My Fanatec load cell arrived yesterday. Hmmm, it's not actually plug and play. I plugged it in, went on track and couldn't stop the car at all and found it impossible to lock up the brakes. So, I see there are several places to change things. On the Fanatec itself there is the BFR setting (default is 50). In-game under the controller setup where you can change both sensitivity and min and max. In-car where you can set the brake pressure. I'm sure the brake settings are personal preference and car specific, but are there any general guidelines for a starting point? For example, should you match settings...like should BFR be set to the same thing as in car brake pressure? Should sensitivity in game be left at 100% so it's a linear path? I did some testing but found the first thing I have to do is anchor my pedals more firmly. They sit on a raised box and I'll have to bolt them to that before I can do anything meaningful, but I was looking for a general starting point.
Here are a couple things to check. Make sure in control setup the pedal is recognized press brake and see if the Blue indicator for brakes moves.In game check in the difficulty/assists and make sure you don't have Anti-lock brakes or Braking help turned on the Anti-lock settings go from off to low med and high(I think). Depending on the car your driving they may have ABS like GT3's so check in the car setup menu where you can change the level of ABS and even turn it off. Old UI you can find that in the Advanced section new UI scroll the farthest to the right in setup screen to find it. In the Controls Calibration press your brake pedal as far in as it will go and then press the Max button while still holding the brake fully depressed. Then test the brake to see if blue indicator moves to 100% when you press it. Once you get it working properly you can tinker with all these different settings as well as In car pressure and sensitivity to find your ideal for different cars. As well if you currently have your pedals plugged into your wheel base I would recommend that you plug them directly into one of your computer usb ports as you will get better performance. (reason being that thru the wheel base it only reads them at 8 bit resolution but plugged directly into usb port 16 bit something like that can't remember off the top of my head...but its BETTER) Hope that gets you started
I would leave the brake sensitivity in game on 100% for linearity. The car setup brake strength you can do the same as you'd do with a spring pedal, so put it less than full if you're getting a lot of lockups. More likely though, with a new load cell, you might as well put the car on full because you probably won't habitually hit it for a while, and certainly without your pedals secured. I'm not sure how strong your load cell is (either raw or the way it's configured on your pedals) but anything more than 20-30kg will take some concentration to actually press that hard if you're used to a spring brake. Just a matter of changing your habits. I wouldn't get hung up on USB vs wheelbase, I think practically it makes very little difference. But if it 'feels' better, go ahead.
To follow up, I haven't used assists (except for clutch) for a long time. All of the basics are in order. I did some experimenting last night and set the min and max and that helped a ton. That, plus adjusting the in-car brake force makes a difference. I mounted the pedals and that helped, too. My Day One settings were as follows for anyone who comes by here in the future: I left the BFR on the wheel (Fanatec Elite) at the default 50%. Sensitivity in-game at 100%. Set min at 0 and max at what I would consider a reasonable full brake pressure...it's around 60%. In-car brake pressure I set between 5 and 10 less than the defaults for the car so for the Formula E that I usually drive instead of 80, I set it to 70-75. I suspect this will all change as I get used to the load cell. Right now, I'm slower than I was with the G27 but braking sure does feel a lot more natural. I appreciate the assistance on getting going with the load cell.
I agree with Lazza especially regarding the pineapple pizza it probably makes very little difference. You might not be able to 'feel' the difference - at least in terms of how much pressure you apply or release to reach a certain value - but the computer can. 16-bit will give a smoother transition between force levels which might help during trail braking and brake dabs. In racing very little differences add up over a lap right now there is a 1 second difference between 1st and 70th in the GT Challenge Qualifier. No disrespect to Lazza this is just my opinion and wanted to mention it for people that hadn't considered it as for some half the fun with sim racing is constant tinkering with rigs, setups, system performance etc. to release those placebo endorphins. Cheers!!
