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

I don't agree. It's definitely possible because that's what it's like in every ISI sim prior to rF2. In those sims I can literally feel so many physics parameters rather than just getting used to the car. I could literally feel the actual nose diving at varying amounts under braking or even from just lifting suddenly, I could literally feel the front-end lifting to varying amounts as I'm hard on the accelerator. I could feel different FFB signals that tell me as im getting closer and closer to front or rear lock-up, and it would also tell me when they locked, when they are about to re-gain grip, even in a straight line without turning the wheel.

I'd be in the wall, slow as heck, and totally inconsistent in GT Legends if I had to drive those beasts to my limit (Top 5 GTL Rank laptimes) with rF2's "let's blind the driver from 75% of what the car is doing" type of FFB. Cutting out, by far, the majority of car feedback to the driver is the complete opposite of what happens in real-racing. Having vehicle physics regarding all sorts of customizable parameters is actuall much more in the end-result to the drivers brain and way of driving than going for just actual steering rack forces and therefore destroying almost all vehicle sensation and communication. It's just not how it's done in real life.

Your brain needs the communication and sensations from somewhere, and until we have full motion cockpits than transmitting it through the wheel's FFB is MUCH better than nothing at all. Once you get accustomed to it your brain won't know the difference.

Driving a real car hard, feels more like rF1 to me even though it has inferior physics and "technically" FFB as well. Why? Well, it's not because of the sim's steering wheel feel (obviously rF2 is superior in terms of a pure steering wheel feel), but because I can get all those tons od extra feelings from the car in rF1 just like a car in real-life. The only difference is in rF1 they come through the wheel whereas in real-life they come from vibrations in the chassis, g-forces, "seat of the pants feelings, pedal feelings, all sorts of different kind of feedback bombarding your body and most of the driving comes from all these feelings and only a small amount from the pure-steering wheel itself feel.

Some cars have a heavy and resistant feel to them and they relay almost no info through the wheel, but it's not a big deal because the large majority of feeling the car doesn't come from the wheel anyway but all the other feelings I mentioned. Now, how would anyone expect to drive a car like that in rF2 with easentially no feedback? It wouldn't make sense.

 

+1 (it's better with the Historics)

 

A quick note about STM:

If you have custom controller configs like me, one called "stick" and one called "paddle", for example, you must edit the STM value in those files as well, or else the STM value in the main controller.json reverts back to zero each time you load them.

 

I agree on how important is FFB. It is essential for me. However rF2 FFB is clearly superior to rF1. In rF1 I only had good feelings when I combined ingame FFB with realfeel and leo FFB plugins. Nothing has been developed for RF2 because it does not need it. I just feel it natural as when I drive my car which in some cases is to its close to its limit. When it rains you can only rely on the feeling the wheel gives you. The normal acclerations to which you are used when driving in dry conditions are excessive for wet conditions. I once had to save my 1600 kg Honda CR-V in the rain downslope. Two heavy countersteerings where required to recover it from spinning after losing the rear. It is the feeling from the wheel that tells you when to flip direction to end the countersteering.

 

Saving a big spin/counter spin is the least of my worries. RF2 isn't a wild angle drift sim. But if you wanna go there, you can feel the rear getting just the tinniest bit light and on the verge of stepping out wayyyyyyyy before you can feel it from the steering wheel itself. And no, rF1 has the potential to make you feel way more parts of car physics and sensations. RF2 is limited to just whatever you would normally feel through a steering rack, which is a joke in terms of what one feels when driving. In rF1, as I explained above, I can set the FFB to output car physics stuff that would normally be felt and relied upon in real-life - only difference being in real-life it's not felt through the steering wheel itself.

Feeling brake dive, rear-end squat, front-end lift, brake calipers, different FFB signals telling you in exact detail how close or far you are from locking or un-locking a tyre, customizing how soon or late the FFB drops off relative to front tyre slip and also customizing the rate at which the ffb drops off as the slip angle gets worse or better, feeling a sort of pressure/tension from the wheel as you brake harder and get closer to rear lock-up and then feeling that tension almost fade away as you get extremely close to rear brake lock up, feeling a sort of jolt or elasticity feeling when you either don't blip enough or blip too much on a downshift. Then customizing all those feelings individually and tailoring how harsh, subtle, or non-existent you want them to be.

It mat not feel as natural in terns of a pure steering wheel compared to real-life feel (of course rF2 will feel much more natural, it's just actual steering column forces), but as a whole, not just the steering wheel itself feel, but the entire act of pushing a car and feeling all it's communication and feedback in order to do the best job you can of driving the car, then in that regards a system like rF1's has much, much more potential because I believe around 75% car feedback and communication does NOT come from steering column forces. Maybe even more than 75%.

