I still think it shows that we can’t have a true 1:1 ratio at least not for the Dallara DW12 and that there is no need for a much stronger wheel base even if we could set it to a true 1:1 ratio.
There are definitely some things that are off in the iRacing output as of course the iRacing models cannot take every factor into account with regard to car construction… I am not sure if you ran that last test with the settings I provided or the settings that you have for the SC2 as there should be a little bit of a difference there as the settings that I have above are more weighted than most… The other thing to consider is that the actual car telemetry has been set up to run LongBeach very well most likely, while the Default iRacing Set-ups are generic… Long Beach is a VERY bumpy track and from the past talking with people who have set-up indycars for the race (not the DW12, prior indy cars) generally speaking in real life they run very Soft suspension to absorb curb strikes and undulations in the road… So I am guessing with a fully optimized tune to absorb running over the curbs on the suspension many of the larger changes in force would actually be a lot smaller…
The running Average force is what you need to be looking at to determine how on target things are for both telemetry outputs… as the oscillation factor can come from as mentioned above the suspension settings and how the car is being driven (ie over the curbs, major road bumps, etc…)
In looking at the graph you posted the averaging would probably place the peak average output from the car at around 27Nm which is about where I would expect it with variations based on all the above.
If you look at your original graph you will see that the the steering angle on the wheel is moving back and forth a lot even when the car is going straight on the iRacing Telemetry and that you are actually tending to turn the steering wheel more in the corners… The steering wheel moving all the time actually means that you are probably a little under dampened on the filters which is allowing the forces that come from the telemetry to be harder than they would if the wheel were not moving as with FFB the further the wheel gets off of its target position the more it tried to add a correcting force… This is unfortunately the nature of FFB that is not present in a real car. This situation is self triggering in most cases and is part of the reason why FFB wheels end up feeling heavier than the real car… A Real car doesn’t fight you going a bit off of actual 0 torque, a FFB will. This is a big reason why the real car steering angle is generally much more consistent and smooth when looking at the graph. The key here is to dampen the FFB wheel enough so that the wheel has a hard time moving around on the straight but is not sluggish to react when you want to change direction… You can set up the car with additional caster which will help have a smaller self centering window BUT more caster in a car also makes the steering much harder to turn.
The Second thing is that in the first graph you are turning the wheel much more that the driver of the real car (5 - 10 degrees is a big difference in a race car). This would generally say that the car is not rotating well and causing understeer… In this case the cornering forces will generally also be greater because you are essentially trying to force the tires into doing something that they do not want to do so with that added angle brings more resistance until you actually start to understeer and then resistance actually drops since the tires are resisting the road less and begin to slide… SIDE NOTE: The interesting thing is that many tires actually get the most Grip right at the point they start to understeer, so, optimally, both for the speed of the car and the forces you get through the wheel if you can keep the tire right at that slip angle you will be the fastest… This is where the loose is fast term comes from as having the rear tires in this slight state of lost grip (due to the optimal slip angle) it puts a car right on the edge of spinning but at the same time you have the most grip.
In the Barber telemetry that I saw there were definitely some quick spikes that went well above the actual car telemetry output, which were explained to me as calculation errors that do occur from time to time (which is inevitable really as there are a lot of in the moment calculations going on).
The basic thing is you can have a true 1:1 but your FFB wheel does have to be set-up perfectly which is almost impossible… You can get close though if you come from the standpoint that the Wheel and its filters are there to control the way the wheel reacts and NOT to change the feel coming through the wheel… Many set-up the wheels very active (which is fine if that is what they want) but when you do so it amplifies the FFB loop which causes the massive spikiness and the tank slapping sort of return of the week… this makes the forces feel to you as the recipient that they are much higher than they should be… this is ALSO where the issue is that you mentioned above with the speed of acceleration of the wheel to a certain Nm which is VERY true DD wheels in general are faster at getting to a force than a real car would be, again it is reflected in the back and forth nature of the telemetry line of the steering angle.
Personally from my experience and the issues around FFB with regard to the recreation I find that .6:1 or close to that is about real in terms of the amount of fatigue you would feel in a race. It is not an easy level of force but it is not overwhelming either and as I said I can’t even deal with the Indy cars at that level for the full length of a race as they are so RAW. I have found that .4-.5:1 is generally where most people blindly fall into what they feel is right (mostly in the mid to low of that range).
In all reality with the 6 tooth pinion in the setup and a good setup a SC2 Ultimate would pretty much give you a 1:1 output with the DW12… No other commercial wheel could do that currently. but the Large Mige SC1 and the New Asetek may come close as well. Otherwise you would be going custom like Beanos, which, BTW is a VERY Dampened setup even mores than my settings that I posted above. I would probably almost guess that his set-up would fall even closer to the Real Car output as far as reaction than mine.
First I’m not used to that car, so yes my inputs isn’t the best, but even with 5-10 degrees more input it shouldn’t increase the corner forces that much, because I’m much closer to under-steer which would have give a drop off in the corner forces. Most tyres have a drop off in the resistance/forces before it reach the maximum grip and start to under-steer which will then have a much steeper drop off in the resistance/forces.
