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

I've done the Wheelcheck test again (attached) and I can see differences in the Graphs but you're the expert here so I'll leave the conclusion up to you

This is with the wheel plugged into the front USB ports which I *believe* are 2.0 but I could be wrong.

View attachment T300-frontUSB.rar

 

Sorry for the delay. Spreadsheet program was acting all crazy and I still can't figure out how to change values on my Y-axis to a percent of a number. Anyways, here you guys go:





I can't tell which is most linear. 60% seems like it but 60%'s total force is also about 10% less than the wheel's total potential force. So which one really has the straightest line of the bunch?? We would need to scale each line so that it's max is also 4240 in order to do a direct comparison of lines/linearity to see which line is the straightest. Am I making sense???...

 

Here you go:



Something odd happening with the front usb port results or these are just anomalous results? For starters, the maximum rotation angle for the 60% gain in these second set of results actually increased by 10% over the maximum rotation angle change for 100% in the previous results.

Provided it's not an anomalous result, then i would use the front usb with 60% gain setting.

 

To convert y-axis values into percentages, simply divide each y-axis value by the maximum y-axis value recorded. This will then give you values between 0.0-1.0 for the y-axis. Now you want to convert those into percentages which you can do by simply multiplying each value by 100 or you can highlight all the values in excel, right click and select format cells. In the "Number" tab, select "percentages" and select 1 decimal place (no need for more here) and it'll auto convert the decimal values into percentage values.

 

Thanks, I know how to manually convert to percent I just can't figure how to convert an entire column of numbers (the 50 DeltaX results per test) into percentages. For example, highlight the entire column and say "divide every number in each box by 4250 then multiply that answer by 100".

What do you think of the results? Kind of difficult to see which line is the straightest by eyeballing it. I'm leaning towards 60%...

 

Right. First you need to write an equation in another box that takes the value from another box (e.g. first value from your y-axis data) and converts it to a percentage. Then hit enter to finish writing the equation in the cell.



Then left click and hold down on the little blue square in the lower right corner of the cell you just wrote the equation in and drag it down to form as many newly converted values as you need.

 

awesome man, thanks

 

No probs.

 

New to rFactor 2 (still playing the first rFactor since very early in its release). I grew to love rFactor when I found TechAde's Realfeel plugin. After that, I never ran a vehicle that didn't work with his plugin. Now, with rFactor 2 I'm not feeling much feedback. I don't have time to post my whole setup, but I set my low end based on the first post in this thread and I downloaded TechAdes clipping plugin to set the high end.
What I'm expecting is that when the clipping plugin shows the yellow bar going up, I should feel more feedback. But I'm not. Am I expecting the wrong thing? I can feel the car get light when I crest a hill at high speeds, but I don't feel the bumps and such from the road. It just feels like every track is as smooth as glass. I mean, I get small feedback here and there, but nothing like I would expect.
In the profiler I have the Overall effects strength set to 100% (tried as low as 50% and as high as 110%). I have everything else at zero, with the centering spring box checked, as well as the use special game settings and allow game to adjust settings both checked. When clicking on the steering wheel settings in the profiler I have the sensitivity set to 50% (atm...I've had it as high as 100% and I think I just recently moved it to 50% from it's normal 100%, but I honestly don't remember where I usually have this set). Deadzone is at zero and range at 100%.
In game I've been testing with the Nissan 370 at different tracks, but feel the same thing at each track. I've bumped the car-specific FFB multiplier up to 1.5 (which is where I'm at the verge of the yellow bar on TechAdes plugin changing to red...I never actually see red though).
I don't run with any aids, and I keep all the FFB as pure as I can and always try to run with zero smoothing.
Any ideas what I'm missing, or is this just all I can expect with my outdated Logitech Momo? Thanks for any help.

 

Maybe, it is a very old wheel but it's been such a long time since i've used a momo (and i never tried it in rf2) so i can't tell whether your experience with it in rf2 is typical or not. Hopefully someone here who's using or has been using one in rf2 up until recently can.

Does it feel like the moments of maximum constant ffb output from your momo wheel are less strong in rf2 than in rf1 with real feel? As if there is something (artificial) limiting the ffb motor(s) of your momo wheel from outputting the maximum torque they should be able to?

 

I can't say that the output is less strong. There are times where I can feel the forces, like cresting a hill - I can feel the forces drop off as the vehicle gets light, and the forces feel as I would expect them to feel. But, at Sebring for example, going around the last long corner leading on the the s/f straight...it's a real bumpy corner. I can see TechAde's clipping meter going nuts, again, as expected, but I'm not feeling anything. There is one spot in that corner where I feel feedback as if there was a slight dip in the road, but that's all I feel through that entire corner.

I've been struggling to get a good "realfeel" type feel out of Assetto Corsa and Project Cars as well and they both feel like I'm driving over glass. I can turn up the "canned" ffb in those games and feel what I would think are regular forces. I actually have the forces around 25 in Project Cars, so I would think that is pretty low for most. So, I don't think there is anything wrong with my wheel.

