Extremely Dangerous Unexpected Behavior in rF2

How long did it take you to realise that damping helps and is actually required for a DD wheel hehe. Niels Heusinkveld did a good video on tuning a DD wheel a few years ago and you can find it on his youtube channel. Maybe BirnenRubber could benefit. The interesting test is too add some Damping and get used to it for a few days as it will feel strange. Then go back to no Damping and you will wonder how on earth could I have ever driven without it!

 

Glitches can indeed happen at any time with software and certainly the user of any DD wheel must exercise due diligence and be very mindful at every step.

That said, If a safety issue is well known to the manufacturer and 100% repeatable, it should at the very least be documented appropriately. Nothing in the current documentation for the Restart Race function gives the user any warning of the dangerous injury they could receive as an intended consequence of the current software implementation.

 

The default UI gives a warning that the wheel is not centered in AC.

 

Some damping and friction is probably required. How much is subjective in my opinion. I have done this test, multiple times. I'm faster with lower (not zero) amounts of damping and friction.

I agree 100%, there should be warnings where there are known spots in the sim that can produce wheel snaps. Perhaps my post came as a counterpoint to the OP. It wasn't. What I was trying to say is that I find the best approach is to be overly careful, and always make sure the wheel is centered in the software and where your hands are in real life match what is happening in the sim. I would like for all these "bugs" to be fixed as well, but I can name at least 5 or 6 different scenarios that can produce this result across different sims, and I'm sure there are many more. So my personal approach is to just accept the risk and be diligent.

You are correct. Although I had never experienced this personally and went to verify. It seems the default UI will not alert the driver unless the wheel is cranked beyond 90 degrees. Sidekick will help when the angle is much lower. A sufficiently thumb hurting wheel snap can occur at angles lower than 90 imho. For reference:

 

I agree that diligence is key regardless. It might be just my wheel setup, but in AC when I enter any car, even when the wheel is straight, it will jerk to the left about 90 degrees or so as well, but not as violently for some reason likely due to my particular settings for that game.

A software fix in RF2 could be when the restartRace() function is invoked, for them to simply call pause() first within the function, or something similarly simple, which would just be a few lines of code to fix.

 

@Paul Jeffrey Any updates on this? It it being worked on?

 

@Paul Jeffrey
Bump! Worth bringing this post at the top again. Or has this issue been dealt with?
I don't want to seem like I'm making mafia-style threats, but with a lot of new content being released, well known youtubers are bound to be uploading footage. Now imagine if one of these people got caught out by this bug. It's a bad enough thing to happen to anyone, but the publicity would also be bad.
And please remember that most of us here are bringing this up because we want rF2 to be as good as possible, so we're doing this out of support.

 

Yep my 26nm wheel tried to snap my arms off when resetting a race the other night. Not once but every bloody time
I reset the race. Bloody dangerous and hasn't happened at all in other Sims.

 

It happens every time and you still haven't worked out to be ready for it? What are you, stupid?

I'm joking hahaha

Long ago this would have just been a matter of polish, but with the wheels (and rigs, actually) people are using now there really needs to be a controlled transition in and out of the virtual car to avoid very nasty surprises. Even when it happens every time.

 

I am quite surprised this hasn't been addressed. I am very aware it happens, but I occasionally forget.

Hope it doesn't take someone getting seriously hurt for this to become a priority.

 

We should limit wheel torque to levels we can actually handle, should such abrupt events occur. Fact is, there are many ways where something can go wrong with the ffb signal, maybe completely un-related to the game itself. Is there really a need to run a 25Nm dd-wheel at 100% output? The most I've ever felt the need for is about 15Nm and even then, I still have substantial margin in the game ffb gain.

Back in the early days of DD, it was pretty common to suggest 100% output in the wheel driver (reduced ffb in-game) to avoid signal clipping but, that's not generally required for good ffb. Some amount of signal clipping can actually serve a purpose to avoid injury. The lucky ones suffer minor injuries and learn early on, to strike a good balance between ffb-output and car control, not using the wheel as an exercise device.

 

Sorry, but although I get your reasoning (ie mistakes can happen at any time, and it's ultimately up to the user what risk they expose themselves to) this normal functioning of the game can be fixed and avoid the foreseeable instances. If there's a game crash and the wheel throws itself into a spin and the player breaks their wrist, that's bad luck. If restarting a race results in a broken wrist that's a poor product (which doesn't equal liability - I think that's a step too far - but it reflects poorly on rF2).

 

I've owned a DD since 2015 so I'm pretty experienced with it. In all my time owning it, it had never behaved this was in any title including RF2 . This seems relatively recent and it's intermittent too. What concerned me was how violent it was lock to lock kinda thing. Have the Devs mentioned doing anything about this?

 

Stick a DLC tag onto the problem and it will be fixed by next Q release!

 

It's unbelievable, but I haven't seen any kind of acknowledgment from anyone from S397 that they know about the serious issue, despite they've been tagged multiple times etc. It either looks like they mostly don't read forums (except news and notification section) or don't give a ... or don't have time to fix it.
Maybe someone asked devs on Discord already about it(as they are more active on Discord than on official forum)?

 

They don't want to acknowledge it, that's basically it

 

Of course, such issues should always be addressed by developers where possible but, I've experienced such events in many titles, for various reasons. Simple USB disconnects can cause it, game crashes, Audio / video driver issues, PC focus priority switches, etc. The hazard goes well beyond the games themselves and it's ultimately the user that has to be proactive for their own safety, as well as appealing to developers.

Reducing power output to practical and safe levels is something everyone can do to improve their own situation. There is a big difference from 50-70% output vs 100%, when these events occur. I speak from experience, having injured my myself multiple times over the years. Being of an older age, things don't heal like they used to.

 

Please Studio 937 check this problem, it's serious enough. Violent steering wheel shakes are dangerous.

In my case, playing online alone with my brother-in-law and 8 IA 90% of the time we restart a race we suffer from violent steering wheel shakes while the 'Syncronyzing' message appears. The violent shaking doesn't stop until we go out to the lobby. The race clock freezes and control is not regained until there are about 6-7 seconds left before the start of the race. Then we can safely enter the race.
The server is in another pc of my lan, and my brother-in-law is in another near city and have a very good ping less of 10ms. Fiber and good routers. Sometimes ping goes to 2000 or 10000 when restart the race. Have FFB to 65%. It happened with Fanatec CSW v2 an with CLS DD. All drivers I tried.
In offline mode, many times when I press the restart race button, the steering wheel shakes to one side.

For the love of God, we're getting old.

English is not my language, too much information in a few words , keep that in mind.

 

@Coutie
Has this issue been acknowledged and put into TODO list?