Let's talk about what FFB editing is possible in rF2

Battle against the deadzone in the mid wheel has been in every single racingsim I can think of, and is an ongoing struggle still today. I have yet to find one that gets rid of it completely when talking about T500, and I believe it is the technology in the wheel that prevents a direct constant FFB delivery.
That being said, DrR1ppers thread about the FFB showed the min forces parameter, and what can be done with it, did shed some light to this matter, and ended up producing results for the better.

I know this isnt directly the issue we are talking about here, but it does fall into the same ballpark.
When talking about the lack of feel concerning FFB, my thoughts about it has always been that in rF2 you cannot feel everything that the tires are trying to tell you through your steeringwheel.
No matter how great and accurate tire model or FFB there is connected to the physics engine, if it doesnt give you the information to the steeringwheel that its suppose to, all you are left with is the sounds (in racingsims, usually a poor excuse for accurate information) and visuals (which cannot convey the small "slips" that make a huge difference if ignored).
It could be that one just has to get a directdrive FFB wheel (bodnar and the likes) to get everything out of the FFB spectrum with these modern physics monsters (read; more and more indepth and complicated sims), but that doesnt really happen till that technology becomes the industry standard, so that arguement is mute for about 99% of the sim racers.

Now, all these parameters that are at our disposal to piddle with the FFB, might be able to produce more accurate FFB and bring out some of the forces to the steeringwheel that are absent, but as long as they are under an .ini file, most users will never get to experience the "alternative".

What AC produced was the "canned" effects to counter this, and with certain wheels they are necessary to get the most out of the FFB, inclueding T500.
Unfortunatly most of the audience have no clue what are they for, how to use them, or are too lazy/ignorant to use the search function to find out and obviously the only way to vent this disappointment is to throw in a hissyfit with capslock enabled, so I dont see much difference there if they actually would be under an .ini file.
I know this is not necessarily rF2/ISI type of solution, I dont even know would I want it to be such to be honest, but anyways... these threads are quite interesting, informative and actually needed.
Trying out in practise what folks like DrR1pper or Paul Loatman comes up with, is what produces the biggest improvements to the experience at the track in rF2.
I hope that these "findings" will lead to better ingame wheel profiles and attention to detail on this area.

 

That is a solid argument however. Sims get more and more detailed every year why hardware is seriously lacking and has so for some years. All the lesser forces are drowned out because there is next to no headroom on our consumer wheels and constant torque is next to non existent. People complaining about not feeling slides coming up with certain settings for example is a good example for this, all the smaller cues which usually lead up to this are drowned out quite easy. That seems to be one of the things AC does pretty well, even if it is canned, I don't care, it does the job even with these low powered wheels. But then again things like road noise is usually too much because you only feel the peaks.

We just need one company to make this affordable for the common simracer and it could become a new standard in the coming years. It has already been so in the automotive industry for years, so why not make it so for home use, smaller, cheaper, less headroom.
I've seen professional grade solutions listed which could produce up to 48 N/m on constant torque (!!!!!), that is downright dangerous mind you, so if simracers could 1/5th of that, we'd be in 7th heaven already.

 

also driving a game with a plastic wheel attached to a monitor isnt realistic either, you can't achieve realism here, what you can achieve is feeling and effect.

 

What if it's a non plastic wheel and not attached to a monitor?

 

i didnt mean that disrespectfully, but just annoys me to hear people trying to get a feel of a real race car through a fake steering wheel..

People have fun, if it feels fun and good to drive let it be......

 

i have a DFGT it feels good... im happy with it

if i want utter realism ill do another track day.

 

lol, wasn't interpreted as being disrespectful at all. I was just having fun with how what you wrote could be interpreted.

 

This is misunderstood a lot indeed, it's all the same outputs from the physics engine, the delivery of those values is the only thing which changes the experience.

