Thanks for the input guys. I'll take another shot at setting up my Momo.

Quote from Gunn :

DFP pedals have two flavours. The first one is what most people have (and they are still being sold), they are identical to the Momo pedals and fail just as often.

The second flavour is a "Revision 2" set that you may get if you send your broken pedals back for a warranty replacement. Apparently some of the revision 2 pedals have been packaged with new retail product but nobody at Logitech could confirm this for me. The revision 2 pedals differ in two ways.
1. They use completely different potentiometers (pots). They are metal pots and much more durable than the orignal tiny plastic ones. This reduces the chances of the pot failing or braking.

2. The pots are mounted differently than the old type. This eliminates the problem where pots pop out of their receptacle and also eliminates the former problem of over-stressing the pots.

The Momo and DFP pedals appear to be interchangable, you can use the pedals on either wheel.

If you enquire about warranty repacement pedals from Logitech they still ship both Revision A, Revision B pedals for the DFP and they still ship the original Momo pedals for the Momo. There is no certainty that you will recieve revision B pedals as a replacement under warranty. You can always ask for these and you might get them, it is worth a try to avoid getting another flawed product (revision A and Momo).

So they know there is a problem but they continue shipping units with the crappy pots? Nice. I just became aware that I have the infamous 90% throttle limit problem, but have not yet taken the pedals apart. I am seriously contemplating simply replacing them with the ECCI pedals. I suspect those work. I just wish they would implement FF on the ECCI wheel, then I would just get the whole package. Momo pedals be damned!


http://ecci6000.com/6000_momo_01.htm

Quote from mrbogeyman :

This ties in with the other thread in this section with F1 drivers who died. Some of the stuff in there is really gruesome and I would rather stuff like that was kept off of these forums, there are kids about and even if you put a warning on them they are still likely to click the links.

I say be more responsible about what you post, we really don't need to see that sort of thing at all.

IMO I think the admins should remove these links as well as that F1 one. I know people die and its a fact of racing, but do we really need to be shown the sick details.

With all due respect, the Internet is a big place and not all of it is pleasant and happy. Parents should supervise their kids if they are too young for such content or lack the appropriate judgment of where to click and where not to. So many of today's kids are perpetually left alone in front of the TV or the computer and do not receive the proper parental guidance. The problem has less to do with forum content and more to do with irresponsible, inattentive parenting. I do agree with posted warnings of graphic or disturbing content but parents simply need to be more involved in such matters until the kids are old enough to make their own appropriate decisions.

[quote=tristancliffe] "When I'm machining stuff I routinely use both imperial and metric systems (though not on the same job, one or the other at a time)"

That gave me a good laugh

Quote from tristancliffe :

Yes, lb is mass, but lbf is pounds force (or the equivilent of lbs in gravity, or lb * g (in ft/sec). The f is often dropped (as it's obvious), so lb-in is a measure of force per unit length.

Imperial isn't bs at all, it's a very valid and useable system of measurement. In many cases it's far more valid for engineering and estimating. Simply saying that metric is the only way, and the best way, is closed minded and foolish.

Both systems work, although imperial is somewhat incompatible with much of the world. I've always found the metric system to be far more elegant and easier to use personally. I was rather unique in that view as a kid here in USA, but perhaps that was the result of being raised by a physicist. Unfortunately, many Americans are still grossly ignorant of the metric system and simply don't want to deal with it at all.

Anyway, as for the engine, it looks like a twist on the rotary/wankel concept, but much more complicated. I don't see how the "chamber walls/pistons/whatever you call them" can withstand such a rapid cycle of compressions and expansions constantly speeding up and slowing down as they revolve at what I presume to be some rather high RPM to deliver the alleged power. Although I suppose the current internal combustion engine seems somewhat chaotic with so many parts continuously changing directions; at least compared to a turbine where everything just smoothly spins. I have a hard time believing this miracle engine can surpass the power to weight ratio and reliability of today’s gas turbines. However, being of a more scientific disposition, I tend to question pretty much everything until it's proven. Still, it's very interesting indeed. I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

Speaking of turbines, is anyone familiar with the old experiment where they put a turbine engine (used through a transmission to drive the wheels) into a car to compete on the oval track? Evidently, it was somewhat slower off the line, but proceeded to dominate the race until a bearing failure prevented it from finishing, or so the story goes at least.

