Good FFB is a huge factor if a sim is fun to race or not. Now alot of the morons around here want something that's realistic meanwhile they've never driven a car before and don't even know what realistic steering feels like and have proven they don't even know what it means. I just hope this sim is released soon as I can stop reading these idiotic forums full of experts who don't know ****.
I have no idea what side of the debate you are, every other post you seem to contradict yourself. Are you saying you want FFB amplitude to be higher to compensate for the lack of other feedback? Are you saying that asking for more FFB effects, that are more realistic is wrong? In my opinion there are two different realistic forces when talking about a sim wheel. Effects and amplitude. Effects should be realistic, such as the understeer chatter the OP mentioned. How exactly do you know what forces are real and what are added to the sim? Have you driven every mod available in real life? I don't think anyone said drivers rely only on steering wheel feedback but it is one feedback among many. I think if you don't think drivers use steering wheel feedback, well... your wrong.
cdnracer has just said "Good FFB is a huge factor if a sim is fun to race or not". which is slightly different than his "FFB will never be realistic, and should never be realistic". how is anything supposed to be correct? *edited to avoid a keyboard warrior fight.
I like your post Only comment i have is the brain is a very complex thing, I actually think you're missing the innner-ear/movement/g-force aspect with understeer. It's fairly obvious with oversteer like you said, in real life you feel the sideways movement. But you also feel the "lack" of movement with understeer. IE you're turning the wheel, in real life your brain knows what should come next which is a certain amount of lateral force/movement. If you get less than expected your brain will use this together with the sensation through the wheel and the visual cues, as well as audio cues (squeeling tyres) and with the total combination determine you're getting understeer. simplified: cornering in a balanced manner = inner ear senses the expected lateral movement Oversteer = inner ear senses more than the expected sideways movement Understeer = inner ear senses less than the expected sideways movement it's more complicated than that I'm sure, you have a slew rate so its not just lateral movement its the exact direction of the movement and so on, but the bottomn line is you're you're still missing the inner ear/lateral force aspect with understeer just like oversteer imho This I tend to agree with others about the need for ffb to "compensate" for the lack of sensory input, in particular the inner ear/g-force senses. Whether that's "realistic" forces amplified or additional forces that aren't realistic I dunno, and I'm not sure I really care lol - as long as it feels good while I'm sim-racing, allows me to drive on the edge and pickup understeer/oversteer early and accurately and "fools" me into thinking it feels realistic What I "think" might feel realistic feel could be way off lol
I haven't driven a proper racing car with slick tyres but have driven quick production cars, mostly FWD. My experience with FWD understeer is that the force increases approaching the point of maximum grip and as soon as you go close to and on that limit the force peaks. It's at this point or slightly past the peak (maximum grip) where the vibration begins (not sure which, might be dependant on tarmac, corner radius, compound type, car type etc. a million things). I'd describe it as a high frequency oscillation. Once this begins I find that the force on the steering wheel is perhaps on average the equivalent of close to the force you feel at maximum grip level, but the oscillation makes it feel very unpredictable as it quickly transitions from high force to low force. Then once you've clearly overstepped this peak (now going into actual understeer), the steering force becomes very light - which is logical since you've got less grip than before. Greater turning of the steering wheel induces even less grip and thus even less force. It's not until you back off the throttle or dial out the steering angle that you regain a stronger force in the steering.
i agree, im sure theres all kinds of neurons firing in the brain when you're driving. Describing a feeling isn't a very scientific thing as its all subjective to that person experiencing it. I tried to objectify my descriptions by focusing on the forces i was directly feeling through the wheel, obviously the amount of force i Perceive might be different to someone else feeling that same force - but its a force nonetheless. So thats why i focused my post purely on the forces and the interaction of those forces with the body, because at least those forces can be translated, with the end product being better FFB for us simracers.
IMHO, without having the force to rip a wheel out of your hand, realistic FFB isn't possible. Realistic enough FFB? That's a different matter and something that software developers are aiming for. We can't rip the wheel out of your hands, we can't make you need the strength to handle the forces a real car goes through. What we have to do is give you sensations which allow you feel the car more than your sense of sight and hearing already do. Your brain will fill in a lot of information. Your eyes and your ears will allow your brain to connect the motion of the vehicle to your sense of motion (your inner ear). The benefit of FFB is to give you an extra input along with your eyes and ears. I won't talk about the feeling of FFB, it's realism, etc, because I actually think that's personal preference in some cases. Besides, it'll up to you how you feel about rF2's FFB. Also... You guys are having a great debate all by yourselves. But I will expand on what I think benefits of FFB are - for me. Maybe it'll make someone try FFB for the first time... I didn't use FFB for a really long time. I felt like I could feel cars in simulations just fine. But when I did begin to use FFB I started to become more consistent. Being the self-analyzing personality that I am, I figured out what was going on... Basically I could feel the car and react to it fine without FFB, when I added FFB it gave me a positional awareness that I didn't have before for the track. If there's a bump, for example, that I didn't really notice, my subconscious was now being told about it, and memorizing it. This effect was happening all around each track and it was allowing me to build a subconscious awareness of a track that couldn't exist from sight and sound alone. The consistency probably came from the fact that I stopped missing braking markers, stopped missing turn-in points, etc, because I had a FFB 'bump map' in my brain and knew exactly where I was. To me, that's the benefit of FFB...
