Using Wheel damper?

[Msportdan]

Has anyone tried this?I know its a forsaken rule to use damper in sims. But ive been messing wiht about 30% damper (json resistance coefficent) (100% profiler) and it feels much more like a real car it takes away the springey feel to the wheel, and also makes it feel like your on rubber. Also with a min force about 3% I still feel details and not clip.

Has anyone tried this?

 

[Msportdan]

i do agree with robin and myself regarding the game effecting the wheel damper. But what i think emery is getting at is at 100% damper at the wheel, your taking away forces from actual ffb from the wheel. But for me i have 100 at the wheel but in games i never run 100%, i run about 20-30. So the game is only asking to use 20-30% of the damper from the wheel. S

From this i don’t see any ffb limitaions, or loss of ff. detail. If anything it feels miles more authentic to a real steer rack.



So yeah i do agree 100 in game and wheel would very much deaden your detail i won’t argue with that. But who uses 100 in both?!

 

[Emery]

But what i think emery is getting at is at 100% damper at the wheel, your taking away forces from actual ffb from the wheel.

Correct.

But for me i have 100 at the wheel but in games i never run 100%, i run about 20-30. So the game is only asking to use 20-30% of the damper from the wheel.

And this is where you're getting muddled. The game has no way to tell the wheel how much damping the game has applied. The game only outputs "move wheel this far with this much force". So what is happening is the game calculates your 20%-30% damping (from the controller.json file) and modifies the FFB signal accordingly, sends that to the wheel, and your wheel is now applying 100% damping to the already dampened FFB signal.

If it feels good, then I'm happy for you! But do realize that the signal is now heavily overdamped.

 

[Msportdan]

ok.. so howwould i apply this...

set the wheel to 30% (example) and in game at 100%. That way I would have to change the wheel for every game?

 

[Robin]

@Emery I don't think I follow the logic.

If I have damper at 100% in the Fanatec driver and in the game I set 30% damper, that 30% is dampened 100% by the driver is what you say, correct?
How is this different or wrong? 100% of 30% = 30% so the outcome is still 30% damper.

From the Fanatec CSW v2 manual:

Driver settings:
The lower bar ‘Dampering strength’ is an additional fine tuning possibility for the
tuning menu option ‘DPR’ (see chapter ‘Tuning Menu’ of this manual for more
detailed information).

Tuning Menu:
(...)
DPR range: OFF
000 ... 005
DPR default: 100
These force feedback modifiers give you the ability to change the force feed back signals of a game (only applicable if game uses these effects). In theory there are three types of signals which a game can send: Force (pushes the wheel into a special direction), spring (pulls the wheel towards the center) and damper (creates friction). Not every game uses all types of effects and some games even use only one type to create all different feelings. Using your tuning menu in the CSW you can increase or reduce these different effects individually. To change the used and active value press up or down direction at the FunkySwitch of the Fanatec Steering Wheel or turn the FunkySwitch clockwise / counter clockwise.
Note:
If SPR is set to low values or ‘000’ the ClubSport Wheel Base V2 will not be able to move the attached Steering Wheel to correct center position after calibration run

In my view this contradicts your statement that the driver cannot interpret how much damper a game sends to the wheel?

 

[Emery]

If your controller.json is 0% damped and wheel is 100% damped, then you're getting 100% damped.

If your controller.json is 30% damped and wheel is 100% damped, then you're getting 130% damped.

Situation is even more complicated with Fanatec wheels as the For value will scale SPr and dPr.

 

[Msportdan]

this may be the way for rf2, but for every other sim, 0% damper in game (even with 100% damper on wheel) equals no damper at all. But the controller json has default at 10% damper.

So maybe rf2 has built in damper as I said?

emery where do you get this info from... From what your saying to get 30% damper I have to run 15% in game and 15% from the wheel.... seems a bit odd mate?!

 

[Andy_J]

If your controller.json is 0% damped and wheel is 100% damped, then you're getting 100% damped.

If your controller.json is 30% damped and wheel is 100% damped, then you're getting 130% damped.