Here are a couple interesting links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Turbine_Car

http://www.indy500.com/photo/l ... &series_id=1&lo=h

Quote from Barroso :

so you got a celeron processor, onboard sound and a pci gfx card, seriously what did you expect? it prolly should give more fps but it is a celeron and this is most likely due to drivers or windows thing than lfs' fault, check updated drivers for mobo, sound, gfx, ide drivers and all of those, and try to put the windows factor apart by formatting or cleaning up the hd.

Without looking at it myself and performing some testing, I would have to agree with Barroso on this one. Do any other high-end games or benchmark utilities exibit dismal framerates on the system? If you have a spare hard drive you could try a fresh OS and not loose your configuration on the current drive, although it sounds like it may not be much of a loss in this case as far as gaming is concerned.

How about a track-side drive-in theater projecting the Playboy channel?

For those who have encountered controller setup problems, such as mine with the Momo Racing wheel, I found some simple instructions. I've not tried them yet, but will when I get home. It's not exactly intuitive, but here's how it goes:

While in the controller setup screen, operate the actual button or lever you wish to map. One of the numbers on the right side of the configuration menu should turn red. Now click on the function to which you want that control mapped, followed by clicking on the number indicated previously. Wait a second or two, and then operate the same control again. That should do it, allegedly.

I will try it tonight. If it's total BS and still doesn't work, I will so advise.

Edit: Ok I tried the alleged solution. I was able to get the paddles up/down mapped to the respective numbers. However, now neither paddle will shift while in the car!. I've tried the clutch button function, as well as changing the clutch function in the "misc" tab in the setup menu. I also tried deleting and re-extracting the sim. I am totally confused by this thing. It's too bad, I would like to see how it drives!

Last edited by rabidmaddog, Thu 25 May 2006, 03:18.

Despite my depression after watching the accidents, it still amazes me how ineffective the fire suppression equipment was/is in many cases. One would think that they could have had something better. Use of CO2 extinguishers just seems idiotic. Once the CO2 dissipates and oxygen is supplied again there is still plenty of heat in the car to once again ignite the remaining fuel. Spraying large volumes of water to cool things down and/or foaming the crap out of everything makes more sense to me, but perhaps they simply can not respond quickly enough.

Quote from P2M-Unixseb :

well, you think Rfactor sucks ?? try Toca Race Driver 3 and you'll see what sucking really means !!!!!

No kidding. Race Driver 3 is even worse than Race Driver 2 in my opinion. As for Rfactor, I was also quite disappointed. The details of my tedious experience are in another post if anyone would like to read them. However, upon informing the Rfactor guys of my dismay and multitude of resulting system lock-ups and blue screens and ultimately requesting a refund, my money was retuned. 25 cents was missing, but I wasn't too concerned about that. Hopefully it will be used to improve Rfactor.

Rfactor is promising, but just isn't there yet in my opinion. "Like driving a boat" is actually a good description, although somewhat exaggerated. It had a very odd feel and goofy steering behavior regardless of pretty much every possible combination of settings. I find LFS to be far more realistic in the area of driving physics. It also continues to run perfectly which is easily appreciated after Rfactor's perpetual instability on my system. Other individuals say it runs fine on their systems. My machine is a typical 1 year-old, high-end, Nvidia based gaming machine which seems to run anything except Rfactor.

Quote from mrodgers :

I use to think this, but then I hit the pitwall at Aston and was like "WOW, this thing has better flight physics than MSFlight Sim!!!"

Except the MSFS flight model physics are totally bogus. For a better pointless comparison between plane and car simulators, try X-Plane. It models air flow over the wings and control surfaces. MSFS does not.

Seriously, there is much to be said for fluid dynamics modeling in a car sim. F1 cars are virtually airplanes being kept on the ground with airfoils. A wee bit off topic, but nonetheless.

The only thing I liked about Rfactor was the glowing brake rotors. My Rfactor nightmare post resides elsewhere on this forum.

