Why is single seat cars steering unstable in rfactor2

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by gringhos, Oct 11, 2013.

  1. Guy Moulton

    Guy Moulton Registered

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    In the setup screen it actually lists it as TOE IN, so + is toe in, - is toe out
     
  2. Dave Millard

    Dave Millard Registered

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    Ditto..
     
  3. TMoney

    TMoney Registered

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    Yes I agree with you guys (to an extent), no one wants a lot of slop in their steering. We as sim racers always want ZERO deadzone. Until now.

    For the deadzone allow me to clarify. What I mean is a slight increase off of the full ZERO setting. You may find in game that "0" deadzone actually has 2 clicks on the slider. Moving it up to that 2nd 0 click actually makes a difference for me especially in the historic cars. On a car that tends to feel overly-twitchy this allows a VERY minor (and I mean minor) amount of play that can prevent you from over-correcting too much in panic mode when she starts wandering down high speed straights. What you don't realize is a lot of this wandering you feel may actually be caused by your own inputs. Sure everyone has their own preferences but I encourage you to try it.
     
  4. Nibo

    Nibo Registered

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    Tim, sorry, but thats what I feel. Brabham feels like a narrow car with low grip compared too EVE F1. It frequently does what Spark F1 does under acceleration, that is leaning to the side heavily like some kind of boat, messing steering direction that I give it. I understand oversteering, but this is not quite it, it feels different because of big roll in car body in relation to car wheels. It feels like rear tires have grip, but front just twists away.
    Thats just what I feel. May be its not called "unstable", but it makes Brabham difficult car for me. I prefer EVE F1-F3 and Howstons.
     
  5. speed1

    speed1 Banned

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    When does that happen, on straight drive while accel ? Sounds like a soft suspension car with greater body movement and decreasing weight (drag) on the front and changing steering geometrie (steer bump). That shouldn't mean it is normal, still something could be wrong or exxagerated.
     
  6. Nibo

    Nibo Registered

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    Mostly on turn exit under power. Some times when changing direction on a straight or in fast curves. Spark has this very pronounced. Brabham less so. EVE also has this tendencies, but its much more controllable and easier to drive than first two, for me. I might have different driving preferences than others.
     
  7. speed1

    speed1 Banned

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    Me personally don't like this cars because of the boat like feeling but this perception is based on sim experiences which could be a wrong image about this cars because of possible bad or faulty simulation. I really don't know but yes this cars drive like boats shifting weight, eliminating drag like there where no damper just springs don't saving/ensure mechanical grip/patch and rolling all over the place while changing steering geometrie because of the kinematics.
     
  8. Gearjammer

    Gearjammer Registered

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    One thing the OP doesn't mention is if he is using any sort of driving aid. This might have an effect on the steering stability. I understand what the OP is talking about when he is describing the instability though. I have experienced it in the past in RF2 as well. Try and drive a straight line and the car wanders left and right, almost like an oscillating wheel issue. Under heavy braking, it can be a struggle to keep the car straight, even with heavy front brake bias.
     
  9. speed1

    speed1 Banned

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    I haven't noticed any input deadzone just the known forceless center with the G27 as i was testing the new historic cars but i could feel a bit of wondering too and increasing or decreasing toe seems not to eliminate it. Sure wondering on straight could have many reasons but in this case i have the feeling the reason is the greater body movement with the historic cars. The car struggles to find its balance, like a car with damaged dampers.
     
  10. Empty Box

    Empty Box Registered

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    I'm going to take a shot here and say it's the FFB screwing you up more than anything. With the way FFB works here in rF2, you basically have zero resistance to movement until things start loading up. There is practically no steering feel in a straight line if you set your FFB to not clip at higher speed corners, practically no feel coming out of slow speed corners with the same ffb setup. That is what was getting me when I first fired up the howstons, then I just said "eff it" and started clipping through any corner over 90 MPH to get feeling into the wheel.

    Also, don't forget the road itself can have an effect, Longford for example is almost all crowned roads, so there is a lot of road camber.
     
  11. speed1

    speed1 Banned

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    Agree with zero resistance around the center and yes slow speed communication is the next issue. Some cars have to less alignment and some to less Fy/lateral load and some have both to less on the ffb, given the wheel a lifeless feeling in some situations but as said already in another thread i'm not sure if it is the bad of the software or hardware generating this lack of feel.

    And yes the road is the main factor the car need to master but when something is outer balance or broken the road do what it want with the car like a boat loosing its drivetrain on the ocean.:)

    Sure same goes for a broken or faulty controle unit, such as like the steering.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Oct 12, 2013
  12. Domi

    Domi Registered

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    Would be nice to have some sort of FFB tweak that multiplies low forces in order to get some extra feel in straight line, but without clipping on high loads...
     