Situation is even more complicated with Fanatec wheels as the For value will scale SPr and dPr.

H ow do you know this?

 

[Msportdan]

theres no mention of this on the infamous ffb thread on isi site, run by drripper..

 

[Emery]

theres no mention of this on the infamous ffb thread on isi site, run by drripper..

Because the basic instructions assume you're completely turning off the wheel damper & spring.

H ow do you know this?

Because there is no signal for the game to send to the wheel to request a % of damper or spring. The game only sends "turn the wheel with this much force".

 

[Msportdan]

But Drripper and the guy who mentioned in the first place both say, to enable damper effects, you have to have the wheel damper effect on.

CORRECTION: Thanks to Flaux for correcting me on this. Turns out enabling spring/damper in the profiler seems to then allow rf2 to apply it's own spring/damper affects onto the final ffb output. Whilst i still believe it is "artificial" in nature, it may very well be desirable for some specific cars since it can make the ffb feel more realistic due to some inherent problems with how conventional ffb hardware works. However, having said all this, i've not been able to test this for myself so you will need to test for yourself. Please read edit 11 at the bottom of the post for further details.


http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.p...-for-rFactor-2-The-key-to-being-in-the-Zone-D




http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.php/5817-ISI-Can-you-explain-this-ffb-setting-please

 

[Emery]

In my view this contradicts your statement that the driver cannot interpret how much damper a game sends to the wheel?

It might seem that way, but here's an experiment to try with the Fanatec wheel, without running a game:
Set FF=50
Set For=100
Set SPr=100
Set dPr=100

Now try turning the wheel. If the wheel were really getting SPr & dPr from the game, then it should be easy to turn, but it isn't.

 

[Emery]

But Drripper and the guy who mentioned in the first place both say, to enable damper effects, you have to have the wheel damper effect on.

Seems like it should be easy enough to test. With the wheel damper turned off, increase controller.json value to 100% and compare with controller.json value at 0%.

 

[Msportdan]

just tried this on thrustmaster and that doesn't happen On desktop the wheel feels the same with damper at 0 and 100%.

Yep ive tried that in rf2. And its feels as I described above.

http://www.racedepartment.com/threads/using-wheel-damper.116241/#post-2172568

 

[Robin]

It might seem that way, but here's an experiment to try with the Fanatec wheel, without running a game:
Set FF=50
Set For=100
Set SPr=100
Set dPr=100

Now try turning the wheel. If the wheel were really getting SPr & dPr from the game, then it should be easy to turn, but it isn't.

You're right, the wheel is extremely resistant this way.
I've always had trouble with the 'feeling' in rF2 where others where raving about its flawless FFB and just now tested it with the driver setting of Dampening to 0% and it truely transformed the feeling of ISI's Corvette CR.6 GT3. It actually feels like a car connected to the road now and there are all kinds of little nudges I feel in the wheel coming from the road and the steering rack.

I still find it a confusing setting with all the variables (even more so in the Tuning menu of the wheel itself), but for rF2 Dampening 100% is not correct.

So, in iRacing I have the in-game setting of Damper at 0%. Am I correct in stating that for iRacing it doesn't matter if the Fanatec driver Dampening setting is set at 0 or 100%?

What about R3E, does it use a similar system to rF2? And then AC?

Cheers!

 

[Emery]

R3E, GSCE, GTL, GTR, GTR2, Race07, RaceOn, etc all are based on the rF1 technology for FFB, so they're similar. rF2 made some extensions in the controller file due to the new tech.

I don't use iRacing, AC, pCARs, or whatever the new cool rally game is, so can't help there.

For the CSWv2, with BMW rim, I'm pretty happy with the following settings:
FF=80
Sho=100
AbS=OFF
LIn=OFF
dEA=OFF
drI=OFF
For=50
SPr=10
dPr=10

Inside the Controller.JSON, I have Steering torque sensitivity = 1.2 to magnify the midrange forces and make up for the spring & damper losses.