Form the looks of it I don’t think the cost is unreasonable, assuming it works well of course. The next step up to the ECCI is a big one into the $1000+ range, and that is currently without force feedback. I am hoping they change that because I simply have to have one of those on my desk! Considering I can easily drop $600 on a video card, $1200 if I go insane with SLI, $300 for the Logitech seems pretty insignificant. My Momo still works great provided I drive barefooted so I can feel the light pedal action more. Its gears are a bit notchy though when the FF is turned up.

Has anyone read anything about the pedal design of the new Logitech? It looks like they may have spings and/or dampeners in a piston configuration under each pedal. Duno.

Hurry up October!

Quote from steve30x :

WOA another bloody freak that thinks that there is a difference between a sim and a game. (IMHO THEYRE the same thing)

I think the distinction should really be "race simulator vs. arcade style racer". It's just a matter of which game places more emphasis on realism and accuracy in the physics in my opinion. They are both games for sure, but they are far from the same.

Forklifts and steamrollers. I wonder which one is slower..I mean faster...illepall

Quote from STROBE :

Ok, been trying out pretty much every possible combination of everything suggested above - various/all devices/RAM attached/unattached. Result is always the same - nothing. No POST at any point. Even with the RAM out and the PSU hooked up to nothing but the mobo (and the Coolermaster front panel thingy which in turn powers the CPU fan) and FDD, it won't post or boot in any way. Things have power and fans spin, etc, but it's not doing anything.

Time to choose - do I replace the mobo or PSU first? :nerd:

I've only skimmed through this thread, so i don't know if it was covered or not. Have you tried reseting the BIOS by removing the battery or using the jumper? If that doesn't clear things up I would suspect the PS as well. You can check it if you have a volt meter and the color code (or pinout) for the conductors and their respective voltages is available. You typically need to bridge the conductors in the bundle which turn the PS on. Then you can measure the various colored pairs and verify their voltages. Typically one or more will just be plain dead if the PS is cooked. If this doens't sound like fun to you, it's much easier to simply swap out the PS, although I don't actually install it in the chasis until I know it's solved the problem. Good luck!

Last edited by rabidmaddog, Wed 10 May 2006, 22:14.

Quote from J.B. :

Like Bob, just exchanging parts now and then.

"Building from scratch" makes it sound a bigger deal than it is, it's not like you are actually building a custom design or something.

You just buy the parts, stick the stuff in the places where they fit and use a screwdriver to fasten everything. I don't think it's a lot more complex a task than connecting all the cables of monitor, mouse, dfp etc. to the back of a prebuilt computer.

Advantages are price and being able to select the parts you want, f. ex. a quiet PSU.

Except locating some of those little power leads for the HDD LED, Power switch, reset, etc. Especially when the MB markings are ambiguous and the locations don't match what is depicted in the manual. That can be a bit of a puzzle sometimes. Otherwise, I completely agree

Has anyone read the Power Glove image from a sexual perspective? LOL

Quote from Platinum pete :

The major let down of Rfactyor in my opinion is that on my system i had to seriosly re-configure my hardware to get it to run properly and responsively. this includes graphics latency settings and appeture settings along with a few others. in my opinion customers shouldnt have to do this.

Precisely. So should I really tweak my BIOS and other settings to possibly make Rfactor happy and likely screw up the flawless performance of 30 of my other games and applications? I don't think so. As I said, I think Rfactor needs more testing and more work. I am not saying it won't work on a different machine. I hope it does work well for others. It simply was a nightmare for me and many others.

Quote from BWX232 :

Well your PC is very unstable by the sound of it. rF is not inherently unstable at all. It must be your PC.. some component that rF finds the weakness in. Maybe it is a BIOS setting that needs adjusting? rF is a very demanding app. -Much more than almost all you listed.

Buffalo NY just beat Canada's butt in hockey..

I suppose that has about as much to do with this conversation as you being Canadian an literate. Of course maybe there are more illiterate people there? I should hope not.


You sound like a true one sided clone with blinders on! Congrats on that.. LOL. How would you know how rF drives if you never got it working correctly?

PS- you can drive more than one sim.. they don't have feelings like girls.

