A future project for you Mika 
Well, we would need to convince one simulator to ditch directinput and develop a good, realtime interface for something else. Not an easy project at all. And not implementable via USB, not very easily at least. CAN would be much better for that type of things…
if i remember correctly, berney from simxperience contacted a bunch of game publishers about switching to something new, but received almost no interest.
publishers want to make money and cheapest way to do that is to stick with msft and directinput
Yep, if there is interest and money then anything could be developed. Not many people would buy five-figure priced steering wheel which would then only support that one sim…
Possibly develop it with a Car manufacturer or racing team using a pro version of AC or RF2 . With the hope it would trickle down to the consumer market in the future.
I can see a point in the not to distant future in the quest to cut the deaths on the roads all cars will be driven by AI by law. Leaving everybody bar the super rich left with the only option to get their driving fix on simulators. If it ever got that way Id buy the biggest electric ai driven car I could afford completely gut it the interior and put a sim rig in it.
Yep, that would be the way to do it.
But, your original post suggested that torque-based wasn’t used. Well, closing the torque loop in the simulation is not used, but of course the motor control is being given by torque commands and position feedback is used at the drive and the simulation. So, its not torque that is the problem, is how the control loop is built.
True but I could only remember the jist of Lee’s original article that it had something to do with torque.
I had a look at my granity settings and noticed its now set to torque control Im sure it was on positional before but not 100% sure. Did this change with the ioni firmware you did recently? Or is my memory worse than I thought?
Your memory is worse.
In sim racing application, torque control is used.
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We do still use positional information as well because the sim HAS to know where the wheel is positioned otherwise you could have torque but you might be going around in circles… It is possible that reading through all of the other posts that having the torque telemetry and a torque reading at the servo that that might compensate for position but I am thinking for accuracy a positional element would always be part of the equation… otherwise you would need some serious computing to have torque information streaming smooth and in real time.
I believe it has already been done for some pro simulator, such as F1 teams, etc, many years ago. Has it trickled down? no.
In my opinion, the main issue with FFB and our racing sims is that the FFB is position based in our games rather than torque-based. I believe this is one of the main reasons why using high torque values of FFB give way too severe and aggressive FFB even though the same magnitude of torque may be detected in real life - the same magnitude of torque may be detected in real life but the behavior of that torque and how it changes with regards to your inputs is completely different to our games which often feel like they want to power through against your will (I’m guessing because the wheel is told to rotate to a certain point in our games VS rea life where the “FFB” is purely reactive to forces).
In real life, FFB is REACTIVE whereas our game’s FFB is ACTIVE.
Also, real life FFB has a huge amount more inertia than our game’s FFB systems.
No matter what sim I play, I have to use lower FFB settings than I would like or else there are many FFB characteristics that are much too aggressive, sharp, powerful, and accelerative compared to real life.
FFB of simracing is still quite a ways away from real life. High powered direct drive wheels have exposed this more than when using consumer wheels with lower power. In some ways, consumer wheels are more realistic than high powered direct drive wheels.
Ffb force is torque based. But feedback back to the PC and game is position feedback.
Often, in my opinion, discussions about the lack of “real” feedback through a FFB system is pointless. Any FFB systems function is unrealistic in it’s nature. It tries to translate an experience of motion and g-forces into a g-force free and motionless environment. Anyone with any experience on let’s say the Nordschleife (I live 10 minutes from this track) knows that a FFB system doesn’t even come close to real life driving. When I push my BRZ on the Nordschleife I hardly experience any force in my steering wheel. If you would translate that experience as close as possible in my OSW wheel, driving a sim would become boring as hell (for the feel part that is). People who think you can feel your back wheels loose grip while your front wheels keep grip in your steering wheel are lacking the real life experience, because you won’t (unless it’s really extreme).
What you want in a good FFB system is an alternative translation of forces you normally wouldn’t feel in a steering wheel.
You’ll never mimic the real deal with a FFB system, not now and not in the future. Don’t believe me, stop imagine driving a car on a track, go experience it.
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So true imo; RL forces through our sim-wheels would be quite lifeless and boring. That’s the whole point of FFB for me; to in part, provide details and information that are not present in the virtual space. Granted, with DD-wheels, some force-effects need to be reduced and managed through manual fine tuning in most cases but, that’s not so much the fault of the hardware / DD-system design as much as it is about making FFB work for the majority of wheel users with mainstream hardware.
DD-wheel users should expect to have to make some effort to tune game-FFB to suit such powerful systems and fortunately, this and other sites offer good information on how to do that.