 

Maybe you should use some electrodes connected to your body parts to provide you with those extra feelings and leave the wheel with what it feels in the wheel as it does in reality where as I say most comes from the wheel, at least for me.

 

Most feelings don't come from a wheel. Just traveling in a straight line in my dad's Toyota Corolla the wheel was dead but I can feel so many chassis vibrations under and around me, g-forces in every direction, pedal fredback, engine rpm and driveline feelings, feeling the suspension moving, body/chassis movement, etc. meanwhile the steering wheel was a "dead" circular object in front of me. You do not feel anywhere close to as much with a steering wheel, I'm sorry but it's fact not personal opinion.

 

I can understand both sides but a game as such I would not call it. In the first place there is the hardware not specifically adapted to the simulation or vice versa, then there are toys one more than the other, and what I do not understand as well is the philosophy of some of the people and the perception of those. I know what spinelli searches and he's right if he says he needs the information but it's not how a car is like on the steering wheel. However, some people distort and drive with their theories other people in the wrong direction, similar to the solution with the stm feature and any linearity measurements of the electronics. I'm tired and have no more pleasure to try to convince anybody and unfortunately am not in a position to do so. I was and am in any case always been the asshole. It is just a joke when I read as people say a car with 30 km / h is normal to lose or some kind of FFB config as described as the key. I know better it isn't, at least for myself.

I'm just saying do not expect from ISI when people are even wrong with their expectations and sensations in the first place.

 

Whilst g-forces are a component, you can supposedly drive to 90% of the performance based on the audio, visual and steering feedback alone if you take Alan McNish's word for it that moving to real life from a sim you get that last 10% of sensory feedback from the seat of your pants feel. He is not saying the sensory overload from the shear strength of forces from the seat of your pants is a weak 10% (vs say perhaps 40% steering which would suggest steering forces are 4x greater, no), but that in terms of the key feed back information you get and use to control the car it is only around the last 10% of all the sensory feedback components combined (e.g. Visual, steering, seat-of-the-pants, auditory). He goes on to say that so long as you have the first 90% (in the bag from training on a sim) then moving to real life where you get the last 10% can only help you in translating your sim skill to the real world. I.e. that you'll be better in the real world vs how you are in the sim (provided your physically fit enough for the sport ofc).

But perhaps he's talking about other sims he's tried and hasn't tried rf2 to make the same claim.

Either way though, you can't argue it's more realistic to have forces you would not feel through the steering wheel being artificially simulated through the steering wheel. You could argue it as a preference but nothing more.

 

You can easily argue it. As the end-result to your brain is more realistic if you have all that additional information and communication that you get in real life.

It's 50/50. In terms of the literal steering wheel itself feel, the pure steering rack feeling only is more realistic, but in terms of getting as much communication to your brain/senses like in real-life, then the other way is more realistic. You can argue that your brain/senses receiving much, much less vehicle information relative to real-life is less realistic because, well, you're cutting out a HUGE chunk of information that you do receive in real-life. So in that sense you can argue that the steering column only forces feel is very unrealistic because that's not how people drive.

P.S. I'm sure most of us can drive with no audio, and no FFB, and probably be within 90%, 10% is massive. We're talking about tiny limits and sensations not chunks of seconds. One time I changed some FFB settings in GT Legends in the AC Cobra (VERY slightly adjusted either the "curve" of how quickly the FFB drops off according to the given front tyre slip angle, or how early/late that particular drop-off curve comes into effect, it was one or the other I can't remember) and I couldn't get within 0.250 of my best lap time for the absolute life of me - all because of SLIGHTLY different FFB sensations telling me different things that I did not benefit from. That 0.250 is MASSIVE when you just finished a whole string of laps under that 0.250s margin just earlier.

I wish ISI just gave us an option, that's all, people don't have to use it.

 

I think you've chosen a really poor example there Spinelli that is an exception to the rule because your in a straight line. Ofc the steering is not going to transmit you much if any feedback when in a straight line and only bumps in the road through seat of your pants (unless the car is looser then you'll feel it in the steering more too!)

But that's a really bad example since even the seat of your pants feel is barely useful in a straight line, except for and only accept for when braking in a straight line you could argue. When it comes to corners (which are the most important parts of a track) is where the steering wheel starts to play a crucial role again. How much more or less vs the seat of your pants? I don't know exactly and wouldn't be so bold as to make a claim of fact as I do not have the sufficient evidence to back it up. You say (from your experience I guess) that's it's 75% seat of your pants whereas someone like Alan McNish says its the last 10%.

Who's right?