The car setup (caster, toe, camber etc) plays a role but not so it goes up twice, for the corner forces at least not if you run a somehow realistic setup.
That is true at least the near impossible part 
I know from my own experience with different wheel bases how hard it can be, but it also depends heavily on the wheel and the options you have in the driver if you get a good FFB or not.
The main problem for me is you need to choose between either the right behavior and very little feedback (small forces). Or a more active wheel where you have the forces all over the place, in both cases you don’t get the small forces. It’s either tuned out to much (damped) or it is to active and the spikes takes over.
I hope this will give people a better understanding of what they are dealing with when it comes to tune in their wheel bases in iRacing.
That’s why I posted it.
I do appreciate your thoughts and I’m learning a lot from it, the technical par of FFB which i know you know a lot about.
I have experienced what iRacing can do when you get it right, (which is nearly impossible). In my experience we are not there yet.
It’s way better than people give it credit for
What I would like to see is a tool in the driver where we can actually manipulate the strength of the different forces to be able to either lower or raise them. That way we can use the damping, friction and inertia purely to get the right behavior in the wheel, regardless of what specific output we are using. As it is now we are forced to use damping, friction and inertia to tune out peaks. Because of that we are losing all the small forces.
I think this shows the need for such a tool
That is sort of the thing though… is that it will increase until you actually get right at understeer but that transition happens fast if you are not exactly online. With a car like the DW12 with high downforce and quite sticky tires with no power steering when you start to get where the tires protest the forces will increase significantly. actually happens in all cars but power steering can mask this significant increase. This is why it is generally easier to drive the car online as opposed to off as offline you are asking the tires to do more and they will protest until they just give up (understeer or oversteer). Caster can easily add a significantly noticeable amount of weight to the steering… But at the same time when you add caster you do change the way the car reacts in the corner… i.e. minimal caster will be very light steering but will also tend to cause the tires to lose grip quicker.
The one thing to remember when looking at the graphs you posted is that the average is not double… You are seeing the spikes in the FFB as double. Those spikes come from your wheel position changes, induced wheel position changes (road changes), and as well the FFB corrective changes (which is a nature of FFB). As you lower the force of the wheel in your hands you would probably see a reduction in the spikiness of the output as you would be “fighting the wheel less”
This is the unfortunate balancing act with some devices and it is one of those areas where I do Believe that the SC2 has an advantage as they have enough filters and options to be able to for the most part balance things… (which is why I am fairly vocal when they talk of removing or combining settings) But it also comes down to personal preference. The issue in many cases is that in a sim we are unable to feel and chassis vibration which is where MOST of your information about the car comes from (through your butt and other senses, Seat of Pants feel), very little of this information is transferred through the steering and almost none of it is transferred directly through the steering Rack. The vibration felt in a real car is generally through the chassis into the steering column and then into our hand… However, as sim racers we want to feel these feelings through the wheel … but with a game like iRacing they just don’t produce this information to be sent through the steering so we liven the wheel up allowing it to be somewhat unstable and in some cases VERY unstable to try to recreate that information that we are not getting… This is where a large majority of the issues come in.
We are effectively trying to recreate information that isn’t present by boosting the minor references to that information that come through the steering. which intern boosts everything to the point of being a bit brutal, then we have to turn down the wheel and in doing so we start to loose more important information because its amplitude becomes too low to feel. Then we complain we can’t feel these things and it is the Game,Wheel, etc… fault when in reality it is our fault as we are asking the output to be something that it is not.
The best thing for FFB currently that I have seen is actually Logitechs TrueForce… in essence they have separated the Telemetry and the chassis vibration and merge them to the wheel. This minimizes the effect seen on the FFB as they can be controlled and balanced more like a real car… They use the Audio Rumble (like SimVibe) to create the chassis vibration effect separate from the FFB signal and then inject that into the Wheel output to recreate the chassis vibration and give a more true sense of the wheel feel. It is Very smart and it has been done effectively by SimRig manufacturers for a while where they will place a vibration puck on the side of the steering uprights to send a vibration to the wheel.
What I would like to see is a tool in the driver where we can actually manipulate the strength of the different forces to be able to either lower or raise them. That way we can use the damping, friction and inertia purely to get the right behavior in the wheel, regardless of what specific output we are using. As it is now we are forced to use damping, friction and inertia to tune out peaks. Because of that we are losing all the small forces.
I think this shows the need for such a tool.
Brion has given good comments earlier. Something small from my side: IRL, you will not feel those sharp high-amplitude spikes, they will be dampened by the steering system anyway. Thus using Damping, Friction and Inertia as a 1st step to simulate almost what you’d feel IRL, then lastly Slew to control the ramp-rate of the servo output to create softer or harder race-tyre feel, you’re good to go.
Those small forces people are after in the steering column is mostly noise and not really felt at all IRL. If you wish to get road-effects and those in iRacing, it is best to use tactile transducers via LFE output. That gives the best of both worlds.
Anyway, as Brion has alluded to earlier, I typically (used to) run quite high forces on the DW12 and set quite a few practice WR’s, but, my wheel was set up to replicate real life feel, thus the sharp spikes were filtered, at which point the high torque ffb becomes significantly more manageable.
