Have Your Say: Force Feedback Expectations

I want the studios to make configuring FFB easier. Right now in their sims, they expect users to know, without ever being told, to turn off the artificial spring and damper that come preconfigured as enabled on most wheels (Fanatec, Logitech, & probably Thrustmaster). The signal shouldn't be clipping.

Amen. I've never been able to grasp why developers seemingly ignore the most essential part of their sims: wheel configuration and FFB tuning. All the graphics, audio, cars and tracks go for naught if the player can't understand what the wheel is telling them. Every sim forum, without exception, has people trying to find wheel/FFB settings that will help them to enjoy their purchase. A FFB wheel is the USP of racing sims. Only flight simulator controls come close. So why does it seem to be an afterthought?
 
Good FFB feels exactly like what you'd get in the real life equivalent car. That's it.

For that you need
  • a good tire model that has a good pneumatic trail simulation and can be fine tuned ti mimic different kind of real world tires
  • accurately modeled suspension geometry that has correct camber and toe change under compression and expansion as well as spring-rate and damping.
  • actually modeled steering parameters
    • control arm length and angles [force translation and ackermann]
    • rack/pinion ratio (or whatever else the car has)
    • kingpin inclination
    • caster angle
    • linkage stiffness (rubber bushings?)
    • maybe: mass of the system / angular mass of steering wheel
    • maybe: prarametric properties of power steering
This then should be verified with the gough plot (self-aligning torque vs lateral g) of the real world car where possible.

With a high end direct drive wheel, there should be no difference to the real world car equivalent.
Without a DD wheel, the devs need to have data on the more common FFB wheels and info from the player what the diameter/mass of their steering wheel rim is, to make it the experience as close as possible (even if it's far from accurate... they still need to try their best).

No sim on the market really does this, but the best ones go in this direction... thankfully.

That sim lites like Forza and GTS have such fantastically accurate car models and then don't give an eff even about proper steering lock and ratio is just unacceptable in this day and age to me. Forza for example could feel miles better with some minor tweaks. It would still be far, far from great, but still miles better.
 
I don't even know really where to start on this, maybe why i looked at Paul for help or inspiration..

ok first the disclaimer.. all i have is my experience in the wheels i have owned. its not about which one is best or which sim is best... but i do feel there is a difference in what is ffb across the sims i drive..( the finer detail)
if i use the same wheel and the same profiler settings and only the game can change its effects how come is varies so much..

From my real world experience of cars.. i have to admit i have driven more cars that are yet to be classed as classics than top notch cars now or old.. but i having worked in the motoring trade for a while with cars as a driver you could say ive had my fill of new and old..and having driven from a very early age on a farm i have had a good chance to feel cars before power steering abs tc ect.. im no speed demon but i could slide a car ok in the fields/roads round our house. (cant do this now of course)
So i have got a bit of a feel as to how a car feels on the edge at lower speeds.. that's also something to remember.. my old cars the back end could broke traction at 40mph in the corners.. new cars can go a lot faster..
i had a old triumph spitfire and that thing was so good for fun.. the feeling you got at the wheel let you know what the car was doing also your butt told you a lot more, it was no record breaker but for fun it was a rwd slide fest... all at low speed the perfect and cheap way to learn.
so from my history you may see where im coming from...

my ideal ffb or so i think on what the info is telling me.. and a reference to the real world.
im going to try and break it down into sections

Stationary
when stationary the wheel should be firm and the weight of the car should reflect in the weight in the wheel from car to car.. how much weight is over the front axle and how heavy the car is..
New cars with power steering.
( Real world power steering can make the biggest cars feel light) so on newer cars i expect it to be a light feel at the wheel even when stationary.
Old cars on old tires.
On old vintage cars i expect a heavy almost rubber feel at the centre. cars did feel very heavy at the wheel in the 70's cross-ply tires ect and no power steering.
Low speed driving
In the Real World you don't really feel anything at all in newer cars.. the wheel feels dead, you turn in the car moves, even the little ruts/holes in the road can be masked..
in a old car every little bump in the road is felt not only in the wheel but in the body through the car seat and at the pedals any where you body has contact.. (Bone shaker).
Im the sim world..
in reflection not much from the real world does translate to ffb . all we are trying to do is kid the brain into thinking that car on the screen is real by what we see and feel in the wheel and see on a screen. is it a complete package that does this.
another example.
i did hear in R3e a good while back that after they changed the surfaces of the tracks the FFB came alive..
i tried and did agree it felt way better on the same old settings.
So again is that another factor that can dictate the FFB..
but it still does not answer the original question.. the developer of the wheel must have a idea of what the wheel can produce or the sensation it can replicate.. but all they say is it has ffb and a bigger more powerful motor
power power power but what are we to do with all this power if we don't know what its for are we just buying into this for no reason. all the newer cars i have driven i can turn with my little finger... older cars yes can break my fingers if you have you hands in the wrong place on the wheel..
So at the end of the day the wheel can rotate left or right.
its how the weight of the wheel in resistance and change of direction or stutter is used to make it feel like a sensation..