Have you actually read my posts? I was quite interested in Rfactor and gave it very fair opportunity. The steering was goofy no matter what settings I used, at least until it locked-up or crashed my PC. I did actually drive and experiment with it for about 7 hours. The other 3 hours were spent reading forums trying to find solutions. If you read the post again, you will see that I do play other sims. This is how I know it's possible to correctly model counter-steering as in RBR and LFS.

"Very demanding" simply means highly CPU, GPU, and/or RAM intensive. My machine runs fine at 100% load. There are a number of PC stress tests available and my PC was stable when running those as well as all of my other games at very high settings.

I am actually quite objective. I am not attempting to bash Rfactor. I simply wanted to share my experience in that my machine configuration is rather typical for a high end gaming platform, at least one that is a year old. The headaches I experienced with Rfactor were ridiculous.

I'm sorry, but due to the successful stress testing, the plethora of other games I play, my quality hardware, and current, certified drivers, I don't see how system instability could possibly be the problem. If Rfactor was so much more "demanding" than my other sims and games, why does it run at such high frame rates? Regardless, 100% GPU & CPU load still should not induce instability on a stable machine; it would just result in lower frame rates as the demand increased. I can induce that very condition in some games including LFS. In X-plane, I can bring my system to it's knees with ridiculous resolution and detail settings. Frame rates will drop through the floor even with a Geforce 6800, AMD64 3400, and 2GB of Corsair PC3200. Despite the enormous demand of X-Plane, guess what? The Sim keeps running just fine. There are no lock-ups and no errors. That's called stability. It has nothing to do with how demanding a game is. As I said, I tried Rfactor at very low settings. It had no impact on the problems.

Gee, could it be that Rfactor simply has issues with certain hardware do to insufficient software testing? It's certainly happened many times before. You know, those little things called patches?

I will leave it up to the other forum members to determin what you sound like.

Quote from KeMoT :

I have bought rFactor some time ago and have not driven a lap up to now... brand new game umm, license.
It looks weird although, recent mods for it make it look nice

Please let us know if it works. Perhaps there is hope.

Quote from Ball Bearing Turbo :

No it's your PC.

I build my own PCs also (I am Canadian and I can read) and Guiness has the same effect on LFS as your Vodka drink... It's because we build our PCs, not a bug.

Damn, I was afraid of that. Now I need to build a new one which is alcohol compliant. Will beer work in a liquid cooling system?

Quote from Ball Bearing Turbo :

If one IS smoking things, then NFSanything IS fun

I had not thought of that. That might fix Rfactor! I've tried vodka and cranberry juice playing LFS, but for some reason the simulator increases its difficulty level as I drink. Must be a software bug.

Quote from hammer it :

Thank you for your assesment.
I had thought about trying RFactor and no longer do.

They do have a demo which I tried. It was seemingly stable for the 45 minutes I played it. The car did exhibit the counter-steering problem, but I thought it might simply be that individual car. It would seem that is not the case however. In my opinion, LFS is the way to go.

Quote from BWX232 :

Maybe your PC just sucks? Did you build it?

That's possible. However, it runs about 30 other games, including LFS, RBR, Battlefield 2, Doom 3, and X-plane at very high resolutions and detail settings. It also runs all of my music composition software and a boat load of virtual instruments which are very CPU and RAM intensive. If anything will detect system instability, it's digital audio workstation software. The PC also runs AutoCAD which is what I work with for a living. It's been running fine for over a year. There are neither IRQ conflicts nor any IRQ sharing. It's the most reliable and stable platform I've ever used. Yes, I did build it. I never buy pre-built machines because they always have exhibited more problems, are never configured exactly how I would like, and are considerably more expensive. I've been building them for 12 years. There really isn't much to it these days; especially if you're Canadian and you can read. Rfactor induced the only blue screens of death I've ever seen on the PC. No, I don't think the PC sucks. It is rock solid; hence my assessment of Rfactor's instability. If I were the least bit suspicious of my PC, I would not find fault with Rfactor and would discuss the issues in a PC forum. Everything works flawlessly except Rfactor.

Last edited by rabidmaddog, Tue 9 May 2006, 00:01.