help resolve/reduce this problem because the mechanical delay (tooth gap) is lessened by higher forces. So instead of having the tooth gap deadzone delay occur just above the ffb deadzone amount (e.g. 15% region), it will now occur in the 0% region because you've used an stm. Which doesn't remove the mechanical deadzone/play problem but instead moves to a place where it should be less felt by you (or so goes the theory, hopefully).

I like this point also, something i was thinking about earlier in regards to Lukas's posts. And for some reason from a mechanical resistance point of view in the ffb wheel, this is true on the t500 by default (having some slight resistance built into the wheel) compared to the csr-elite wheel (and csw by proxy which were super duper frictionless) and to anyone who has not had a chance to compare them in use, would think that the frictionless wheel is better but this has been the complete opposite in my experience. Driving on the t500 in the low end force region (ignoring stm) is so much freaking easier than it was on the csr-elite, for example, trying to get back onto the track from the grass using my csr-elite was a total bitch with constant donuts and having to drive like a snail whereas driving back onto the track with the t500 is a piece of cake and no need to drive overly cautious trying to get back on track (you can extend this to oversteer catching moments as well, with the t500 i can catch all the sudden snap oversteer moments that were near impossible, except by shear luck, on the csr-elite). Perhaps it has nothing to do with the level of frictionless of the wheel though and more to do with the ffb strength....i'm not sure.

 

IMO the biggest problem here is the apparent lack of communication between sim programmers and wheel manufacturers. There is an important interrelationship between them that seems to be in a huge void atm. Each wheel has its own characteristics and they differ a lot between different wheels. Providing a unique FFB output regardless the wheel being used is just wrong. Either that or the wheel would need to be calculating angular speed and acceleration to account for its own inertia and fiction values. This is best noticed when leaving the wheel free in a straight where resonance effects around the deadzone are completely irrealistic

enviado mediante tapatalk

 

About the STM, easily explained, it is nothing more than reducing play. Imagine you the steering parts on your car had too much play such as the GEAR BACKLASH in the steering gear.

Older merc models offered the possibility to adjust it by an adjustment screw and to minimize the play. This here is similar but unfortunately there is no mechanical connection in our case and is controlled by the software which offers also the possibility to go over the needed limit, that would be when the play on the real steering is already eliminated and even a kind of preload exists (high friction). The software even provides to override this limit.

In a software environment this leads to oscillation and overlap of effects which in a mechanical environment would not be possible by minimizing of the backlash because it is mechanically limited to overcome the center.