Greetings everyone, VR in sim racing is becoming more widespread, as is the availability of better rigs, wheels, pedals, etc. However, when in VR, the steering wheel one sees is likely not the same being used in reality. There is a mismatch which can creates some hurdles, especially with more complex wheel user-cases. It seems to me there should be a helpful option to replace the visible steering wheel with the one actually being used. Now, of course not everyone would like to do this, and currently there's certainly little coding done on representing sim racing wheels in the sim. The only new exception might be Precision Sim Engineering GPX wheel and the Formula Hybrid 2019 developed for AC. Although in that case, a new car was developed and the wheel was not made available for current cars. Anyway, I wouldn't see this as a simple mod in the sense of modifying a vehicle with a new car mod in rFactor 2. Maybe this would actually be a new core feature developed in the code, allowing for a new type of mod. This would then allow 3rd party companies, such as Fanatec or Precision Sim Engineering, to develop their own code and formally support this directly. It could also be available to the community, so they can have their go at it as well. I wouldn't expect to have any licensing problems with car manufactures by the fact that this feature would be available, but naturally I haven't seen the agreements... What are your thoughts on it? @Marcel Offermans? It would be great to see your perspective Regards
I like the principal of the idea & its been discussed before, having my T300RS in VR in front of me would be cool but beyond that I don't see it as time well spent by any Dev (let alone Studio397), here's why: We don't have proper "Virtual Gloves" available just yet (I think there's some in development), so Pressing any Buttons won't show up in game so essentially you're just looking at your Wheel in VR and nothing more. The amount of wheels on the Market would actually make this a huge task to model each one correctly, you can't just do a few of the big ones and leave it at that, then of course future wheels would need to be modelled as well. For me this is time better spent elsewhere in Coding & Modelling. It would take a complete reworking of the way Steering Wheels are present in the Car/Mod and the way it's presents itself in game, essentially it's a huge task before you even get the chance to Model one Wheel. I personally wouldn't want to see my T300RS when driving Historic Cars, it would look simply well out of place (and that includes more modern cars as well), I'd prefer the Virtual old style wheel. So all in all yes a nice idea, but for me it's not overly practical and the resources of any Dev are better spent elsewhere
Maybe look into Reality Blender on steam, if your system can handle the overhead. I got it working and it was cool though it is tuff to make the wheel and the in game wheel position work. Also camera placement is difficult since your body is usually square in front of your wheel.
Thanks for your thoughts. Good points. Maybe it's a bit too soon, given the lack of good "virtual gloves" solutions as mentioned. Nevertheless, for pro sim steering wheels with several features, usual for Formula / LMP classes, I believe there's already added value, even if I understand that's not the case for simpler steering wheels or cars with "simpler controls". As such, I disagree you can't only have a few ones built-in, as the use-case is clearly better on a subset of all steering wheels. You wouldn't really be interested in this feature for the other ones, as you wrote. It certainly seems like a rework of the ways cars/steering wheels are present in rF2. Maybe this is just something to take into account when planning other structural changes that might need development in the future. I do strongly believe that at some point this will be very useful. OTOH, I also am quite aware that rF2 needs dev resources elsewhere. I'm personally looking forward to test out the new UI and online competition system when it comes out @elbo: thanks for the tip. I'll look into that.
hands coming off the virtual steering wheel is a big no no for me, very distracting & never match real life hands ability to turn this off, or hands completely off so it's steering wheel only is needed
I don't know how many times i've tried to press the virtual buttons. Searching as an idiot the virtual one in my steering wheel
It’s not an issue for me - but I had been using my Thrustmaster F1 rim for a couple of years before I adopted VR and so don’t have any real problems finding the buttons. My rig also has a couple of rotary inputs to the (now pretty useless) Bodnar shift lights and a button box - unless you have some form of mixed-mode VR, you’ll never capture everything... ...so why try?
