Over the past two months I've had an ongoing problem with my Simagic Alpha causing rF2 to crash to desktop when using the ESC key to return to garage. I finally resolved the problem as explained in this long post. The fix was to install a USB 3.0 PCIE card to connect my Alpha instead of the motherboard USB ports. I used a Vantec PCIE card UGT-PC345 as it was in stock and on sale. I did not figure out the root cause myself but after much testing, frustration and research found old 2015 and 2017 forum entries that explained the problem and how to fix it. The root cause is a timing issue between some Motherboard USB ports, the wheelbase and the way some games, including rF2 and ProjectCars, handle FFB resets. Now the story. With my new Simagic Alpha DD wheelbase connected, rF2 would sporadically Crash to Desktop or to Steam when I used the Escape key to return to the garage. It would happen after a major crash (hit the wall at speed) or I could cause the failure by pressing ESC then RACE button several times. I had lost faith in using the Simagic Alpha to race online so went back to my Fanatec CSL Elite wheelbase which never failed. My PC configuration: ⦁ ASUS TUF Gaming Z490 Plus with USB3.2 ⦁ Intel i7-10700K CPU, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD ⦁ Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 8GB - firmware 516.94 ⦁ Windows 10 fully patched All the standard things did not fix it • Contacted Simagic who sent new Alpha firmware but no joy. They had no further real help to offer. • Not a power or thermal problem - it could fail immediately after boot. • Switched back to my Fanatec CSL Elite and could not cause the failure no matter how hard I tried. This implied it was directly related to the Simagic Alpha not something else on my system. • Tried all USB ports on the Motherboard • Reinstalled Steam and rF2 • Wiped and reformatted the boot disk to start with a clean Windows 10 install • Updated to latest BIOS, tested all likely BIOS settings, etc. • Cloned Steam/rF2 environment to a six year old ACER Aspire laptop where rF2 with the Alpha Wheelbase ran flawlessly, we could not cause the problem. This all implied it was not a Simagic Alpha hardware or firmware problem but a timing/interface problem between the Alpha wheelbase and something in my gaming PC. FINALLY we found this 2017 entry from the Studio397 Forum - https://forum.studio-397.com/index.php?threads/pid-dll-crash-64bit.54579/#post-910645 and followed the research. Five years ago, users of the SimXperience AccuForce Wheel reported the same problem with ProjectCars and rF2. In https://forum.studio-397.com/index....er-crashes-and-erratic-gpu-usage.52463/page-9 "Voltaic" summarized the original problem and diagnosis threads from the ProjectCars forum. In the 2015 https://forum.projectcarsgame.com/s...d-OSW-Wheel-now-completely-stop-working/page3 a serious coder called "GingerCat" explains how he figured out what was causing the problem in rF2 code. Thanks to Oscar1292, Voltaic and GingerCat, I spent $30CAD on a PCIE card and am no longer looking at a very expensive paperweight.