The human brain is pretty amazing. For us to be able to sit in a stationary position and 'feel' motion is absolutely amazing. I'd really love a study to be done, but I believe what has to be happening is that the visual and audio cues from the software, along with the motions we make on the wheel, are being sent to and processed by the area of the brain which deals with motion. I remember reading books on experiments (done on prison inmates, horribly) where the skull cap was removed and they would poke and prod the brain of a living person. That person would smell thing, would taste things, would become angry, etc, depending on what they did to their brain physically. I think most of what we know about the active areas of the brain came before we able to scan the brain... And came from those live experiments. There's also a lot of brain injuries where an area of the brain takes over a duty from a damaged area... It would be really interesting to see if when we're sat there completely stationary, an average sim racers brain thinks it's moving and is activated in the same areas as it is during real motion... Or even if our brains develop a different pattern to regular people.
Holy Cow lets see if i put wheels on my desk and uh.......Gentelmen lets be honest! A sim is a sim and a simulator is of course the way to go. Hmm I dont have 25000 us to do that. If i had that kind of money i would be a pro karter an not driveing a desk. I do have go karts just not that type of kart. So point is realisim, vs realworld. My pc cost 1500 for parts I built it. My go kart cost 900 for parts and I build them also. 100% real feel there lol. A desktop can never feel real. Rogernater
Hi Tim: Here Here you hit it on the nail. So while waiting patiantly for rf2 to come and load it self into my pc. I have found other sims and mods to play with. Go Kart Pro is fun, if you set it up steering and all its quite nice. Oh by the way i am a 66yr ole guy who has been racing all my life. I have 2 national titles in karting and 3 yrs SCCA. Bp Vett So when I drive a mod my whole self is in it. I may not be abel to feel e-thing, but I win online in my league every once in a while. Rog Well I better say I won 1 race online in 4 5 yrs lol its hard to be as good for me with the pc. I can drive better in a real car. I am a retired Ferrari Tech 23 yrs Newport Ca. PS I am up for a study. Rogenator
Don't forget proper headphysics guys. It is amazing how some small adjustments made by Reiza in their GameStockCar can change a hole sim and make it better to "believe" or let's say better to feel the actual motion in-car.
Headphysics are an acquired taste, I think. Personally I find it easier to read the car's movement by having the head almost rigidly attached to the car, as some compensation for not feeling that movement through my body. If I have head movement on I lose a lot of 'feel' for what the car's doing - but obviously that's my experience because of how I've learnt to drive the car in rFactor with my settings, and I fully believe others can have head movement on and get what they need to drive fast. (I say I find it better to have head movement replicating car movement, probably because I've learnt to 'read' the view panning to judge how the car's behaving; others might argue their head movement inside the cockpit, or exaggerated yaw effect from g-forces, tells them how their car is behaving) Unfortunately (or fortunately?) the same can be said for FFB, and pretty much everything else as well. Different people see different things as more/most realistic (knowing it can never be 'exact'), but also react differently to the same thing. Personally I think some people spend too much time searching for the 'perfect' FFB tweaks and not enough time understanding what they should be trying to get from it, and learning to get it. As has been well discussed here, even if it were possible to get the FFB perfectly realistic you'd be getting a lot less feedback overall in comparison to actually driving the car in real life.
I always turned off all headmovements and lookahead in rf and gtr just like you, but came back to it and it helps to get a better understanding. At least with the reiza headphysics which can also be transfered to every rF mod. (dunno about mismatches at this point) Try it. It's different than what you have experienced in the past.
+1 It is adjustable by tweaking controller.ini file. My most basic understanding of physics suggests that when the front wheels lose grip the FFB should get lighter, not stronger. So when you're on ice it's even lighter, when you're in the air - lighter still. If the wheels are locked completely and the contact patch is sliding it doesn't even matter if the wheels are straight or not, so there should be no centering force at all. The remark on the vibration seems logical though. I may have read the OP wrong though. As understeer increases the centering force must decrease, however it may still be harder to move the steering out of its current position.
It's amazing. Make a long post about garbage and all the "experts" here in the ISI forums will come out and nod their heads in agreement. Do any of you actually sim race or do you just try to look smart in sim racing forums?