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Yes, That is why many don’t like my settings for My SimuCUBE, I douse High Forces but not 1:! (.593:1 to be close to exact in iRacing telemetry) but I have the settings filtered in such a way that the wheel actually doesn’t give a whole bunch of ancillary feedback (minimal road noise, ect…) as this is how I remember it when driving real race prep cars back years ago. The car would wear me down over time with the strength it sent through the wheel but there was no real jolting for the most part and things were smooth… The main feelings came through your seat and the G’s which we do not get… This is where things differ with a Sim is that many want all those feelings through the wheel and in most cases many of those feelings are “fake” even in iRacings case much of the road feel is not from the telemetry but from the harshness of the FFB signal…
Right now FFB is as Mika mentioned all torque based BUT the fact that the sim has to know what position the wheel is in in order to send a “reactive force” does make the whole loop different than in real life where the ONLY thing really bringing the wheel back to center is Caster, Friction of the tires, and speed of the car. In a Sim the wheel tries to reposition itself to center sometimes with force because the game is saying the wheel should be centered BUT the wheel is reporting slightly off. This is actually where there are probably limitations with the Microsoft Direct Input resolution where we are pretty much maxing it out with the SinCOS encoders… If we had all the resolution available for positioning here we may actually be closer to reality as there will be less chance of misreads between game an wheel position.
I actually think that in a game like iRacing the Telemetry is pretty accurate but how it is being sent to the wheel and how the wheel is translating it does color it and in some cases (depending upon your settings) boosts it beyond what could be considered real…
But in any manner we are limited by the Technology and the Programming of the Feedback systems to some degree but we are getting a feel that is more real as it is something that will actually work you like you would actually be worked when in a car…
Road cars with power steering on the track help a lot. Because on sticky enough tires and without a/c and with helmet and fireproof suit there are enough troubles already to also fight a wheel.
But once you talk about regular steering on the open wheels or powerful enough karts - you have to fight a wheel a lot. Small Mige feels to be weaker somewhat, but I’m glad it’s easier.
On a track, you know that shit can end up bad driving 700hp. Really bad. And it’s part of fun.
Other than that - karts are more racing - you turn faster, you see better, you’re way more into the drive.
Sim should be fun and challenge. Fighting a wheel gives physical part of that. But I want a fair and realistic fight. And I don’t want lag, noise and weird stupid stuff happening. But I don’t care how close to reality it is - certainly, I know that in reality, those cars are not behaving like that. Who cares? I have a track car as well.
It’s not about using “1:1” forces or any certain ratio. The overall FFB behavior is different. 1:1 forces is often way to over-powered, accelerative, sharp, etc. compared to real-life this is largely due to the fact that real-life FFB is reactive while a video games’s FFB, for the time being, is active. Not to mention real-life has a ton more inertia and mass (tyres, wheels, suspension, etc) than our wheels. Moving over to a fundamentally new FFB system using torque-based FFB could potentially drastically improve the FFB behavior allowing us to use high FFB without getting the fake FFB behavior we have now. High FFB with today’s FFB wheels just want to snap your wrists and the wheels also want to do all the work for you rather than you do the work like in real life. Telling a wheel to move to a certain position is not the way to go and this problem gets more and more exaggerated the higher power the wheel is.
The simulators are not telling a position for the wheel to go. They are giving torque commands.
OK I guess it is really hard to explain what is going on but the feedback is sent via torque signals from the Sim based on how far off of the optimal position the sim determines the wheel to be at, So it isn’t putting the wheel at a position but it is nudging it toward that position through varying degrees of force… The problem comes when you have a light armature servo (and yes most servos are WAY lighter than a full rack steering system) it is easy for the reactive force to over power and overshoot where the wheel should optimally be and with that overshoot comes oscillation. The problem is that as you increase power with nothing to slow the servo you get a wheel that drives you BEYOND what is realistic because it will start to overcome the forces you apply to the wheel and intern the wheel feels more like it is driving you than you are driving the wheel…
I see SOOO many people running 0 damping on their servos which just shows off the issue… Damping is there to help stop that overshoot and counter the force as the wheel gets closer to its intended destination. Friction can slow the whole system which is like adding weight to the entire system. the only thing is friction is VERY heavy handed so it doesn’t take too much to add inertia artificially. Inertia is the filter if you want to add flywheel effect to the wheel so it is not as abrupt to stop on a reverse command, It also helps in getting the wheel moving faster so it is good in conjunction with minimizing the initial effects of Friction.
You can get a pretty natural feel out of the wheel but you aren’t going to get it out of a unfiltered servo UNLESS you actually mimic a rack and steering column and everything in between to up the inertia of the entire system and even then there will be some differences.