If the track has some undulation to it..(not a flat car park track) the weight of the car should make the wheel go heavy and light as you crest a brow or go into a dip.. you should feel the tires load up or go light.. (this must be a given in all sims ?)
If you make a change of direction you should feel this in the wheel regardless of the tires or car .. only at low speed in newer cars do i expect to feel little or no real resistance in the wheel. in older cars with older tires the faster you go the easier it was at the wheel, which often led to problems back then..

Accelerating and breaking
when i accelerate hard the wheel may go a little bit lighter if the car has movement in the suspension, weight trans-fare and if i brake really hard the wheel should feel heavier. at the point of lock up the wheel should feel different, that tell tale sign along with the sounds and visuals. (wheel goes really light like on ice).. it can judder just before grip is just about gone in a corner, like a sensation the front wheels are slightly slipping/skipping loosing grip..
But is that not the same as pot holes that's a judder.. or a different judder or type of judder..

Driving in a straight line at speed
i expect to feel nothing really in newer cars, no pull on the wheel lets face it its boring.
In a old car i expect to be constantly having to correct the wheel to stop the car drifting/moving over following the road imperfections, old cars move around a lot more than newer cars and this to me must be reflected in the ffb its almost a bit vague at times and a little floaty at speeds, the car can feel alive.

Turning at speed..
Once up to speed,, i don't know what im looking for at this point, iv'e not driven a race car at full speed on a track, ive sat in one and shall we say know how it feels in my butt as a passenger.. the track days i have done you still never get up to a speed that you can feel the car on its edge really, so that feeling at the wheel i don't know (the finer details)
Yes the wheel has a weight to it when you turn. unless the car crashes you dont feel that much, maybe a spring effect wanting to rerun the wheels straight.. at high speeds i don't feel that much in comparison to lower to mid speed corners.. just a weight to the wheel..
Now in old cars this is normally much more pronounced the wheel it feels like it could rip your hands of at times with weight trans fare snap..
but i do say im no expert at high speed in new or old cars..


Now Caned effects what added that's not needed, or whats added to great effect i just don't know anymore
 
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if i use the same wheel and the same profiler settings and only the game can change its effects how come is varies so much..
Some good points about feel. I found on track generally the faster you went in older cars the lighter the wheel got , but caster settings could effect this. The wheel would also tend to shimmy more as the shocks were not nearly as good as modern ones. Early slicks tended to give almost no notice you were reaching the peak tractive limit and were very difficult to drive at the limit because of that. They would also have to return to about 60% of the tractive limit before regaining grip after over driving them, which made it very tough to save a mistake. treaded tires are far more reasonable when being pushed hard.

I think the reason they make some sort of "profiler" for each wheel is because the software/hardware translation varies between devs. And also you are now given more options to tune in game FFb than ever before. I find this to be far more prevalent than when FFB was first introduced. It was very hard to jump from one game to the next without recalibrating your driving style. It seems the closer they get to reality, the easier the transition at least for me. But my first step in any new software is always to tune the FFB to what seems intuitive.
 
Very difficult and ambigous topic here. Talking about FFB on sims I'm not even sure I like how real world cars feel through the steering nowadays! Too light and synthetic almost feels like a sim at times... ;-)

But seriously, I talked to people who like to feel exactly the same as the real world car would transport through the steering rack into the steering wheel and your hands/arms. Others like a FFB that is also making up for sensory information you would normally get when driving a real car but do not get when sim racing. Honestly I'm a bit of both. I'd rather get more information about the cars' driving state than an actual reproduction of the real car and missing on crucial information such as understeer. As I'm mostly take digital race cars for a spin, I'd like to feel the car to be a bit on the heavy side. A firm feeling through the steering and the pedals. Not like to fight the thing, though. Getting the balance right is key and that balance might be a different spot for different people I guess.

Ok, there are some simulators with 3D motion and such. Very tempting indeed although I do not have the space to set such a rig up and possible also not the dosh. Not that I actually experienced such a modern motion rig. But seeing real racing drivers turning away from such machinery because they feel it does not really immerse you more (as you would expect) but alienate you from the actual experience, that says enough for me. I heard it also feels wrong for some of them apparently.

Realistically speaking I'm pretty much happy with what R3E provides me with in terms of FFB. I did not even had to fiddle much with the settings to get an immediate feeling of immersion. Like sucking you into the experience naturally.
Not sure what I do wrong on AC but I do not get the same kick out of that sim even with some serious fiddling. But you get used to it after a few minutes of driving, so it doesn't really annoy me much.