You are still able to feel when the front tyres are at the limit in the steering wheel IRL.
iRacing used to have them in the steering wheel and they were not noise. They were to distinct to be mistaken for dirt or noise.
If iRacing has taken that away from the steering wheel it’s the single biggest mistake iRacing have ever done.
Some of those forces aren’t in the LFE so you can’t get them with transducers either.
Even on my big AKM65 servo with more inertia than any of the current SC2 servos, and with my higher than normal D, F and I settings, running Recon Filter at 3, I can very clearly feel when the front tyres let go at the edge of traction, or when you run on higher profile tyres, and you go in to hot, the sidewall starts buckling…those are rather distinct and clear to me.
Perhaps it might be because one gets to ‘hear’ what the FFB tells you after 8 years of testing things at the limits, not sure, but I have heard before guys cannot tell when the fronts hits the limits…I definitely can feel that….most likely because those cues are not masked by overly noisy ffb settings due to way to low filter settings…
I find iRacing ffb cues quite accurate. Just IMHO of course…
Thanks, that is the kind of feedback I’m after in the steering wheel. Including the ability to feel derbies level of sand on track and all that kind of feedback. I had all that with my other wheels but I can’t get it with my SC nor the 1 or 2.
They are as you say very distinct when you get it.
To be honest when I had it, iRacing may actually have had the most detailed FFB of all sims. I didn’t had the need for transducers or motion rigs and more important I wasn’t dependent on the sound for tyre scrub, I could feel it in the steering wheel.
Today I don’t have any of those details and I can’t get regardless of what I do. Because there is too much dirt that needs to be tuned out or introduced when you apply some settings.
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One of the other things to not remember but a lot of people don’t know is that over the past 4-5 years iRacing ahas been moving to a “real” tire model where they can specify all aspects of a tire that is placed on a certain car (including sidewall build, tire compound softness, wear traits, etc…), This means that they are trying to duplicate real life in the way the tires actually react to surfaces… These are not real tires and will never be due to that in talking with iRacing staff and noting a bit about the industry the tire companies WILL NOT give up any data directly so they have to work it out themselves… In the Past and with most games they do use what is called a theoretical tire model which doesn’t take into effect as many different parameters. it is vey probably that this model Due to being more theoretical it is probably that this model gives more feedback in certain respects.
If you have ever had to change the tires on your real car you would realize that changing brands, compounds, tread patterns, sidewall ratio, etc… all can have a dramatic effect on the way the car feels both in driving and in response… Some tires will communicate grip in a much more direct way where others will mask things. This is true of race and road tires.
The other thing is a lot of what you are describing as wanting to feel (sand, debris, grass, even in some cases curbing) with regard to vibrations and things truly do not come through the steering system, they are translated through the chassis (which is where LFE Pucks work wonders). Things like the tires sliding on the surface due to sand will change the weight of the wheel but the scrub vibration is translated through the wheel to the hub to the suspension to the chassis to the steering column and then to your hands. It is not actually a force that is coming through the steering tie rods in the car and through the rack.
That is something I really like in WRC9: I can feel really good how the surface changes, Fe when it starts/stops to rain. Or how tyre performance is dropping on Tarmac, how different it is to drive on snow: with the exact same settings the car feels much lighter, steering inputs are needing more time to get recognized (of course a car on snow drifting sideways behaves very different, and this is well done in the game).
When I read about the Iracing tyre model I thought by myself “how appropriate can it be without having data from manufacturers”, and then you mentioned exactly this point.
What you think about the fact that we all use different steering wheels? It’s where we get almost all FFB from, and we never really focus on this fact.
Last question: Iracing has a 60 Hertz FFB frequency (if this is still correct), where other games have 333 Hertz. ATS changed to 120 Hertz in 21, and also started a new FFB physics engine which is not only based on artificial effects, but real life data. When will Iracing make this step?
What I had and are missing these days.
Road texture.
I could feel the difference of how smooth or rough the asphalt was, difference between asphalt, concrete, gravel, grass etc. they all felt different. These days everything feels the same, super smooth even dirt feels the same as asphalt. It’s just the bumpiness of the track that’s different.
Tyre scrub.
I could feel when the tyres were under- over- or at the limit. I could feel the impact of tyre pressure and if it was right even the difference before it came up to the right pressure. When the sidewall started to bend. Tyre ware. How much steering input I had based on scrub. All of those small differences.
Acceleration/deceleration.
I could feel the rotation speed of the tyres spinning up/down. I could feel the amount of braking, if one tyre had less grip. If I was close to or locked up a tyre and which one or both. I could even feel and tell when the car come to a full stop just before it happened.
All those small details.
Dirt on track.
Rubber, sand, gravel and the amount of it, more sand felt different the less. I could feel the tyres collecting the dirt and when it started to fall of the tyres. I could feel the gap between the asphalt layers and how it moved from side to side over the tyres.
The gyroscopic effects.
I could feel if I had an unbalance in the car, if there were a damage or miss align in toe or camber and things like that.
I have probably missed some effects or put some of them under the wrong category but you get the hint.
Today I don’t have any of it and to be honest it feels like crap and like an arcade game in comparison.