 

You can feel so much in a straight line it's not even funny in real-life and in properly configured rF1 settings and all that affects your turn-in as well, which affects your mid-corner, and so on and so on.

In a straight line I can feel shudders, vibrations and sensations from the 4 corners of the car and just the entire car around me. I can feel the nose of the car diving, I can feel how the nose goes back up depending on brake release, I can feel g-forces slowing me down, I can feel (not in all cars) the brakes lock, I can feel the rear getting really light almost as if it's floating (close to lock up, to much rear brake, bad setup, whatever), I can feel if I didn't blip hard enough, I can feel if I blipped too much, and so on, and so on.

Also I can feel how much grip I have available almost before I turn-in, same with proper rF1 settings, but in a steering column forces only scenario you are literally blinded and playing a guessing game until you've actually given the wheel a good bit of steering lock because nothing about the vehicle's dynamics and balance are being relayed to you other than just the actual steering column forces.

 

Yes but like i said in my previous post, if the track is smooth or you have soft suspension then any feelings you get in the seat of your pants in a straight line is irrelevant because the car will drive in a straight line. This is not useful information even if in a straight line you feel through your bum the road surface and chassis roll as a result but the steering is static down the straight. THis is a really poor example to use in your argument. Furthermore, if we were to take your example whereby the driver should feel nothing down the straight but a lot of bumps and chassis roll through his/her bum….how do you translate that onto the steering wheel? Because now you want to make the steering wheel have some ffb (to compensate for the lack of g-force feel through the bum) which will forcible make the steering wheel move around somewhat and cause the car to steer without your input whereas the car's steering wheel should be remain static down the straight if you were to let go of the wheel. Can you see the problem here? You've then affected the car that should have been dynamically stable to one that is dynamically unstable by translating feedback from a different source (the g-forces for example) onto the steering wheel where it does not belong in real life. They simply don't belong as part of the steering wheel and front tyre feedback loop.

Well, those that i highlighted i know i can feel through the ffb already in rf2, if not directly then by proxy at least. If you have not removed your initial ffb deadzone however then i would not be surprised that you are saying this.

And the last highlighted section i am somewhat disagreeing with you (but not entirely, i do agree that some rear end feel from seat of the pants feel would defiantly help understand the full picture of how the car is handling). I can feel the subtle difference based on the difference in the steering force each time i attack the corner. It's subtle but it's there, perhaps not so much on a g25/27 but on a t500 it's much much clearer (that and removing the initial ffb deadzone and you'll get ffb responsiveness from the entire working range which adds even more detail as a result).

 

Spinelli have you tried to activate those strings on the controller.ini?

Throttle effects on steer axis="0" // 0 = Throttle effects on throttle axis, 1 = throttle effects on steering axis.
Brake effects on steer axis="0" // 0 = Brake effects on brake axis, 1 = brake effects on steering axis.
Clutch effects on steer axis="0" // 0 = Clutch effects on clutch axis, 1 = brake effects on steering axis.
Gearbox effects on steer axis="0" // 0 = Gearbox effects on gearbox 'axis', 1 = brake effects on steering axis.

They are not all you ask for, but MAYBE they could help you somehow.

 

Spinelli when i do not grab the wheel I dont know how close to the limite I am. For example as a passenger. I receive all the inputs wxcept for one. The losing grip or locking wheel sensation is best peeceived through the wheel.

As i said but spinelli wont listen to what he does not want to because he is too obstinated on being right. In wet condition
for the same g forces and vibrations that you get in dry, you would lose the car. You don't because of the wheel.

 

This is an odd thread.

I have a cheap $100 wheel clamped to a desk with an office chair and I got more enjoyment and feel more in the game than people with $600 wheels and cockpit?

All the things Spinelli says he can't feel in rF2... WUT???. It's all there. I can feel everything he describes as missing and more.

Anyway this thread is going off topic and we need to keep this thread open because it's a GEM!

Thanks again DrR1pper!

 

Ooops, deleted my post. Didn't finish reading your post buddhatree before posting, sorry if you read what i wrote/posted in response before i could delete.

 

Didn't see it

 

one of the partners of rfactor pro is: "CarSim."
they have a steering wheel like that of Mr. Bodnar from many years before.
I believe that they have already studied this solution many years ago.
The appearance of the steering wheel is very similar.


High-precision steering system used to provide realistic steering wheel torque.

 

View attachment 13556

Been playing around with wheelcheck this morning on the G27... looks like a consistent STM of 0.16 for users running 100% strength based on others' comments within the thread.

(all plots in the above are averaged over 5 runs at each setting, apart from the 70% line, which is just a single run as I realised I'd missed running it at that so added it afterwards)