But that aside, for me todays' FFB I feel it exactly does what I want it to do: Transporting me from my living room couch rig into the the feeling of driving a race car on my favorite race track. Some people might disagree on having good (and often expensive) equipment is not really needed to achieve this. But even the sensory sensation of grabbing a high quality, thick, grippy steering wheel of the right size adds a lot to the immersion to me.

So in a nutshell: For me FFB is another piece in the jigsaw puzzle like 5.1 sound, buttkicker, big screen, correct FOV, etc to get sucked into the simulation and be immersed by the game.
 
Richard Burns rally+g25/27 ffb it's close enough to real life experience. I don't know why recent games can't get close to that
Good but what is the feel you talk about...

So if a game back then nailed it what happened now with the newer wheels and newer games..
I still own my g25 and love the feel it had, in say gt legends over my t500.. but the newer games do like the newer wheels.. Even though the basic premise of ffb should not of changed, why do older wheels suffer...
its like they forgot the basics in a effort to baffle us with glits that's not needed..
similar to the cries of the older sims where better because they had more options...
now we have the opposite the more options we have in ffb the worse it gets.. or the more complicated it gets to set it up..
 
tune it to what, there also lies the problem for me...:)
are you using your years of proper driving to set up your wheel,and adapting from there or what you have found works best from sim driving..
When you get as old as me you can't always trust your memory.;) But yes I would say I desperately try to recreate what I remember as accurately as possible, and then leave the graphics and sound to fill in the gaps of perception. I drove many cars on the limit because I had the perception or misperception as that may be, that I had a pretty good idea of what the chassis and tires were doing beneath me. I sensed I could feel the steering getting lighter in under steer(tactile), or feel the back of the car rotating a bit too much while over steering (visual, tactile, and audible at the limits on DOT tires but less with slicks) , using the brake and throttle to "balance" the car. If you got right in between those two scenarios you had a nice four wheel drift and could ride it thru corners like a surfer catching a wave. Loose that feeling and you had to slow down, or spin out and I've been seen doing both. Sim vibe is also good for feeling chassis undulations, or shifts, but turn it up to far and it just makes my butt go numb...lol.
 
From a real life experience my interpretation of under steer or a front end slide and how it feels at the wheel may differ to what i feel at the pc.

my old car had no abs and in the winter or the wet it was so easy to lock up. when it locks the wheel went light which ever way the car wheels were pointing made no difference it went where the bonnet was pointing.
as you got the grip back the wheel had a bit of bite to it and loaded up again.. so heavy, light and then back to heavy as the grip returns, this i can replicate or get a feel for with my wheel at the pc.
progressive under steer.. the wheel is heavy as you turn in, it feels like you can keep turning it but the car is not turning in but going wider and wider at no point did the wheel go light. there was grip but not enough to turn the car..the feeling is a hard one to find in a wheel but its there in some sims..
 
From a real life experience my interpretation of under steer or a front end slide and how it feels at the wheel may differ to what i feel at the pc.

my old car had no abs and in the winter or the wet it was so easy to lock up. when it locks the wheel went light which ever way the car wheels were pointing made no difference it went where the bonnet was pointing.
as you got the grip back the wheel had a bit of bite to it and loaded up again.. so heavy, light and then back to heavy as the grip returns, this i can replicate or get a feel for with my wheel at the pc.
progressive under steer.. the wheel is heavy as you turn in, it feels like you can keep turning it but the car is not turning in but going wider and wider at no point did the wheel go light. there was grip but not enough to turn the car..the feeling is a hard one to find in a wheel but its there in some sims..

Yes I can say my Accuforce definably gets "lighter " with under steer or over steer in most sims. The software should always have temps across the tire available also so you can verify overheating I/M/O. (my first complaint was tire temps when I raced R3E, as your setups became a guess) Think of the circle of traction as a guide. A tire can do 4 things, stop, go, turn left, or turn right. But as it transitions from turning to stopping it can never exceed its 100% peak tractive limit and must give up one category to add to another.
Hitting the brakes can cause under steer by taking turning percentage away, while at the same time adding weight to the front tires and increasing or decreasing their tractive limit based on the new loadings, much in the way aero downforce does. Some direct drive wheels have a huge advantage of using hybrid motors and extra tuning software to help with this. But for a little less coin and a lot more work you can dial in most modern sims to replicate that feeling without the added cost. Most likely your "favorite" sim is the one you have dialed in the best, and with each new one many are reluctant to vary from the settings they know got them what they wanted to feel with their particular favorite, albeit those settings may be a complete miss for interpreting another sims code.
 
Most likely your "favorite" sim is the one you have dialed in the best, and with each new one many are reluctant to vary from the settings they know got them what they wanted to feel with their particular favorite, albeit those settings may be a complete miss for interpreting another sims code.

