When you go searching for wheel torque (I don't recommend it!) you'll find a measured ~35Nm in a FSAE car - though only at initial corner turn-in, not sustained through the corner. I think for most drivers normal cornering forces above 10-15Nm are difficult to deal with. I've seen many DD users say that the extra speed is a noticeable benefit, as much as the overall force. The details don't disappear on weaker wheels but they're less apparent. Of course those details do disappear if the FFB is clipping, and the DD can provide much more torque without clipping, so that's definitely a benefit.
Is the h-pattern shifting in the Caterham and Mini considered a finished product - at least for the time being? I ask as the model at the moment seems to be that if a shift is mistimed then a lower gear than the one selected is assigned. I don't mind the challenge of having to make sure that a gear change is good in order to avoid dropping several tenths, but the penalty at the moment for a mistimed shift is a lunched engine. In reality there would be a degree of feedback if I was selecting the wrong gear or even having trouble engaging everything smoothly and there would be an opportunity not to commit to a gear change. At the moment, while the increased need to co-ordinate gear changes improves the driving experience the penalties for poor shifts are extreme.
I've seen the opposite. If I miss a downshift I have to release the clutch and try again. Granted this is with paddles not an H shifter. I finally have a reason to get one of the Bodnar Logitech USB connectors for my old G27 shifter. Others here have also complained that they can't bypass a gear like from 4th to 2nd, they say the shifter acts more like a push/pull sequential shifter where each gear has to be engaged BEFORE the next shift can be attempted. If I wasn't packing up my gear for another move,(8th or 9 time in the last 10 years...Marry a psychotic wife they said...have INTERESTING times they said....) I'd try and duplicate that.
Mistimed or misplaced? In the caterham upshifting 4th to 3rd will lunch the engine, but failing to use the clutch will leave you in neutral - could lunch the engine, but will need to rev the engine for a while first. Definitely need some audio feedback in lieu of shifter FFB, as a clue that the car isn't in gear, and/or that you're selecting a gear that will break things. @davehenrie yep, have to go gear by gear except to 1st. Very weird!
Much of the discussion here is more focused on DD wheels that can replicate most of the actual forces, and are handled differently by rF2. So ignore some of that. Anyway: On a Logitech wheel you're limited to about 2.5Nm torque. The Caterham here is on the low end of typical cornering forces at around 5Nm, with most cars producing more. So first thing: you aren't going to get real forces. More force is better, on several fronts: More engaging, as it's more realistic and just feels better. It's a bit like music sounds better when louder, to a point. Greater difference in forces, either mid-corner fluctuations, understeer dropoff, or comparitive forces when judging track grip (dry or wet). Signal to noise ratio - gear or belt driven wheels have more inherent weight in their movement, so increasing forces will help to separate FFB effects from the wheel's friction. So basically without exception, this level of wheel should be run at full strength in the software/driver. Reducing the force takes you further from reality and has the above drawbacks. Avoid above 100% unless you know for sure it actually produces more force on your wheel, and isn't going to flatten the top end of forces too much. In-game settings aren't so simple. You have to keep in mind what you want to get from FFB. It's not just a centering spring or a heavy feel on the wheel; you want to feel variation in the forces at your fingertips, to help you understand what the car is doing. There are broadly a few different things that generate different levels of FFB: Mid-corner centering force, which will fluctuate with variations in tyre grip, load, angle, plus suspension geometry. Harsher interactions like driving along kerbs (rumble strips), grass, dirt. Collisions with stationary objects and sharp edges - e.g. crossing road/kerb edges at an angle. From top to bottom those forces are increasing in magnitude. The cornering forces are by far the most useful, the second group you want to be aware of but offer little in the way of car-control FFB, while the last group will only shake your rig/desk and threaten to injure your fingers and hands if you're in a compromised position. So, usually the best approach is to increase FFB as much as possible without losing the forces you want to feel, which are those in the first group. This is a fairly dynamic process as forces can vary with car setup, track conditions, driving style to some extent, and different people prefer slightly more force or more detail at the high end. It may be something to revisit occasionally and adjust if necessary. I prefer telemetry for this (you can identify force levels in parts of the track you actually need feedback, and ignore harsh bumps or kerbs) but Simhub can display the FFB level live as well. If you run in-game FFB too high you'll get excessive clipping, where instead of high-level fluctuations you get a flat 100% output. Over extreme bumps or harsh kerbs you're not missing useful feedback, but if that happens mid-corner you now just have a centering spring instead of FFB. Different cars can produce different levels as well, because the car maker can arbitrarily set the "max forces" point, and that sets the standard 100% output level. Many cars in rF2 will produce some mid-corner clipping at 100% FFB Mult (in-game), so getting more detailed FFB needs a Mult of 80% or less. Some other cars have the "nominal max" point set well above normal forces, so you can actually run above 100% without losing much relevant detail. The IndyCar is like that (130% is reasonable, but would kill FFB in most other cars) and the caterham is in this category as well - its max is set to 9.5Nm, well above the 5.5 cornering forces I've seen with some test laps. 150% or higher might be perfectly useable and make the most of your wheel's limited power.
