I recently returned to rFactor2 with a new PC and found that there was a microstutter and that the cars were almost undrivable. I soon discovered these two were actually related. Driving felt like driving on ice. I couldn't correct cars at all and was taking corners 20 - 50mph slower than the AI and barely staying on track driving with my wheel. Even with all of the aides turned off I was a dozen or so seconds quicker using the keyboard. I found that the problem was (in part) solved by changing "Skip updates" in my controller profile from 0 to 1. I gained back well over half the deficit and the car became *much* more controllable. I suspect something was causing input to register as if it were spiking back and forth and forcing me to drive most corners two gears lower than I knew they could be taken. Even as it stands the 3D cockpit wheel seems to be moving in small steps rather than turning smoothly as I turn my wheel. I am still getting the stutter and AI is stuttering and phasing as if it were an online race, sometimes going *stupidly* fast and cripplingly slowly. Almost without fail they attempt to drive through me, phase half way and send both of us flying. Moreover, the car still feels really sketchy to drive and on a few occasions I suddenly hit *nothing* and go flying even on an empty track. I have gained (minor) improvements in driveability by capping FPS to 60 and dropping render ahead to 2 frames in the Nvidia control panel. Each time the car became more controlable with my wheel but the AI bug and stutter remain severe. I am using build 880, have verified the core files and my system is as follows: - Intel core i5 4750 @ 3.2GHZ - 8GB DDR3 ram - Nvidia 760GT 4GBG (PCIE 3.0 x16) with 344.48 drivers - Windows 7 Professional 64bit (Fully up-to-date) - Saitek R440 Visual settings are as follows: 1920 x 1200 @ 60hz, no Sync (And oddly, no tearing).
I believe your problem is related to the Wheel itself and the used Saitek driver. I found this: http://www.computerhilfen.de/hilfen-11-357019-0.html#top This comment seems the solution: http://www.computerhilfen.de/hilfen-11-357019-0.html#1897933 It`s in german but maybe you could get the most important points to solve your problem.
I don't see how the problems are related I'm afraid. The wheel is providing resistance just fine, I had to create a customised profile in notepad but it works. Perhaps something was lost in translation? My issue is the AI and physics seeming to hang, glitch and stutter constantly making driving harder. For a reference of how strangely the wheel seems to be affected by input rate and skips I couldn't take Limerock's last turn any faster than mid-to-low 3rd gear in the Skip Barber before I changed the .json file value and *any* corrections sent me skittering off. With the above changes I'm able to nearly reach 5th gear before the corner exit without much drama. It may be unrelated to the AI skipping along the track at stupid speeds or lagging and phasing through my car, or my car 'hitting' thin air and crashing but there's definitely something funky going on with the physics engine and this lag issue. I suspect it's also at least in part related to the fact the AI, no matter where or when, seems to act like my car's not there.
The feedback is smoothed (I dialed it back to 2 for the best result) but the game's stutter remains, the AI are lagging like crazy allowing them to phase in to/through me before a collision is registered and causing them to go absurdly fast/slow at various points and the car is still hitting particularly solid chunks of nothing and launching in to the sky every couple of laps. (I think the 'hitting nothing' is the car phasing in to the track due to the weird physics lag before the collision object remembers it has a job to do. Essentially I'm crashing into the track.)
It sure sounds like your physics thread is over-running. If you press Ctrl-C how does the purple bar look whilst driving?
That actually seems to have fixed the issue for now, thanks. So does RF2 just not get on well with certain wheels?
As explained in the comment for Skip Updates some wheels can't handle the default 400Hz update rate. Setting Skip Updates to 8 will slow down the rate that rF2 send FFB updates to the wheel to 400/8 or 50Hz.
Saitek R440 is an ancient wheel which has problems to handle rF2 FFB update rate. For proper FFB and driving experience, I strongly recommend buying a new wheel instead of tweaking rF2 parameters for this one.
To be frank spending several hundred dollars for a slightly faster update rate on my FFB doesn't seem like the most practical solution when the alternative is changing a number in a file. One for the rFactor2 knowledge database - the ideal skip number for the Saitek R440 seems to be 5.
