Any advantages or disadvantages of one over the other?
Thanks
Depends a lot in the game and how it handles FFB… In a game like iRacing it is generally better to leave the wheelbase at 100% and then adjust the at the wheel power via the Max Force slider as that is what controls your clipping. Other games use a more fixed 100% point and thin actually use gains above 100% to give one cars stronger outputs over others. which will possibly make the actual Base unit go into clipping which can’t really happen with the methodology used for iRacing…
Generally though you can use the rule of thumb of what is the Maximum force I ever want to be delivered by my wheel and once you determine that you can set the Wheel base to that force and then adjust the games as needed.
As mentioned above though iRacing due to the way it handles clipping and telemetry it does have some other concerns in regard to the power you allow the wheel to use.
As for fidelity and things like that the signal going to the wheel is always going to be between a % so if the came is actually delivering all the details of the car or what it wants sent to the wheel then there is no real advantage or disadvantage to altering Gain at the wheel as opposed to in the game. i.e if set Gain to 60% in a game it should just be sending a compressed 100% gain signal which detail wise would be similar (though one could argue that the 60% compressed will not have the detail of the 100% due to sampling rates but that would depend on when the game actually compresses the signal for the set gain.
Again of note iRacing is not normal in this respect and uses a telemetry based ratio system as opposed to just a gain setting.
So I may ave just either confused you more or given a better understanding… Not sure which.
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Errrrmmmm… I’d go with confused lol.
Many thanks for the reply! So in a nutshell, it generally doesn’t matter except for Iracing it is better to have the base at 100%.
That being the case, it seems it may just the be best to have base at 100% and set Iracing and any other games FFB in game?
Thanks!
Just let go of the wheel when you crash with 100% FFB 
There are very few exceptions, like DR (1 or 2), they don’t have traditional gain slider and while adjusting SAT slider works to a degree, it’s not linear and result in spiky FFB and loose center.
So it’s better to keep it around 70-80 to have some headroom to avoid clipping and lower gain in driver instead.
Another benefit of in driver lower gain is that some titles can generate exuberant force (e,g iRacing crash scenario) that can really do some damage when in game gain is low and driver is high. By balancing them you can make signal just clip avoiding potential injuries.
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If you do want to limit crash forces in iRacing but generally not lose much detail from the telemetry I suggest setting the iRacing Max Force slider to 65Nm (60-70Nm anywhere in that range will work ok) with the Base strength at 100%
Then:
If you need more at the wheel strength lower the Nm # on the Max Force slider.
If you need less at the wheel strength then lower the strength of the wheel base.
The Reason is that from my research 95% of the cars don’t have any real usable telemetry output above the 60-70Nm range so stopping there has little effect on the overall “feel” of the cars themselves. That isn’t saying that there is NOT telemetry above there that can be informative but for most that don’t want the pure force rolloff at the extremes it isn’t really something that will be missed as most of it is very sharp hits such as car to car contact and wrecks.
Another thing with other games that you do have to be a little concerned about with regard to the forces is that many use the direct input effects (iRacing does not). So if you boost some of these effects in the True Drive control panel you could technically run over 100% force. I am not sure if Granite actually incorporated this possible overrun in their programming though to actually boost the output of the servo a little to compensate. I thought I read something that they did but I am not sure.
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The max force slider seems to go to 40. I don’t really get it all, I have a 28nm Mige running at an amp or two less than max so in Iracing I set max to 26 (it says set it to max output of wheel).
Then the other adjustment is strength which I have at the moment on 2.7, which is far left on the slider.
I have read numerous posts saying how good the auto function is, but after a few laps and clicking auto, it always sets strength to over 12, I can barely turn the wheel!!!
On my SC1 Small mige (20Nm) the Auto FFB in iRacing stops working when i have more then 70-75%(14-15Nm) FFB strength in SC software. Even though I have set Wheel Force to 20Nm in iRacing. So it seems like iRacing cant handle Auto FFB if more then 15Nm.
