I have the Simucube 2 Sport for a week now and so far I’m happy with it. I have a few questions though.
Does the way I power off the wheel damage the Simucube? I usually turn off the Simucube from the back of the wheel, then power off the outlet which powers the Simucube and a few other simracing devices. I want to be sure regarding this topic, as I have read some stories about damaging the simucube powering it off the wrong way.
The simucube gets pretty hot after a few minutes of racing, is this normal? Or is it supposed to be only warm?
Does clipping regularly damage the simucube 2 longterm? There are a few tracks, where the clipping occurs in one corner, and it is barely noticable for me, unless I take off the headphones and hear the warning beeps.
The way you shut down is the exact same way I handle my Pro, it’s good.
The heat is not normal I think, there have been a few others mentioning that a couple of months ago. But its better if someone from GD comments on that.
Clipping I don’t think causes problems. But you can try to adjust your TD and ingame settings to prevent it (or at least, prevent it as much as possible).
With most titles (not iRacing), I find the best way to avoid clipping issues is to reverse-tune the force strength; that means setting the SC1/SC2 FFB-output higher than what you need. The final FFB force-level can then be determined by setting the game-ffb strength, (35-50% is a good starting point), then adjust to preference from there.
By doing this, you are virtually eliminating chances of experiencing signal-clipping from the game, (unless you demand 100% output from the hardware and software). Some signal-clipping may serve as a safety net for extreme cases (crashes, contact, etc.) but, you don’t want clipping under normal driving conditions, even hard cornering / high down-force scenarios.
iRacing handles the force settings differently so it’s best to follow their guidelines regarding ffb settings.
I already have the ffb strength set to maximum in the TD settings, so I only need to tune it in the game. As you said, that under normal driving conditions, clipping should not occur: aside from the experience, does clipping damage the Simucube 2 too?
I run Assetto corsa at about 40%, anything above and the simucube 2 starts beeping. It is diffrent for every car and track though. Should I just use a track and car combo which does the most clipping in order to find the maximum ffb strength?
There is nothing wrong with little clipping, just don’t overdo it.
There is no damage to servo as it’s signal that clips at 100%, servo can handle much more, and you can just disable that beeping in settings.
@josef: If you are having 100% strength in True Drive and are almost consistantly getting torque saturation (clipping) beeps, then you are really maxing out your torque and the device will get hot. Not right away, but after some time. There is internal protection/throttling of torque so that certain temperature limits are not reached, but even 50 degrees Celcius will feel quite hot to the hand while still being in safe limits.
Thank you for the answer. Regarding the clipping, is the constant clipping an issue, or can it only be occasionally? For example in the track Nordschleife or Spa there is one or two corners which cause clipping. And driving those tracks would cause clipping periodically every minutes.
I barely notice the clipping, so for me it’s only regarding the safety of the device.
The fact that you have clipping a few times a lap at Nordschleife is normal and totally fine. But that track does not have really long straights, and instead has long sections with corners all the time, so the Simucube 2 does get warm with that high FFB level.
You might find that for example Monza would not make the device as warm.
@Mika, I was under impression it’s signal clipping, not hardware. Is that really servo that at max?
Useful information for the first test drives: Driver might hear audible beeps already on the first drive. These are the potential causes for these notifications:
A) Torque saturation / clipping is detected. The game is giving maximum torque and no additional signal details can be felt. Tune game FFB level to lower value to solve this. You can turn this feature on/off on the Hardware settings tab in True Drive.