I wish more people have experienced what I had to understand the level of details we had in iRacing, and how good the FFB really was. It was in line with rFactor. Personally I hold iRacings FFB back then higher than rFactors.
It was so immersive compared to what I have today.
I can honestly say that none of the settings (all settings in True drive and iRacing app.ini) or profiles from forums and paddock (I have tried more than 200) so far with SC1 and SC2 have been able to give me any road texture including dirt on track or tyre scrub including acc. deceleration. When it comes to the gyroscopic effects only a few settings have been able to give me that unless I’m about to lose a wheel.
If any of you can truly claim you can feel road texture and tyre scrub in the steering wheel, please share your settings.
Why is iRacing spending a lot of money on trying to get the perfect tyre model and dynamic tracks if we are not supposed to feel it in the steering wheel anymore? LFE, butt kickers and motion rigs are just enhancement, and should not be mandatory to be able to feel those effects.
If iRacing has taking all that feedback away from the steering wheel (which I don’t think), it is the single biggest mistake they have ever done. If iRacing hasn’t taking it away from the steering wheel (which I hope they haven’t) then there is a lot of work to do, to get it with a SC2.
You do get the overall force feeling differences and the details of the road are very subtle in iRacing when you don’t have full vibration through LFE’s. So you do get all of the appropriate information. it just doesn’t come through quite as bluntly…
The settings i have for the SC2Pro are very good at communicating when the car is getting loose or understeering and I can easily anticipate and correct slides. Rarely do I ever spin the car without knowing that I have done something to make it spin and what it is that I did… There are some cars however that are not as good as others at giving you certain keys through the steering… i.e. the Mercedes GT3 2020 can get very dull when getting close to understeer or over while the F488 will give you quite a bit of information due to changes just in the weight of the wheel… so it varies greatly by car… Which is completely normal in the real world as well, some cars just communicate things better…
The thing with iRacing is they are creating real tires in a digital form, It’s complex, and it works… But the tires are “Different” than real life. What they ar trying to get to is something to the effect where they can essentially build an in sim tire that will react if THAT spec tire would be built that way in real life… But as I said Tire Companies are extremely secretive about their data. Even Race teams have no clue as to all the details about the tires they use… They put them on the car, Hope they feel good, and if they don’t they Complain… and Drivers do it worse than anyone when they don’t feel like they think they should… But they have to live with it unless the company is willing to change it and then again hope they get what they want…
We as Sim Racers are pretty much like the drivers, We want what we want… but then that might not be what we get… But then we try to solve it in other ways. Some of which MAY work… Some of which we try to pull information out of specs of information that isn’t really there or supposed to be there (i.e. errors or artifacts in th FFB signal) by using other settings we have at our disposal.
On Steering wheels… While there is merit to the leverage on the wheel creating more or less force. My personal opinion on different size wheels is more about steering ratio, I generally don’t find that a smaller wheel causes me more physical fatigue than a larger or visa versa, so the amount of force exerted by the driver is probably about the same but maybe over different time elements based on ratio. The smaller wheel you use the quicker you will get your arms to the angle that you might want to be at. This does cause a mismatch in the speed at which the steering commands get to the car as opposed to the cars actual steering wheel. i.e running a formula car with a Nascar wheel you will always feel a little behind the steering or that you have to make really drastic inputs because you have slowed the steering ratio by a small amount. This makes it harder to whip the car around hairpins and makes the car harder to catch because if you flick the steering with a small wheel you have turned more than the same flick with a larger wheel. Going the other way has sort of the same effects except you may find yourself causing the car to understeer prematurely because the wheel is turned to fast or that the back end gets upset very early because you have turned the wheel more and the front end grips on you quicker… These are things that can of course be learned to compensate for by using slower movements with a smaller wheel or flailing your arms around with a larger wheel… Sometimes I have found going to a smaller wheel on a car that I just can’t seem to get to turn makes the car turn better, this would be me just not getting my brain to wrap around just how much turn is needed in the wheel with the larger wheel. If the wheel and car are matched though you would get the most accurate mapping and ratio.
As for the Refresh rate for iRacing… That will probably not be updated anytime soon. The reasons are mainly that it would cause a complete rewire of the physics engine. If they do ever move to one of the standard physics platforms it would probably be easier but at the same time it is going to be a large job… Part of the issue is their support of slower computers… Physics unfortunately cannot be multithreaded due to the complex timings required for the interaction of all tracked parts (road, all suspension and chassis dynamic, relationship to other cars, and as well the output to the feedback systems) this means that increases in the speeds could have detrimental effects on the speed at which information actually is output to the devices on a slower computer as well as affect network races depending on how much interaction occurs with the other cars (worse NetCode Issues).