The Auto Function has no clue what wheel you have however it is limited by the setting that you place on the Wheel Force slider… Meaning if you se the wheel force slider to 20 Nm and use the Auto and the Car being used does not output over 20Nm in telemetry while you are driving (ie the miata) then your Max Strength slider will only set itself to 20 it will not go below that… This is a safety factor to NOT allow your your 20Nm wheel to output 20Nm when the car only wants to output 15Nm. In reality if you are using 75% in TrueDrive or SC Config. then your Wheel force should be set to 15Nm in iRacing as you are limiting your Wheelbase power to 15Nm overall. if you do this then you will feel a difference in that 15-20Nm rage for iRacing.
The Auto function sets the Nm to get Maximum Telemetry from the car being used. With High powered wheels this does NOT mean that it will set it to the strength level that you will like only that it will give you 98% of the telemetry the car puts out while you are driving and not clip…
This is what I generally suggest the method a couple posts above if you want full telemetry and want to feel the difference in strength from car to car. It is a set it and forget it sort of setting.
The AUTO function in iRacing because it maximizes telemetry range if you use it for every car it is best if you are just looking for a fairly common force level… When using auto you will have to have different settings for every car as the Auto setting for one car will NOT always work with another… and in some cases it will not even work optimally for a different track… Auto is good in that you will understand what the car is outputting telemetry wise more without going into the Telemetry Directly. But honestly it can be a more complex way to set up the wheel.
BTW to be able to follow MOST settings recommendations It would be a good idea to click on the “Strength” name in the iRacing settings to change it to “Max Force”
A great feature in the SimuCube (1) Software would be a limiter for the higher torque peaks. This would allow to drive with a relatively high basic strength but without extreme peaks.
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The overall strength slider is such limiter. How should it be implemented / changed? There is already a torque bandwidth limit, which is a low pass filter that will limit the peaks.
Slew-rate is one of my favorite filters and deserves much more attention in my opinion in the general SC2 community. You can set that to help too. It also has the added benefit of probably being able to remove some damping too which can liven up the FFB but while the slew-rate helps with a lot of the extremely sudden, high-torque movements which, in my opinion, can allow the FFB to behavior more realistic and less wrist-breaking while not having to lower overall power.
A great way to limit overall forces so the peaks don’t go higher than the max force you want is to adjust the game’s FFB steering arm forces basically so that the FFB you get from the car at the turn with the most FFB is near 100% of the game’s FFB out - leaving little-to-no headroom for jolts and spikes to output even more forcefeedback strength since the game will already be at near 100% output. This requires you having to check the FFB output of the car using telemetry software or an in-game FFB output meter/bar while you drive but is well worth it.
So what me confuses then is that the Torque Bandwidth Limit is measured in Hz. Obviously I am not an engineer 
I have actually a good experience with lowering the overall strength. It was necessary for the new Nordschleife in rF2 because the peaks were so strong (much stronger than on the other tracks) that I have been (lightly) injured by the FFB. So I turned down the FFB to 50% in the SimuCube tool and doubled the ingame FFB for the car and then I have had a very good experience.
I know that many Simracers hesitate to reduce the overall strength of their DD Base but I say it is worth a try if the FFB peaks are too strong.
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A lot of the leave at 100% and use the inGame settings comes from the way iRacing does their feedback… For other titles this advice can be much different as some games don’t initiate their own signal clipping as does iRacing. I haven’t played at all with RF so I am not sure how they handle feedback but as long as you are getting all of the game signal through the wheel at whatever strength you run then you are doing OK…
When I run Assetto Corsa (not competizione) I tend to turn the in game gain down to about 60% with the base at 100% but from what I understand with the way FFB works in that game I could Reverse that and accomplish the same thing… I just leave the base at 100% because I run iRacing most and with that I would rather not have all those things I have to change.
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