  13. gringhos

    gringhos Registered

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    Some asked what setup I had. I have approx 550 degrees on my wheel with medium FF. I have now posted several times that my wheel is immaculate, has no dead spot in the middle or anywhere else and behaves flawlessly in every other sim: iRacing, rfactor1, gtl, gtr etc etc. Without wishing to repeat ad infinitum, this has nothing whatever to do with my hardware. I think there is something to be said by the explanation that rfactor 2 has a dead FF zone just either side of centre, but this still isn't the issue!

    I have improved things a bit by suspension adjustment but the phenomenon is still there: without any good reason most single seaters are wandering all over the place while pointed in a straight line, as though the steering arms, pins or steering rack had been loosened. No car I ever drove displayed this unless there was a serious problem in the mechanics. Therefore I am saying that the best explanation is someone has built into the physics an erroneous tendency to wander offline with no reason other than to mistakenly imagine this is how classic single seat races are, or were, with or without wings.

    BTW I'm driving with all aids off except auto clutch.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Oct 13, 2013
  14. maeschba

    maeschba Registered

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    I'm an absolute newbie to rFactor 2 who just drives the Brabham in Monaco yet. This said, I had to turn auto clutch off in order to have a stable drive feeling (Fanatec CSR, settings mostly as detected with some button remappings).
     
  15. TechAde

    TechAde Registered

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    Turning up the Overall Strength in the Logitech CP over 100% does that. Don't go too far otherwise all forces become huge and it'll just clip constantly in the driver.
     
  16. stonec

    stonec Registered

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    I used to drive with a driving force pro a few years back. I can well remember one particular problem with it was that in rFactor, if I took my hands off the wheel in straight line, it would quickly start oscillating itself back and forth. My current wheel, G27, doesn't do this nearly as much. I'm sure there's a technical reason behind the difference, it might be related to the fact that G27 uses dual motors for FFB instead of a cheap single motor which is used in driving force pro.
     
  17. Timpie Claessens

    Timpie Claessens Registered

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    Mostly because the G27 is worse in some cases. To save their cheap FFB motors the wheel is setup so the 2 motors aren't working against eachother all the time at the center, thats why they all feel so crappy in the center (if you also use iRacing you'll note that they have a min force option, thats been put in place just for this)
    The oscilating you had on the DFGT was probably just because FFB etc were all set too high because that wheel arguably (still) feels better then the modern G27's
     
  18. speed1

    speed1 Banned

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    Yes and that adds to backlash.

    Due to the float on the straight and other tests i noticed the virtual steering lock (steering wheel) does not match the physical steering. I checked settings and everything seems normal as always. The steering lock is chosen by car and the logitech profiler is on max steering angle of 900° and admit that the game changes setting is selected.

    The game sets the steering angle of 630° for the G4. This should be no problem for the G27, but it is. With the standard procedure it is not in sync with the virtual steering wheel. Then i put down the value manually until it was synchronous, arrived at 490° steering angle the car was better to control but always still not stable enough on the straight. Although it was already much better I'd thought go crazy and put in a extreme test and chose the steering angle of 15 ° in the setup, moreover the chassis as stiff as possible, front toe to 0.00 and rear + 0.40. The result is much more stable car on the straight and the General steering behavior is more consistent and the vehicle no longer oversteers the Steering and the sensitivity decreases. Logical conclusion but incredible property in relation to the values of the vehicle. The response to the steering angle is extremely sensitive upwards, aside from the mismatch in the standard setup with the steering lock.

    It irritates me :)
     
  19. Digi Lauda

    Digi Lauda Registered

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    The floating behaviour may be realistic or not. But what it makes difficult to react to this behaviour is the FFB deadzone on some (or all?) steering wheels. So you are too slow in reacting to small forces because you simply can´t feel it. The small forces are swallowed by the driver/firmware. I have a GT3RS V2 and unfortunately Fanatec increased the FFB Deadzone with the current Firmware. Now it is much harder for me to keep the cars precise on the raceline and also to keep the car straight and on track when accelerating.
    What we need in my opinion is an option to correct the FFB Deadzone. Like Timpie mentioned there is such an option in iRacing, so why not in rF2.......
    Simply an option that let´s us limit the lower end of the dynamic range of the FFB, for example 500-10000.
    I understand that some people and manufacturers want to avoid shaking on straights and so on, but a huge FFB deadzone doesn´t help for precise driving.
    With a workaround in the game we could set it to whatever we like.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Oct 14, 2013
  20. speed1

    speed1 Banned

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    I can't say anything about a solution but it might be useful and I agree subtleties are mostly lost in the dead area.

    With regard to the G4 behavior also the entire balance under acceleration or load changes causes constant pressure displacement on the wheels. That swing up weight and the constant shifting leads to permanent asymmetric slip, traction and demand constant corrections. The result is a continuous track change.

    Apart from this, one it might perceive not or too late the change in direction of the ffb force one could think the vehicle has the most worst suspension, tyres and a too-narrow track width while the COG is much too high.
    How could anybody develop something like that. :)
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Oct 14, 2013

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