Personally while I believe it would smooth out some of the artifacts which can help with oscillatory behavior making for a nicer straight line and certain circumstance driving attitude (much like the higher resolution encoders smoothed out the servos with the OSW) I’m not sure it would truly revolutionize the FFB. Basically meaning I don’t think you will all of the sudden FIND a curb feel or an understeer feel or all of the sudden it will be easier to hold a drift. As currently the information is all there and IF your motions are on target with the point to point information provided by the telemetry at he current rate. system the overall feel of the information would be virtually the same. However if you are off the points since the points would be closer together the reactive counterforce would probably be less making the wheel feel overall lighter and then people would be craving higher forces as they wouldn’t be getting as beat by the wheel (which goes back to the active set-up of the wheel to less active) A more active wheel would be calmed… a less active wheel it wouldn’t change much…
Let me ask you, have you ever experienced those effects I said I had, in any steering wheel in iRacing? All at the same time not only some of them, so you can actually tell the differences between all the details?
Have you managed to get it with a SC2?
Just because we can feel understeer because the wheel gets light or catch a slide doesn’t mean we have the right details.
Let me ask you a question though… How long ago was it that you felt all these effects and also what wheel base were you using when you felt all of these things?? also how strong are you actually running your FFB. The lower you run it the less you will be able to pick up these very subtle details especially when running linear.
Road Texture - I do tend to feel the differences in road surface, Dirt has a vibration to it but can get rough. iRacing does tend to rut the tracks a bit fast for my liking which can make thing pretty rough pretty quick) Tracks for the most part are generally smooth (but that is how they build tracks theses days). I will say you cant really feel a painted surface except for the the tires are cold you might get additional under or oversteer when hitting it. (but that is how paint generally is in real life to,i mean you cant feel it through the wheel when you drive over a road strip). I can tell when I get the tire right up against a curb and feel a little pull from that resistance. All of these things do vary from car to car and damping settings on the car itself can affect the feel.
Tire Scrub - Varies from car to car, this would have a lot to do with the tire model and car set-up in use and it could very well be less than what you remember due to significant changes in the model. Tire Scrub details are generally more of an Auditory + Feel mix as you will hear the tire changes before actually feeling it. For me I tend to be able to tell this more in higher speed corners but it is something that I have issue with due to my driving style in lower speed as I tend to have a bad habit of blowing into understeer by charging the corners to aggressively.
Acceleration/Deceleration - I have felt this but it is highly dependent on set-up… If I have a setup that undertakers into a corner i am less likely to feel this information as the back end pushes the front end pretty evenly. though a setup where the car is front biases you can easily tell when the car is rotating on a locking tire. I tend to set my cars up to have more understeer reducing the corner entry rotation that it seems like you are describing here. Not sure what you mean with “I could even feel and tell when the car come to a full stop just before it happened.” as this would be anticipation and not rally a feel… it would just be a knowledge based on the visual and audible feel as generally all that you would feel otherwise through the wheel is the centering effect of the loaded front tires (which again changes with car) and any road texture which would get less prominent as you slow.
Dirt on track.
This would have to do a ton with the tire model placed on the car, iRacing has had a habit of making the tires in the NTM overly grippy which would reduce this effect… they are slowly working at getting the wear balance correct and have been making strides here… You though definitely can feel the whole car get slippery if you run off track later in a race after marbles have built up… The kicking up of dirt onto the track is generally not as prominent though which is possibly a combination of the grippy tires and if you are in a larger field race the dirt will get dissipated… We also don’t know how much dirt gets placed on the track at times as it varies… Sometimes you can see it but never feel it (as again happens in real life) other times you might feel it.
The gyroscopic effects.
The only thing I can think that you are talking about here is centering force… which does have a bit to do with setup more caster you will get better centering… Toe will do it a bit as well to but Toe is a VERY VERY fine-tuned balance setting and is really for balancing entry and exit grip… i.e to out improves corner entry but will understeer on acceleration and visa versa for toe-in. Depending on the car I can feel the difference in handling with .1mm changes in toe and small caster changes… Caster though will change the over all force needed to turn the car as well pretty dramatically…
In reality all of this is more so how much of these effects do you expect to feel… If you were using a lower wheel in Non-Linear mode and feeling all of these things then you were probably getting many of them from the signal compression that comes from Non-Linear as that would boost a lot of low amplitude signals into a range that can be more readily felt in relation to the higher force signals… Running any difference in FFB settings Doesn’t actually alter he car telemetry THAT much just what you feel at the wheel.
I had more or less of it with all my non-DD wheels, some were better than others (G27, T500rs, all CSWs and a few others). The only wheel I really couldn’t get it with was my CSW 2.5 because of the massive gap/dead zone it had in the center (at least mine) I couldn’t tune it in.
To be honest the weaker (torque) the wheel was able to put out the easier it was to get the right balance and tune it in.
What do you mean with how strong I was running the FFB? Do you mean torque in the wheel or specific output? For my no DD-wheel, I used what gave me the most linearity. Which not always meant 100% torque output from the wheel. For the t500 65% was best while in the G27 you needed to set it just over 100% so it varied from wheel to wheel.
It was some time ago for sure, it was way more pronounced in TM6 than it is with the NTM.
It varied a bit among cars and with different setups, especially tyre pressure as it should be, but it was always present just a bit more or less but never totally gone as it is today.
For road texture I can feel that pull and resistance you’re talking about with some settings but not with high torque as the curb strike itself takes over. I can’t feel the actually texture of the curb (not how aggressive/rough the curb is) back then I could even feel if there was sand or grass on the smoother curbs.