In game, I've set Steering Torque Minimum to 1%. Typically I have to turn car-specific feedback down to 0.5 to avoid software clipping and occasional hardware clipping. [Speaking of software clipping, everybody is using the pedal overlay, right?]

GT cars, formula cars, historics, even the Palatov feel good to me with these settings. The only cars that don't feel quite right are IndyCars and Formula Renault. [And I haven't tested karts since they're outside my interests.] They're not so far off that I can't adapt within a lap or two, so I'm still searching for what's missing. It may just be the default setups are slightly off for my tastes or it could be FFB settings. IndyCars may need more like 0.6 for car-specific feedback due to the scaling ISI used when they made that model. Formula Renault seems to want a completely raw FFB, no spring/damper.

 

[Robin]

@Emery Thanks for those settings, but you left out the big one: at what setting do you have the Dampening slider in de Fanatec driver?

 

[Spinelli]

So confused with damper...

- You got damper percent on your wheel

- Then, for Fanatec wheels, you also have the mysterious secondary damper slider only available in the control panel

- Then you have the damping settings of the individual game Eg., RF2:
"Steering resistance coefficient#":"Coefficient to use for steering resistance. Range: -1.0 to 1.0",
"Steering resistance saturation#":"Saturation value to use for steering resistance. Range: 0 - 1.0",
"Steering resistance type#":"0=use damping, 1=use friction",

- Then, you have to figure out if the game's damper settings need you to enable your wheel's onboard / control panel damper settings or not in order to work.

- Then, If the game does require you to enable your wheel's damper setting, are you supposed to just set it to 100% on your wheel and let the game's damper settings take care of the rest?

- Then, do the game's damper settings change per car? For eg., in RF2, even though the damper settings in the controller.ini don't change, do they effectively still change due to other parts of each cars' physics or do we need to essentially manually set different damper settings in the controller.ini for every car in order to drive each car as realistically as possible?

- Finally, repeat all steps above but this time for spring instead of damper.


Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh


There must be a way for each game dev to buy some of the more used wheels on the market. (Eg. TM T300RS/TX, T500RS, Fana CSW V2, CSR/GT3RS, Logi G27) and calibrate the game's controller/FFB settings to each wheel as at the moment it's a complete disaster and everyone is just doing all sorts of stuff and there is no "standard" or even a "rough" bit of guidance for each wheel/game (and car if the game's physics don't handle this on it's own). Every wheel has different friction and damping (motor, gears, belts, shaft, etc.) so the damping settings of all our sims should be different for each wheel. I just checked RF2 and the damping settings are set to 0.1 for every controller file: Fanatecs, Logitechs, Thrustmasters, etc. So how is a generic setting of "0.1" for every single wheel on the market even remotely correct when every wheel has massively different amounts of damping and friction?

Finally, most people tend to disable spring and damper all-together yet now many of us are discovering that some forces that the game is supposed to be taking care of will apparently actually not work if we disable damper. For 10 or 15 years tons of players thought our control panels' damper/spring were purely from the control panel and therefore interfering with the game's FFB (including the games' damper/spring) but now it seems this can potentially be all wrong?

We need some of the source code programmers of the game engines to come here and explain EXACTLY what is going on and what we should do. Not some guy that's hired to communicate for the company, but the source code programmers of the game itself. That is the only way to figure this stuff out once and for all.

 

[Robin]

Yeah that's very true. More support from the devs would take away lots of the DIY stuff and discussion and confusion.
They program the game so they should be able to make tailored profiles for all the commonly used wheels.
AC, R3E and rF2 all seem to have profiles but they do not seem to alter everything that it should.
And as @Spinelli pointed out; in case of rF2 at least, the various ini files are All the same for the various wheels.
What is the point in having those if they aren't used or configured by the devs?

 

[Msportdan]

I'm personally unsure about this damper combined value lark.. I'm confident my original finding is correct. i DONT think the wheel damper and game damper combine.

 

[Emery]

@Emery Thanks for those settings, but you left out the big one: at what setting do you have the Dampening slider in de Fanatec driver?

Well... I can't find a control panel for the Fanatec wheel on my system. So if there is one, it has default values, LOL.