 

At least for me, the above statement is true. If you have real world experience and your telling me this is the bee's knees than I believe you, will it have an affect on my lap times? No. Will it make things more enjoyable? Most likely. In the end rF2 is so customizable that it really comes down to who will spend the time tinkering and relaying what they learn to community like you and so many others are doing and I thank you all for it!

 

I'm sure that that is big part of it. People who have drivers license and drive cars, they are used to certain things coming through the steering wheel, and I'm sure that the sensation of gforces and rest of the "seat of your pants" feel will get mixed into it when evaluating FFB properties.

I dont know how does a racecar feels to drive, how much steering torque is there, or how much info do I get from steering wheel in situation X, Y nor Z, other than what I can read about, and even that is subjective information.
Closest thing to anything racey I have personally experienced is a kart.

Its not hard to find data how much steering torque is being produced by a certain type of car, but number itself tells us very little and its totally different to actually experience it.
Since there is so much more information coming to the driver while driving a car, than just what the steering wheel does, what you see and what you hear, simracing with a budget of 2000$ (pc included) is very Limited representation of driving a car, this is something we all can agree on.
What we cant agree on is, what should there be happening in our most valuable tool; Force Feedback Wheel.

There is basically two ways about it.
For it to feel as close as possible to reality, which most of us just have to rely on the word of others... Or for it to feel so that there is as much information coming to us as possible, so that we can make the most educated decisions possible while driving.
Which is the lesser of two evils, I really dont know.

 

I tested your settings, not bad but I use it almost standard only spring and damping effects are not in use. Vehicle-specific multi-will do the rest.

Currently I have fun with the eve F3. Funny to drive the car soft and high as possible, it can even lift the inner wheels.


For fun I have set it to max movement, caster to max, air out, 0 toe, no stabilizers, .................pleasant ride.


It shows what the ffb provides the driver and how detailed the bump simulation is as. Very cool !

Just the surface tenseness is the smallest at the steering wheel, some details are lost, probably due to the hardware, I don't know.


In any case it is still very impressive and already in the standard very well, and I think the difference is not big equal to what is adjusted by the user atm.

 

I appreciate your contribution I also share the most of your opinion but with all respect, it is both unrealistic, only the damping in our case slows down and acts more disadvantageous. Maybe it fits with in your overall result but damping as such should only come from the tire but not added statically or artificially.

edit: and I can feel damping without to switch it on in the plr or driver

What doesn't fit here comes from the tire surface not the carcass which works fine, but the surface ruined everything or the T500Rs can't better.

 

Go with whatever works for you, that's what those options are there for.

 

@Paul L.

It does but at low values you can not clearly feel it, is why I said, maybe it fits to your settings and I also did not mean your settings specifically slowing down and I've also driven it you can believe me, as I said not bad but does not seem to reduce my problem.

 

We need to accept that without the ability to "reload" the profiles we are editing while on track we will never sort this sort of thing out. Back when rF2 was still unreleased it was one of my wishlist items. The ability to (while in practice) edit various aspects about the cars setup or FFB via another computer so the changes could be examined on the fly. Think how much easier all this would be if someone else could change values while you are lapping. "More dampening"//.. "less spring"//.. "Increase the gain until it clips"//.. Changing, Loading, Driving, Leaving, repeat will take ages to sort out what does what and when.

 

Possible that it is dynamic but without changing the value strongly I notice no difference and it also seems not to solve the problem, I've also tested everything possible.

Patience, with time everything will change, for now it's good.

 

No problem, i've understand that and i'm not sure to said something like the FFB multi would changing the amount of friction. You must have misunderstood something or I expressed myself poorly because my problem is another.

 

You don't need super expensive and high torque wheels to feel more. I could feel A LOT with the Logitech Momo Force wheel (expensive red one) and even quite a bit with the much less expensive Momo Racing wheel (black one) once my rFactor 1 based sims' FFB were tuned properly. These wheels weren't as smooth, powerful, or fast as the newer wheels, and the Momo Racing (black one) was especially laggy, but I could still have tons of communication of the car communicating back to me.