For the tyre scrub, it was a true mix of feel + audio it was very easy to feel, not as today purely audio at least it is for me.
Acceleration/deceleration when I had it, it changed with different setups and things like that but again never totally gone. For that full stop thing, it was easy to feel the tyres slowing down, so you could feel the tyres stopped to rotate (not lockups) before the body of the car stopped to move if it make sense. I hope you get what I try to describe J
Gyroscopic effects.
If you put a wheel on a stick, spin the wheel, lean the stick left or right, you will feel how the balance of the wheel will change and the more weight you have away from the centre the lager the effect will be, that’s the gyroscopic effects.
An unbalanced tyre will effect this as it wobbles. The gyroscopic effects will also help to reduce oscillations with increased speed and help with self-aligning forces. Unless you have an unbalanced tyre or a skew brake disc for example, then it will increase the forces and make the oscillation worse. Both toe and caster have an impact on this.
I don’t know if that is what you mean with centering forces. They are easier to feel with a lower torque and less damping and friction.
For the non-linear/linear thing I could feel all of it in both modes with the right settings and a forcemap file, I preferred the non-linear mode though for most of my non DD-wheels, as it was a bit more pronounced and crisp.
There were so many “layers” of details and I think that is one of the problems with the FFB. It seem to me like it’s built up by layers (one for road texture, one for tyres and one for suspension, could be more) and then they are all sent out as one signal making it hard to balance them, when we add smoothing or damping because we do it on all layers.
I expect to feel them all together, they don’t need to be super strong though as long as they are balanced with the other forces so we can actually feel them (which is the issue we can’t tune them in properly), not just a few of them. More important not being forced to use a lot of torque to be able to get just some of them either.
At least not in a DD-wheel and defiantly not with my SC2 J I expect way more from the best. If you want to be the best you need to deliver the best, not only a lot of torque and the ability to run it smooth. It means the best FFB as well. As I see it we aren’t there yet, because we can’t tune it in right to get all details together regardless of the NTM have them or not. We are forced to choose between smoothness and level of details and if we want to use less torque or less damping we lose even more details because we get to much dirt.
Non-Linear is probably a big reason of why you were feeling it mostly through the lower wheels… It sacrifices the upper force signals to “enhance” or make the most use of the Low to Mid strength forces by raising their amplitude… with linear these signals come through at a significantly lower amplitude and can easily be covered by “uncontrolled” power (ie too active of wheel settings). So in order to get these signals to come through you have to raise the Specific Output of the wheel which again if set too active then becomes a bit un-controllable as you spend more time fighting the wheel than actually driving the car which is un-natural…
Some of the things that you are looking at “feeling” are things than are not generally described in a detailed manner through the steering… There are indications that come through indicating changes but the majority of the information comes from what we hear or would feel via chassis vibration. This means that some of what you were feeling wasn’t actually from or due to the actual Telemetry Signal but artifacts due to the way the wheels work or interpret the signals OR in iRacings Case the 60Hz signal stepping vibration IS actually a decent mimic for Road Texture if not smoothed out.
You kind of explained the situation a wheel set-up is a balancing act based on what you feel and What is actually being output… if one of those “Layers” is too strong or not strong enough it can overshadow, or Regress into the back ground Relative other Layers… As well Not all layers that we THINK should be there are there… In iRacing case they model the Steering Column, they don’t add in chassis dynamics or vibrations into the steering signal, These come from elsewhere within the system. In other games they do allow you to use Direct Effect Parameters to Enhance or remove these “Effects” from the delivery of the signal.
What settings are you actually using right now that feel the closest to what you want?
That is one of the problem, we are forced to use a high specific output with linear mode instead of using what we want or are comfortable with. We need to chose either to get the small forces and have curbs that rips your hands off or descent curbs but no small forces. Meaning we can’t use the entire range of the wheel.
Sorry for maybe making you disappointed :), the difference between the artifacts/dirt and the real forces was so distinct, so no you couldn’t mistake them.
No they are not a decent mimic, they are not even close to the real road texture, (wrong frequencies and to strong). How do I know because I had both of them, the real road texture and a little bit of artifacts/dirt that I couldn’t tune out completely, the difference between them it’s like night and day.
That balance act is extremely hard in iRacing and in most other sims as well, but in the others it may be a bit easier to tune the balance because of the Direct Effects. If those effects are right or not, I don’t know I think sometimes they only make it harder or easier to screw up things.
That’s a hard question, because non is giving me what I want.
Most of the times these days
Truedrive
16Nm
Recon 2-3
TBL 2200-3300 most of the times, higher just adds dirt.
Damping 4-8 depending on car/track. higher values than that give me too much rubber band and “center dead zone” in lack of a better name for it.
Friction 3-7
Inertia 0-4
Slew rate just above where the tyres start to feel mushy, varies the most for me depending on the other settings and the car.
Iracing 50-65Nm, linear mode
If I go for a higher specific output the force required to turn the wheel becomes too strong and start to feel unrealistic compered to the other forces, the same for the curbs which is already to strong from the beginning.
