The day we recieved a sim. Thanks to the FFB

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Ian Mills, Jan 11, 2012.

  1. Ian Mills

    Ian Mills Registered

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    hello there,

    Those of you that know me will understand that i am not really a forum user. I tend to avoid them where possible as many of the threads and posts turn into unconstructive criticism and results in the use of language that would make Frankie Boyle/Chris Rock and Roy Chubby Brown blush and proclaim .... "<stiffUpperLipAccentricBritishAccent> oh, that's just nasty </stiffUpperLipAccentricBritishAccent>".

    Despite my motives for ignoring forums, rF2 has got me infront of my keyboard to express my sheer delight at what ISI are doing.

    Back to the topic! For years i have been very unhappy with the state of sims primarily based on the FFB quality and more importantly, the un-direct nature of the steering system.

    Why?
    We are not sat in the car, so we dont have the chassis torsion and movement to base to understand what the vehicle is doing, we only have one device, a FFB wheel. So why then is FFB the most overlooked, poorly modelled part of a 'sim'.I wont dwell on them here as the subject has been done to death, but a few things worth mentioning include. 1. resistance to turn the wheel left or right is not FFB. 2. Canned effects are misinformative and if switched off can give a driver an advantage because he is not responding to info that isnt really happening on track.

    RealFeel, was an eye opener for me, because it connected the controller to the wheels, and instantly showed me that most mods in rF1 where badly modelled. I am not saying i could do it better myself but as a modding enthusiast, digging around and using ReelFeel is a great way of highlighting that many times, the steering/suspension/tyres never came into contact with one another. The 'Spiking' felt was simply the rF engine desperately trying to understand the mess on these poor mods.

    One major advantage of turning it on was the increased responsivness of steering. It reacts much faster for me, and i am unable to drive 'standard' ffb now because it feels slow in comparison.

    Realfeel simply tells you what the wheels are doing, so that left me driving mods that were constructed well, which unfortunatley are few and far between. The problem is then, that you can get a dead feeling, why? a few reasons include, 1. the tyre model of rF1 is not good, 2. Tracks, for the most part, are very smooth.


    What do i mean by that? Every sim out that there (and i am including other sim titles/mod combinations) will allow me to literally take my hands from the wheel down the straight, sip tea and perform brain surgery in a clam and collected manner, before returning my hands to the wheel, getting comfortable in my seat and braking for t1.

    I myself had 'given up' on sim racing due to it all feeling very dead behind the wheel.


    Returning to my dislike of internet forums for a second, one of the others reasons for this include that it is opinion based. While i personally like reading and gathering opinions, to consider different angles and ponder a new approach i had not thought of before, many times opinions get in the way of facts.

    So lets look at a few,

    What is it that we need from a future sim in terms of driving feedback ?
    No effects, what are the tyres or suspension/chassis actually doing?
    We must have the wheels connected to the controller.
    Tracks are not smooth.

    Anybody who has driven on a race track will know that running on to a kerb or off road, shakes your teeth out and makes your eyes vibrate in your head like you have just recieved a tazer hit to the temple. When you come back onto that track you are convinced you have damaged the car in some way, or taken some life out of it.

    I appluad ISI on this single subject and i am very worried that changes will be made to numb down the vibrations/or hard code in a damper.

    The thing is, we desperately need to feel every track surface change, undulation, bump because, simply put, it is that way in real life. I hope it is an area that gets even more attention, joking for a second, i want to be able to drive over a coin and be able to proudly announce on teamspeak which way up it was. :)
    Seriously though, as dynamic tracks surfaces and weather gets developed and come into play more and more we will need as much information as is possible. We need to know what the car is doing, and what it will do next in a forever changing environment. This really is critical to .. well, dare i say it.....driving.

    rF2 has moved on leaps and bounds in this department and it is a pleasure to finally return to a hobby that i love, and its all because, for the first time ISI have made us feel more connected to the car. The car is alive.

    Congratulations.

    So, to ISI, please keep this the way it is and don't disconnect us from the car. On my knees, i beg you.
    To the community, please consider what i have wrote constructivley and think about making rF2 and future isi titles ahead of the curve, chasing the limits of what a sim can be while others make games to please the majority.

    Thanks for your time and effort.

    -Ian (G25 User)
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 13, 2012
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  2. Rui Santos

    Rui Santos Registered

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    Ok, i understand you but "we" just want FFB to reduce it's strength a bit. You're in a computer at home and not in a race car!! I drive Karts in real life and i don't want my G27 to simulate it's strength because it's just stupid and the materials are not the same!! I don't want to buy a wheel per month :p
     
  3. killerwatt

    killerwatt Registered

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    +1
     
  4. Gimpymoo

    Gimpymoo Registered

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    It should be optional, can there not be a "strength slider" ingame to appease those who want it a little weaker but NOT decreased across the board.

    Some spend many hundreds on a wheel which are more than upto the task.

    I agree with the op though and congratulate them on a well written post.
     
  5. mc0676

    mc0676 Registered

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    Ian Mills ehm ... try to go out of track with a REAL Megane in a REAL track and try to see what happen to your wheel when you go out of track.
    It start to ratt or vibration when u are on the grass ???

    NO MATE, it do not works in this way. Every steer reaction is smoothed by tyres. NO RATTING, never !

    An hard reaction is a think, the rattin or vibration another. Don't confuse that.

    What wheek do u use ?

    If u're using a TS500 then it's all ok for u, right.
     
  6. Tobias Nyström

    Tobias Nyström Registered

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    Thanks Ian Mills, for putting this into words, as myself, a irl racer I want exactly this.
     