What I am looking to feel from the wheel under braking, is what drivers use, need, and importantly rely on in real life from the feel of the car around them under braking. They can feel how much they are braking from the deceleration of the g-forces of the car, they can feel some shudders and vibrations from the tyre as it is on threshold lock-up, they can feel shudders and vibrations on the brake pedal itself. A racecar driver would not be able to drive fast and consistently if they were to magically have all these feelings from them removed except the steering wheel feel itself. All these feelings are a direct part of racecar driving, it is part of the job. The feelings have to be transmitted to us another way if we can't get them through pedals, g-forces, chassis around us, etc. If through the wheel is the only other way then so be it, as long as we get the feelings some way or another. To me, receiving the same amount (or as much as possible) as real life albeit in a different way (from the wheel's FFB) is more realistic than not feeling them at all in order to just have the steering wheel itself feel more realistic.

One can argue that real-life non-steering wheel feelings being transmitted to sim-drivers through their FFB wheels is more realistic than not receiving those feelings at all. The actual steering wheel feel itself may not be as realistic, but the feelings being received by your brain as a whole (regardless of wether or not these feelings are supposed to come from the wheel, the car around you, or the g-forces) is more realistic. You/your brain needs to feel the car, it is the most important thing that you need in order to do the job and therefore I think it is more realistic, overall, to feel as much of the car in a sim as you would in real life, rather than to cut-out 75% of all the feel that you need in real-life just because you don't want those feelings to be sent to you in a different way (through the wheel's FFB).

Overall feelings are more important than steering-wheel-itself feelings, and until we all have full motion sims that can simulate over 4 g's laterally and about 6 g's longitudinally, combined with 8-10 buttkickers/transducers giving us more info depending on all sorts of variables, combined with full FFB pedals, then we simracers need some sort of compromise on just how much of our steering wheel's FFB is telling us just pure steering column feel and how much of it is telling us alllllll the other sorts of information that is felt from a driver in the cockpit of a real-life car (which, by the way, is WAY more and way more beneficial than the feelings coming from the steering wheel itself).

You have boat-loads of feel from the car when travelling in a straight line, tons. Again, maybe not from the wheel itself, but again, 75% of all the feel of driving a racecar doesn't come from the wheel anyways. SO limiting us sim-racers to just 25% of the feel that real-life drivers get is, to me, less realistic, than attempting to transmit all the forces to us sim-drivers (albeit in an unrealistic way through the wheel's FFB, but feeling it from an unrealistic source is still, to me, more realistic overall than not feeling it all).

Easy way around this. Have some super advanced FFB section in the game with every line of the FFB ini file. When I say every line, I literally mean all 40 LOL.


Paul, I am going to mess around with all those braking FFB options that you mentioned. I also noticed that msportdan's FFB settings he provided had brake effects on but I haven't tried them yet. I know most people don't agree with me, but maybe I was just spoilt by my real-life experiences (all the super important feelings that you rely on in real-life and receive a million times a second that DO NOT come from the steering wheel itself), or maybe I was spoilt from me being able to tune rF1 so much to my liking. Maybe I just have a weird brain where I need a more weird and odd feeling wheel telling me more about the car, rather than a steering wheel that feels and acts like an actual steering wheel. I don't know, maybe I just need something different to most in order to drive to my maximum potential. I guess I'm just weird lol.

 

I agree with Spinelli, we loose a lot of the real world (driving/racing) aspects in a simulated environment , additional messages from ffb as to what the sim car is doing help to make up for some of these losses.

I feel a slight force from heavy braking ( I'll have to test it again to how noticeable it is in a straight line )

I do like the superior ffb of rf2 but it would be nice if we had some options to easily adjust it just as we did for the "real feel" mod in rfactor 1

 

hiya Paul,

did you ever try the real feel ffb mod in rfactor 1 ??

I think Spinelli is referring to ffb similar to that mod, +of course the great fidelity of rfactor 2 as an addition

if you hadn't tried the real feel mod then I understand that you can't imagine what he's trying to say