Does the age of a wheel determine if it will work with a new racing simulator? I would have thought that the signals coming in to the wheel would be the same for any wheel and then the wheel turns those signals into feedback through the motor of the wheel. So, as long as the wheel is working, I should be able to play any game/simulator with it, it just might not give me the fidelity of a newer wheel. Is that not correct?
Actually, the Momo has a default setup in Project Cars, which is newer than rFactor 2...so, I wouldn't think there would be any "new technology" that renders the Momo obsolete, right?

 

I thought STC only has an effect if the value is higher than the particular car's nominal steering max torque (or whatever it's called) setting? That's what ISI said. Then again, I've read a couple people swear it (STC) made a difference even when switching between values of less than 10. Hmmm...

 

Yes, I clicked it. I'll try it again in case I miss-clicked or just to make sure it detects properly.

**UPDATE**
I clicked the "detect" button again and it made no difference.

At Sebring, I can feel the curbs, they feel somewhat normal. Going down the S/F straight, I can feel a tiny bit of feedback, but it feels rather rough...like light spikes of feedback instead of bumps and dips. This is no different than I reported prior, just wanted to update where I actually felt the most feedback.

 

It sounds like the motor in the momo may not be up to the job of reacting quick enough to the finer ffb signals/defailts from rf2.

 

If it is the momo racing black wheel, try this.

In the global device setting in the logitec profiler:

overall effects strength 40
spring effect strength 30
damper effect strength 23
center spring enabled
center spring 40

leave everything default in rF2 except for the brakes, set that to 0 sensitivity.


This may not be perfect for You but it will give You a start. Again this is only for the black momo racing wheel.

 

I'll give those settings a look...thanks.

 

I tried posting this last night, but my internet was down and wouldn't load the site...

So...I found the Vehicle Set button. Before I found it though, I went into my in-game wheel options and on the steering section I clicked the "left" and the graph went straight up from the center and then flattened out at the top. I then clicked "right" and it did the same on the right side of the graph. When I clicked "center" it didn't appear to do anything. So, I clicked the "detect" button and it reset. I then ticked the Vehicle Set button (which before had been greyed out). The feedback seemed to be a tiny bit more noticeable, but still far from what I would expect.
I did realize that going down a few straights, the wheel was giving me small jolts (almost like the start of oscillation). I don't know that this was new, because I had previously been focused on other things...but then again, it may have been new...can't really say. So, I started to raise the FFB minimum torque to make sure it was set correctly. I went all the way up to 20 and the oscillation was terrible. I backed it down in increments of 5 until I got back down to the original 5.0 setting. No oscillation there, so I bumped it up to 7.5. Just a hint of oscillation there so I just left it at 5.0.
I then turned to smoothing and went from zero to 5. It seemed to liven things up, but again, just barely noticeable. I bumped the smoothing up to 10, and again, it seemed to increase the forces. I could at least now feel some decent resistance in the corners, but only from the g-loads, not from the bumps on the road...it just seemed to be a constant rate. At this point, the small jolts down the straights were pretty much gone, except for down the S/F straight (still at Sebring) and the straight right before the S/F straight. I then ended up increasing the smoothing to 20. Seemed to give forces I expected in the turns (thought again only from the g-forces, not from the bumps in the road). The bumps in the road seemed to be appearing in the FFB, but only barely noticeable (maybe 10-20 percent of what I would expect)
I'm still unsure if I should be expecting to feel forces whenever the yellow bar on TechAdes clipping utility increases, and with increasing intensity as the bar gets higher. That's what I am expecting, but I haven't heard or seen that that is a correct assumption.
I guess until I hear anything more I'll keep increasing the smoothing to see how high I need to set it to get the desired outcome (if possible). My concern though is that I'm expecting the smoothing to add quite a bit of latency to the FFB. I've never run with any smoothing, so it's something I never really paid much attention to. But, I believe latency is a byproduct of smoothing.
Thanks again for all the help.

 

The settings I typed were meant to be used with the default configuration of rF2. If You do not get your force feed back right first, You will be making in game adjustments which are not needed and sometimes counter productive to driving. It will lead You to going down a rabbit hole of settings.

 

+1

Yes, your supposed to feel forces/torqued from you ffb wheel when you see them in the plugin. The fact you don't suggests to me that the momo is unable to act quickly enough to produce those momentary instances of wheel forces/torques that make up the road detail of rf2.

Ps. Just remembered the ffb update rate in the player or controller.json file. It could very well be that the update rate is too high for your momo as well and needs lowering.

I think the line is still something like:

 

I tried your settings and felt next to zero force feedback. So I doubled all your settings and started to feel what seemed to be proper forces. I then tripled your settings and they are very close to what I think are proper forces. What I've settled on so far is:

overall effects strength 40 90
spring effect strength 30 90
damper effect strength 23 72
center spring enabled
center spring 40 0

I'm not finding much to change in-game...am I missing something? The only thing I adjusted in-game was the Force Feedback minimum torque (which I reduced after getting the base settings above in order to get rid of a bit of a rattle going down the high speed straights) and the Car-Specific feedback multiplier (which I believe should be set solely per TechAde's plugin).
It seems to me that to increase the overall forces, I have to do that in the Logitech Profiler? In rFactor, we set the Overall Spring Effect to 100%, everything else in the profiler to Zero and made adjustments in-game and in the controller.ini (if I recall correctly). Has it changed in rFactor 2 where we now make adjustments mainly in the profiler?