iRacing and DBOX 4250i, tuning down gear shift effect

[Alvise]

Hi,

I have the dbox 3dof motion platform and I'm super happy with it. I mainly play with iRacing and ACC.

With iRacing the motion is pretty realistic but, even if I completely disable "Gear shift" effect, everytime I shift the first 3-4 gears of a normal gt4, or even with a Mazda, it's like a kick... it's definitely to aggressive. The only way to turn it down is to reduce the "Acceleration front-rear" effect, but this also reduces the pitch when car brakes or accelerates.

I'd just like to reduce this "kick" effect while shifting without turning down all the other effects.

Did anyone have the same problem?

 

[NetLawMan]

I have the same wish and have dbox. It is not limited to one title, and I think the issue is acceleration/deceleration telemetry provided by games. I have a similar issue with my Gseat/belt feeling fidgety, but the issue is the particular telemetry used by these devices. I have learned to live with these quirks. For dbox I will tend to reduce the front/back effect in dbox Game Center.

 

[Alvise]

I have the same wish and have dbox. It is not limited to one title, and I think the issue is acceleration/deceleration telemetry provided by games. I have a similar issue with my Gseat/belt feeling fidgety, but the issue is the particular telemetry used by these devices. I have learned to live with these quirks. For dbox I will tend to reduce the front/back effect in dbox Game Center.

I also have gseat and gbelt, would you be so kind to share your iracing settings?

 

[RCHeliguy]

Hi,

I have the dbox 3dof motion platform and I'm super happy with it. I mainly play with iRacing and ACC.

With iRacing the motion is pretty realistic but, even if I completely disable "Gear shift" effect, everytime I shift the first 3-4 gears of a normal gt4, or even with a Mazda, it's like a kick... it's definitely to aggressive. The only way to turn it down is to reduce the "Acceleration front-rear" effect, but this also reduces the pitch when car brakes or accelerates.

I'd just like to reduce this "kick" effect while shifting without turning down all the other effects.

Did anyone have the same problem?

Yes, I had the exact same problem.

Like you mentioned, I reduced the Front-Rear Reactivity.

 

[Alvise]

Thank you @RCHeliguy ! Do you create a profile for each individual car?

 

[RCHeliguy]

Thank you @RCHeliguy ! Do you create a profile for each individual car?

I don't that was the first one I setup for iRacing and I pretty well stuck with it. I've modified it some over time.

 

[Neilski]

With iRacing the motion is pretty realistic but, even if I completely disable "Gear shift" effect, everytime I shift the first 3-4 gears of a normal gt4, or even with a Mazda, it's like a kick... it's definitely to aggressive. The only way to turn it down is to reduce the "Acceleration front-rear" effect, but this also reduces the pitch when car brakes or accelerates.

As someone without any kind of motion/haptics, I'm always curious about the level of realism they offer.

If the sim setup you've found has truly disabled any canned gear-shift effects, then what you're experiencing sounds like it could be just the real acceleration impulse (for want of a better word) coming from a flat shift. Getting a kick in the rear from a flat shift is basically just... real. (If you're not flat shifting then I'm baffled but for now I'll assume that you are )

You might not reasonably want to lift in a GT4, but if by Mazda you mean one of their road cars (MX-5?) then a wee lift during a shift is more reasonable to consider there (and kinder to the transmission, not to mention your spine ).

 

[RCHeliguy]

FWIW, many people complain about this exact issue with the shifts.

I don't feel them in Dirt Rally 2.0.

It is a very disruptive jolt. I didn't like it at all. In fact my initial thoughts of the D-Box were soured quite a bit by this feeling. It seriously pissed me off.

 

[Neilski]

FWIW, many people complain about this exact issue with the shifts.

I can fully believe it's really unpleasant, whether it's real or not.
Is it only with flat shifts in your experience, or all shifts? (If the latter, it has to be unphysical I guess, making it a pretty stupid thing for them to do.)

I've occasionally seen in-car footage from real racing cars with what looks like pretty brutal jerkiness on shifts (and tbh in general, presumably from very harsh suspension), mainly inferred from how much the camera wobbles.

 

[RCHeliguy]

If I had a surge system, then I could feel some of the violent jolt working and I do get a bit of that with with my G-Belt, the issue I have with the D-Box is the severe rocking. I'm sure there is a jolt in a very powerful car, but they tend to have stiff suspensions and don't rock like this.

 

[Alvise]

Is it only with flat shifts in your experience, or all shifts?

It's a bit hard jolt for the first two three gears, then I'd say it's realistic. In general the realism given by d-box is really impressive... when you hit a curb or when you go fast on a straight road and you feel the suspensions working... waw!!

@RCHeliguy I also use one single profile for iRacing GT cars, I think that dbox adapts perfectly along a fast amount of different cars without having to change the settings.

Would you like to share your settings and with which cars you use it?

Mine is pretty close to default

front-rear (pitch): 42-43
front-rear reactivity: 10 (but sometime I set it to 11)
left-right (roll): 46 (this higher roll settings gives me a realistic feeling of the car rolling on one side)
up-down: 40

Banking: I leave it to default settings but I'd like to experiment more. I'd like that to feel that when the car loads the suspensions it stays a bit there... or when I'm going up a hill i fill that the car angulation, but here probably I hit the limit of my actuators which are 1.5". Which actuators do you have?

skid vibration: 36
suspension effects: 40
engine effect: disabled (it's nice but it creates vibrations all over the house)
shift effect: disabled
crash dumping: enabled

 

[RCHeliguy]

I use the suspension effects, but have the wheel slide and engine haptics turned off. They are not nearly as good as what I get through my tactile system.

A lot of my settings are multi-fold. I have some shift feel through the D-Box, plus the G-Belt most noticeable while downshifting and braking, and I have transducers for the thunks.

The tactile wheel slide coming through the transducers is much better in my opinion and the engines are in another league. I'm currently using a SimHub plugin that knows exactly which car you are driving in for all major titles and adjusts the engine feel per car engine with perfect redlines on every engine.

I don't know that my settings are going to translate perfectly because I'm running D-Box, G-Belt, Tactile as a group and to be fair I'm barely using my rig lately.

 

[Alvise]

I do have dbox, GSeat + dyton pucks and Gbelt, but my simhub just has generic engine vibration. How did you get the customisation? Is it something related to the GoodVibrations discord server?

Where do you have your transducers attached?

 

[RCHeliguy]

I do have dbox, GSeat + dyton pucks and Gbelt, but my simhub just has generic engine vibration. How did you get the customisation? Is it something related to the GoodVibrations discord server?

Where do you have your transducers attached?

Yes the latest engine effects by Sierses.

 

[anton_Chez]

This is what happens with motion. I had the same thing with the SFX-100. You cannot disable those shifting effects without turning down the pitch effect. Because it shares the same action in the car. No matter if you're braking full force, or flat shifting, the forces in the car throughout that longitudinal plane are the same. So, turn down the pitch effect, reduce the shift effect, but also reduce the brake pitch and acceleration squat that you feel under those conditions.

In the end it is what it is when it comes to motion. Something I'm actually quite glad that I am rid of. For the most part motion can add a great deal to a sim rig. But those times that it breaks the feeling of authenticity, it really does ruin the experience to varying degrees.