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In reality you can use whatever you feel comfortable with. If you want to use non-linear you car, nothing is stopping you… That is the one thing about a computer that is highly different than a real car… In a real car you can’t just go change how things come through the steering you have to change some pretty expensive parts to do so… With a computer it is a click of a button a slide of a scale.
I’m not disappointed as I know what is coming through… and not… and the 60Hz articling is the stair stepping which doesn’t come through at any other strength than what is being delivered… (not wrong frequency and strength as it is the same frequency and strength act the main signal) I am not talking errors in calculation that cause a spikiness here or there… That stair stepping causes a vibration that shouldn’t really be there but in many cases it can fool our brains into grounding the feel.
BTW I racing didn’t even really start modeling dirt in any way shape or form until 2017 with the first dirt track… and then since then there have been a lot of changes in that model…
OK so going over your settings in a Technical Response:
16Nm this is fine just make sure that you are not clipping which you shouldn’t be with 50-65 Nm MaxForce (.246 - .32 specific output).
Recon 2-3 - A decent setting the lower this setting the more stepping that is retained in the signal. 5 is generally the optimal for iRacing (unless Mika has altered that) but when the Recon Filter was first developed 5 was the setting that virtually eliminated iRacing 60Hz stair stepping but retained the speed of processing). These settings ARE NOT linear, meaning that they do not correlate exactly to each other in a linear fashion with regard to how they affect the signal, the number ONLY indicates how much processing is involved as the higher the number the more processing to do the smoothing is needed and hence a smoother signal BUT as said the Non-Linearity causes slightly different nuances to be retained or masked. Play with different ones to see if any bring out things you want to feel in the wheel… My guess is that because what you are wanting to feel was present in more Consumer level wheels you are going to want to actually be more toward 1 - 2 (maybe even Zero - though this does get rough as nothing is absorbed) as many consumer wheels prior to DD units didn’t even bother much with signal smoothing as they didn’t need to, they didn’t have the power to need it and much of the fine noise is/was absorbed in the Belts. (Though Logitechs you could feel the gear chatter from it)
TBL - the setting you have is good and lets most things through but this is a Low Pass Filter which means that any high frequency information gets clipped… Personally I would always run it at Unlimited or fully passed. The reason is this, MOST signals never will get clipped as they don’t cary high frequency information but there are a few that do. In testing I found that lower TBW not only increases Latency and dulls the signal (due to high processing intensity - Opening it up virtually uses no processing) in certain cars such as formula cars under braking it allows certain vibrations in the steering that tell you more about impending lock-up or slip. These signals with lower settings generally get clipped off which causes the car to feel dull and uncommunicative. While as I said not all cars need or have this high frequency feel to them you don’t really know when it is going to be there or be needed to indicate, SO why cut it off and never get it.
Damping, Inertia, and Friction -
These are the key players in getting a solid feel from the wheel that is not only communicative but feel good. They are difficult to get balanced and are as our discussion has indicated Highly Personal in flavor. The Key though is their balance. Right now I think you probably just have an imbalance in these, Probably a bit too much Friction and a little low on Inertia and Damping based on the power output you are running.
Damping - Generally speaking this should not give you the “Rubber band effect” that you are describing as it is ONLY active when the wheel is rotating and only gets more active the faster the wheel rotates… This means that it is effectively trying to STOP the rubber band effect by holding the wheel steady and solid (when not being acted upon by a signal change). In use we actually rotate the wheel very little and it actually doesn’t even rotate that fast. This is why you tend to see Damping % at a much higher level than the other filters under normal circumstances… At lower levels the damping generally can be overwhelmed by the other filters and become of very limited in use.
Friction - This is the Dulling filter as you might call it… This one slows EVERYTHING it causes the wheel to become more weighted at all times. It helps Damping be more effective and it Counters the Inertia filters primary goal of keeping wheel rotation happening, Though it enhances the secondary function of the inertia filter (with regard to Sims (explained below)). This setting you want to use a little sparingly and is the main filter that you might adjust if you are running More or Less Power to the wheel, More Power = possibly more Friction. But not always it really just depends on personal preference. You sort of want to use friction to get the Grounding of the wheel right. Vibrations through the week should be subtle. but having too little filtering can make these come through much harsher and active than they should be masking a lot of other key info… You can use Friction to tame these vibrations to a level that is manageable allowing the other signals to be more noticed when they do come through in the signal. as I said though it is a sparing use most of the time as this can cause a feel of overweighting in the wheel and too much can bring out a dullness.
Inertia - This filter is a tricky one and that is because in regard to how we respond with the servo it acts a bit different than its intended purpose in a motor control sense. In motor control it is designed to effectively power up the servo to a degree based on the speed of rotation to “OVERCOME” the inertial resistance of the servo. In other words it is designed to keep the servo rotating in the direction that it is going. The Good thing about this is that it can work as a counter to friction and re-lighten the wheel when friction is used in greater mounts, However, this ONLY occurs when the wheel is in rotation with the signal direction. i.e return to Zero movements or acceleration to Torque. The thing that works differently is that when we are trying to STOP the Acceleration to torque or the return to Zero signals the inertia signal will do the opposite in that it will ADD force to the wheel trying to keep it moving when we are wanting to stop it. This manifests itself in driving as Heavier Turn-in to a corner and lighter more free exit return… which is honestly sort of what you want… Too much inertia and you may find yourself struggling to turn the car but when you allow the car to center again the steering becomes very light and can get into an oscillatory return where you feel you are chasing center as the wheel returns to quickly and easily.