Not disagreeing with any of your comments, just curious where did information like the Indycar not overloading/clipping up to 130% come from?
It's a generalization, and these should always be tested for individual circumstances (setup, track, conditions). 130 might be pushing it, but I got your attention Anyway, I usually run about 70 or 75% mult in most cars, but here's the DW-12 at 100% mult: (I believe the recent IndyCar is similar; I don't own it) This is default setup, so usual caveats apply (especially caster). At Indianapolis RC, these corners are pretty typical of the lap, and the cornering force is barely reaching 80% of max FFB output. The part that is clipping there in the middle is a kerb - and I don't care about clipping there. So could go to 125% mult (which would bring the current 80 output up to 100) and for my purposes not lose any useful detail. Most DLC especially will have much more clipping than this at 100. Here's a not-great run through with the default Bentley GT3 on 100%:
Mistimed. A rushed gear change, typically from second to third seems to place the car in first - even though the shifter is physically in third and sending only a legitimate signal for third. After investigation I can't persuade the shifter to produce a false signal and I have increased the margins between gear selections where only a neutral signal will be returned. The shifter works reliably for 5 hours endurance stints without any issues.
Yes, it should, unless you make good use of the ffb multiplier. This is basic understanding of how simulation works, anything else is arcade style. If it didn't, every car would have the same ffb strength and that's not realistic. rF2 doesn't know what's your wheel torque, it knows there's a max torque but not the absolute value. It has to scale forces to some unknown max. It's your job to set your max high enough and your min, and also your scaling multiplier so that you get either realistic forces or maxed out forces. Edit: This is true if you're chaning the gain od the wheel to max out at 12.5. But if you're capping the max torque without changing the gain, then you'd be right. That's an important distinction, but I guess you're not doing this because rF2 would use the same torque then, it wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
Sorry if this problem has already been discussed, but when I shift, for example, from 5 to 3 with the H-Shifter, it sets in neutral, and only selecting 1st gear allows me to shift. Is this the case with everyone?
Yeah, been mentioned a couple of times above but got lost in FFB-chat. You can only change up and down 1 gear at a time, except when changing into 1st (which you can do at any time). I assume it's an unintentional quirk from using the gear protection parameters to force the use of a clutch. Can sort of get used to it for driving (albeit having to remember not to bother trying to change 4th or 5th to 2nd), but it's very weird when you half spin and drop a lot of speed, and from 4th gear have to move into 3rd so you can get into 2nd (which is the right gear for the current speed). Ok, weird. I hadn't had that with my laps playing with the caterham. So you think you shifted before getting the clutch in?
Ok that's a great summary thanks for that but as you mentioned, the thread was focusing more and more on DD wheels. Now what about us owners of High End belt driven wheels like CSW 2.5 and TSPC racer? If I recall well, the Max torque output or whatever its called in the controller file for my TSPC racer was showing 2.5Nm whereqs teh wheel is meant to output 6Nm peak. What do we do then? we leave this controller file alone and be happy with these wheels peak torques as none of the cars in Game would reach these levels coming from, our wheels? and just play with the FFB multiplier and a clipping monitoring tool? I would like to conclude on this because its still not 100% clear to me. For reference I have everything at 100% in the TM control panel Thanks
Basically it'll make no difference, because 6 is below the 'max torque' of nearly all cars in rF2. So the FFB will be scaled 0-100% like a weaker wheel would. Of course you'll have stronger forces, but that's it. Feel free to change it to 6, but very rare it'll change anything. *and the rest, yes, exactly as you said. Put your wheel on full and adjust the game FFB Mult to suit the car.
Don't I know it. I need to do some deliberate detonations with the data logging turned on to find out which situations lead to missed gears and which lead to shifts to first.
Just returning to this, I couldn't see the wheel with my normal driving position so took a look, it appears graphically the wheel is restricted to 720°. With the steering lock set to 720 or below it matched my wheel fine. This seems indicative of a car based on 720 rotation and then changed via upgrades (though the empty visible upgrades file doesn't match that), which can mess with the wheel rotation graphically (but still work fine physically). However... the rotation and steered angle in brackets (that's what the brackets normally mean) don't match what's happening. Seems like something is off but I can't quite work out how.
The real car is "restricted" to 720 deg https://forum.studio-397.com/index.php?threads/caterham-academy.72446/page-9#post-1105759