  7. Tripp

    Tripp Registered

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    Nice to hear it is so much better FFB than before i have download the beta but want to see the reactions in the forums before i start to pay and race rfactor 2 i seen so much reactions that is good and also bad experince so for me personal i wait until all is sort out
    and when that is ok i pay the game to use it ,,it is still a beta as isi say so i hope we got a finish good product soon ;)
     
  8. Yutja

    Yutja Registered

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    I am with Mills on that.
    I do not believe that wheels get really damaged by rf2 FF otherwises the staff of ISI would have gone through hundreds of wheels during development.
    The community always strives for realism und for true simulations and now we have proper feedback when going off track it is now suddenly too much?
    I would like ISI to stick with the current FF but also provide a option for other people to turn it down
    edit: I am using a g25 btw, I bought when it came out.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 11, 2012
  9. kmw

    kmw Registered

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    Yes Ian I see what you mean ......
    Good comments, I agree it's all based on opinion, and some option to adjust might be good bearing in mind the range of simmers/gamers, but on my brief look so far, it appears possible to turn the force down already? Anyway, I agree the feel is closer than ever to reality :)
     
  10. Boyd

    Boyd Registered

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    Nice post Ian. I agree that the FFB should be as direct as possible.

    BUT, when I'm driving the Renault FR35 up the hill after T1 at Monaco, staying on the tar, and not giving it horns (just driving), the steering wheel is practically trying to tear itself out of my hands. And that's wrong, it shouldn't be doing that. No tar surface is THAT rough.:p

    EDIT: Forgot to add, also using a G25
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 11, 2012
  11. mc0676

    mc0676 Registered

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  12. TonyRickard

    TonyRickard Registered

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    I have driven cars in rallies on very rough terrain, so much so various bits of the car's interior fell off around us and we were rattled around. The steering wheel didn't shake like we see here though. The wheel is the only thing that can shake so I think developers use it to portray the sensations we feel through our bodies.

    Hence I think it should be optional in terms of how we want the sensations portrayed. It can be a little odd to be in a perfectly static environment with a steering wheel shaking like mad, it depends on how we get immersed and some sense of imagination.
     
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  13. mc0676

    mc0676 Registered

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    Nice post.

    I can imagine that is not very simple for the ISI Staff make all the people happy about that.
     
  14. Jameswesty

    Jameswesty Registered

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    First of all Its important to remeber this is a beta

    There is a specifc issue with some wheels and some aspects of the FFB coming across to strong ( not in a subjective sense of "i dislike the FFB" but in a objective sense of "My wheel is going to brake and all other FFB feel is lost" )

    so when reading posts remeber that not everyone is exsperancing the same thing and so you might be having a conversation from different start pionts.

    As for the OP , in my opinoin Net Car Pro has a far more consistant FFB and phisics set up than Rfactor2 in its current state , Im not saying Netcar pro is better or more rolistic just that at this piont in time its more consistant and prodictable (gives good FFB in all situations where as Rf2 is especaily lacking on rear end grip when accel out of corner and Rf2 FFB seems a bit lurchy making drivers tend to occolate from side to side)

    Given the way in which sims like NKP and RF2 derive FFB It is to be exspected that Car set up and specifc aspects of a given car will have a very large impact on the FFB feel and because Rf2 is still beta it might be quite some time untill annyone can give a fair assesment of the FFB in RF2.
     
  15. TechAde

    TechAde Registered

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    I don't think there is, the issue is just that a per-vehicle multiplier of 1.0 (the default) is way too high for most (if not all) of the beta cars. I'm finding 0.4 to be much better, at least in the Historic F3 @ Monaco.
     
  16. Marek Lesniak

    Marek Lesniak Car Team Staff Member

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    That depends on what steering wheel you have. For T500RS owners, for sure it'd be better to decrease overall FF multiplier a bit (and already having overall strenght set to 60% in the driver settings), while some G25/G27 owners might even want to increase it.
     
  17. TechAde

    TechAde Registered

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    What wheel you have doesn't really make any difference if what you're after is the highest fidelity FFB experience possible.
     
  18. Marek Lesniak

    Marek Lesniak Car Team Staff Member

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    Yes, but I was reffering to FF ingame setting.... for some wheels you set it higher, for other - set it lower to get more or less the same strenght.
     
  19. TechAde

    TechAde Registered

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    Think of the per-vehicle multiplier as the MaxForce setting in RealFeel. The actual MaxForce setting is in each cars HDV, however what we have in the UI is a modifier that acts on it, effectively giving us control over the MaxForce setting on a per-vehicle basis.

    [Edit: That wasn't a bad guess given all I read of your post was Edit: :)]
     
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  20. Denstjiro

    Denstjiro Registered

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    Not like opinions taking over facts....sharing a lengthy opnion :p

    But, yeah, i get it and i agree. Just go on Spa with a classic car, there are two longs straights in the midfield, the first one gives a big amount of tarmack-feedback, you realy gotta hold on to the wheel, no way to take a zip from your coffee and it feels like driving a car in that era (or so i emagin)
    The 2nd straight is like a pooltable, Brain surgery territory as Ian points out. way too smooth and the two give a great example on the difference in feel.

    Also the extreme movements on the gravel realy wants you to keep avoiding the grass and sand, which is of course a good thing, kinda like trying to avoid a stop&go penalty for cutting.
    Forcing the driver to avoid these things is exactly what i hoped for in pre-discussions, we all wanted more in terms of drivers beeing forced to actualy drive the way they are suposed to drive. a million of opinions about it and so it seems ISI took their own route on this which is very nice. (or it was just just an after effect)

    Having said that, it can be abit over-agressive, i realy dont want my monitors to bump themselfes of the desk or having to remove every lose item on my desk before is start up rf2 lol.
    Also some consideration to other people in the house is not to be ignored, especially those whom dont understand what this 'gaming'is about and having to listen to the wheel rattling all night long :p
     

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