So in the end with the above three filters they sort of have correlations:
Inertia and Friction work together to get Grounding and Return rates that are manageable. ie friction loads the system to create weight and inertia can bring back the running lightness to some aspects of the steering.
Damping and Inertia work together to sharpen the Centering Force as when Damping rolls off (less effective due to slower speed) if it is to overshoot its mark at center Inertia (the force against a signal portion) will bump the wheel back into the direction of center. This allows the center to be more defined and have a smooth over transition where the wheel doesn’t feel as if it goes numb for a split second as it crosses center. This centering effect is also where oscillation control is best.
Friction and Damping work together to create the overall weight profile of the wheel (aside from the actual physical weight of the wheel as that has an effect as well). Friction as mentioned creates an overall weight profile while damping is a changing weight profile… Both of these create a grounding and solid feel to the wheel. Too much of either could dull the wheel feel but generally that is much more difficult to do with Damping due to that the wheel has to be moving for it to take effect, Friction it does not and it is just weighted.
Slew Rate -
This filter is probably one of the best filters to come from the SC2 and wasn’t available prior and the reason is that it is essentially a speed control. It has an effect MUCH to the same end result as having a Bigger Heavier Servo with a bunch of weight to it. However because it is electronic it allows us to adjust effectively the Static Weight of our servo to what we want… The Lowe the number the Heavier you are making your servo… i.e. .5Nm/sec might equate to 100lb armature weight where 9Nm/sec would be a 10lb armature weight… The Lower the armature weight the water the servo will spin up and the faster it will reach its full rotational torque. This is important to understand as this has NOTHING to do with response speed. Regardless of how heavy the servo is it will respond at the exact same time it will just not be as fast to reach its MAX (or set torque).
The reason why slew is such a good filter is that it allows you to better control the speed at which things are sent to you… i.e those spikes in telemetry, under normal circumstances while those spikes might be sent through the steering column the speed at which they actually make it to the driver after passing through all of the bushings, rack, metal, etc… generally would be greatly reduced and deintensified. This is effectively what Slew does… Because it limits the amount of signal that can reach you as the driver over time it limits the intensity of the signal you receive… So a sharp spike becomes a little more dull because it never can quite max out torque but a dull force remains that dull force. NOTE: This does not mean that you do not get full torque it means that if the slew of the servo can reach full torque it will get there but if not it will roll off (NOT CLIP) to the next signal reducing the intensity.
How does this translate into driving. the biggest thing is that it reduces the intensity of sharp signals which reduces the activeness of the wheel. Generally you don’t want a slew rate so low that it dulls out everything as you want to feel things like when you hit bump or a curb or have a surface transition, or even in extreme cases if running a very low Slew you might even remove things like dirt from the feel of the wheel. The lower the slew rate the more compliant the feel (meaning the more dampened, Rubbery you might say) but at the same time it is not Rubber Band like as that is one of the things that slew can help remove since it can slow a torque change one of the areas where it is MOST noticeable is whether or not you are able to hold the car in a state of Yaw (drifting)… With a very active wheel you just can’t do this as and bump you hit will change the steering enough to cause you lose your angle of attack and upset the car which causes a loss of yaw and then either a spin or an exit snap. This is also why sim drifters tend to use little to no FFB as with no FFB you don’t get the jolts (well that and I don’t think any Sim allows for full drift setups which are very specialized).
The key is to use just enough slew to get the car to control the way you want but not so much to mitigate the feel of the road.
With yours you provided no numbers but because it sounds like you are setting it per car my guess is that some cars are over slewed and others could be under, You don’t want “mushy” and in many cases you don’t even want to be close to mushy. Race tires are far from mushy in feel, most are very direct and very communicative. What you don’t want is a feel that they have a mind of their own. I see a lot of set-ups shared where the Slew rate is just insanely limited… You want it to be quick but not so quick the car is not controlled.
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Some questions:
In the manual for the Sport/Pro it says the RPM can reach up to 360/min. So max torque is reached at this 360rpm, or don’t we know that?
The maximum torque is the torque acting on the rotating shaft without any other forces involved. So each filter will affect the amount of torque anyway, or is this wrong?
Damping will, according to Granite, damping signal spikes and increase the force needed to turn the wheel. But in theory, if one has an insane amount of force he could turn the wheel with 100 percent damping as fast as with 0 damping.
Friction at 100,or friction in general, will stop the wheel from turning at all. This will also lower torque, because friction is limiting rpm.
Inertia goes together with the mass. If I have a steering wheel weighting 1kg it needs more momentum than one of half a kilo.
A steering wheel should recenter itself. To make driving straight forward safe and without too much constant steering action. All filters will have an effect on this.
All rubbish?
Can you please sort out what is wrong, and why? The reason I ask is to find out how much we can actually use as “given for all”, and what we can’t