I drive most of the sims and the obscure ones.. so im not partial to one in particular..
i like old cars so tend to drive the sims that have older cars of my liking.
my club staff duties don't always dictate my sim preference.
but as far as FFB goes im still looking for the individual outputs from the sim that give us clues as to what the car is doing through the wheel.
which ones are real and which ones are made up to trick us.. (which i have no problems with)
but when you add it all up it feels amazing to drive even though half of it is false

I remember looking at one of the main guys from AC and his wheel setting.. nothing bothered me to start with, then somebody mentioned clipping and how his setting would not work bla bla bla... then answer i believe was that's how he likes it for what he drives... i would of thought he would have had the best setting possible .. no i just drive it...
 
So if you drive a car with wings(open wheelers) the down-force builds in the car so it gets heavier should the ffb in your wheel get stiffer the faster you go.. (ok there will be a upper limit to this )
 
Imo good FFB

- Doesn't have overload of canned effects, rather what would be communicated via steering column IRL

- Has as few sliders/options as possible. Developer should know what is good FFB, not leave it to players to figure out and escape themselves. Good example, AC, AMS. Bad example, pCars 1

- Never requires tweaking car per car. OK gain maybe, to reflect power steering and such, but that's literally all I will accept. One setting has to be great on any car/track

- Works on G27 and similar. If FFB is bad on those wheels, it's bad. If someone says some FFB isn't good "Because it's not good on consumer wheels, only DD wheels" I call BS

- Doesn't change my profiler settings like DOR without putting it back how it was (AMS sadly does this).

- Not requiring any specific spring/damper settings but totally ignoring it is nice (AMS luckily does this)
 
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When I first started sim racing, I equated having a super heavy wheel with realism. I wanted the wheel to yank away from me on every little bump. Now, I look for subtle nuances to judge how good FFB is. When I lose front grip, I want the amount of resistance to equal the rate at which the grip is decreasing. Some titles go from 100 to 0, leaving the wheel with no resistance at all;, like you've just hit an ice patch; that isn't realistic in my opinion. I also want to feel uneven pavement. As I travel down a track, my wheel should be communicating with me at all times. Again, in some titles, the wheel feels dead on straights then wakens up only if you hit a big bump or when when you turn. And on the topic of turns, good FFB should mimic weight transfer (depending on the car). When you initially turn in, the resistance should be a tad light and then increase as you approach mid corner. Having that feedback, helps me determine when I'm approaching the cornering limits. Having all of these attributes working together give me the feeling of steering an object with mass as opposed to just moving a 3-d image around on my screen. I think some titles are better than others and there are even some cars within the titles that are better than other cars. Everyone has their own opinion, no one is wrong or right; it comes down to preference.
 
So if you drive a car with wings(open wheelers) the down-force builds in the car so it gets heavier should the ffb in your wheel get stiffer the faster you go.. (ok there will be a upper limit to this )
Downforce makes the car "heavier", so of course the steering effort should increase. Unless you have power steering.

The common problem is that if your wheel can only produce 2 Nm of torque and you have it set to produce 2 Nm of torque while going 55 mph (90 kph) because "it's too light otherwise", then you've got no room to feel the heavy steering when going 165 mph (270 kph). There is no way for a game to compensate for this lack of torque at the wheel!

A wheel that can peak at 5 Nm is about as small as you can get away with to have sufficient dynamic range that you can feel the change of torque over a range of speeds where aerodynamics take effect.
 
Ironically, most street cars exhibit aerodynamic lift. If you're just driving street cars in sims, then the lower torque wheels will be fine because, assuming the aerodynamics are modeled correctly and you're going fast enough, the steering will get marginally lighter.
 
I'm not that an Force Feedback user, but still i like the G27 most. It's for me realistic, i've tried it in Trucking Simulators on bad roads and on good roads.

It's clearly okay for me. But mostly i have it disabled, because i'm not a fan of FFB.
 
Downforce makes the car "heavier", so of course the steering effort should increase. Unless you have power steering.

The common problem is that if your wheel can only produce 2 Nm of torque and you have it set to produce 2 Nm of torque while going 55 mph (90 kph) because "it's too light otherwise", then you've got no room to feel the heavy steering when going 165 mph (270 kph). There is no way for a game to compensate for this lack of torque at the wheel!

A wheel that can peak at 5 Nm is about as small as you can get away with to have sufficient dynamic range that you can feel the change of torque over a range of speeds where aerodynamics take effect.


yes having my ffb to light for me is as bad as to heavy.. As far as the wheel understanding the outputs from the sim.It did cross my mind, that to use all the different feeling the wheel can produce you may have to have it at a certain strength to allow for the full range.
ok if its to high, we hear of clipping also...
 

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