It seems that a lot of people have problems getting the setup of their driving wheel correct. It might ease confusion to have LFS automatically detect which wheel is connected (you can do this using product ID in Windows) and adjust the settings accordingly. Or, if detecting the wheel isn't an option, maybe giving a dropdown with multiple wheels to select from? There are only about 5 wheels that are heavily in use today (DFP, Driving Force, Momo, Sidewinder, Saitek). So you could have settings for those 5, plus a few "generic" settings (180* wheel, 360* wheel)

Many people will probably still change the settings to suit them, but this would at least get people up and running quickly with settings that are known to work well for their particular hardware.

Moving the controller settings out of cfg.txt and into their own file might make things easier too. That way people could easily post their settings for others to try out without worrying about screwing up graphics, view, and display settings.

I hate to bump my own thread, but over the long weekend I finally got my brother to try LFS (after sending him a wheel). It was painful to try to talk him through how to setup his wheel and pedals to work correctly in the game. Making sure that the axis were mapped correctly and that they were inverted when required, mapping buttons to necessary things like the pit limiter, left/right view, etc. It would have been so nice to be able to provide him with a controller configuration file or, better yet, have him just select the correct wheel from a drop-down menu. I know LFS is a niche product, but hopefully there is some value in adding this feature.

I think it sounds like a great idea. I personally have no trouble setting up controls, but it would make the sim much more approchable for a sim newbie. Anything that helps a user get started in that all important first impression of the demo is a good thing.

+1

I don't remember ever seeing this first post way back, but dialup does that to me with the "new post" link and how long it takes to load threads. That, and the fact that at work I really shouldn't be reading forums, LOL.

This is an excellent idea though. I've tried to help many new folks on setting up wheels, especially with the "centering spring" stuff and jumping back and forth to the windows driver/profiler. Same with mapping the pedals. It can be frustrating when trying to instruct them with the ingame chat. Especially, when you tell them to change x in the drivers and they close down LFS because you forget to tell them to just shift-F4 to windows. Then they leave you hanging because they forget the server they were in and never return.

Well, if the wheel is set up correctly in the control panel, you dont need to support ALL wheels manually. I guess this should be a damn load of work, specially supporting newer wheels and new driver versions. Scawen would be updating things all day long...
So imo its not needed.

Quote from ORION :

Well, if the wheel is set up correctly in the control panel, you dont need to support ALL wheels manually. I guess this should be a damn load of work, specially supporting newer wheels and new driver versions. Scawen would be updating things all day long...
So imo its not needed.

This is why I suggested having the controller config file separate. That way only one person has to set it up. After that users could easily download the config for their particular wheel and the devs could even include those config files in later patches.

Really, there are only a few popular wheels on the market. Supporting those few would give a starting point for most other wheels. Maybe all of the buttons on Wheel X wouldn't be mapped, but at least the gas and brake would work.

Perhaps a wizard of some sort is needed?

Quote from ORION :

Well, if the wheel is set up correctly in the control panel...

Half the problem with someone new to LFS is setting the wheel up in the control panel. Most who are new to sim racing and/or using a Logitech (or other possibly) just plug the wheel in, Windows recognises it, and they load up LFS. Just allowing them to select the wheel in a dropdown box or telling them to download the config file eliminates alot of messing around. Then all you have to explain is how to disable the "combined pedals" in the windows driver instead of trying to get them to configure everything when you try to help out in-game.

Logitech should change their drivers so that "combined pedals" is defaulted to UNCHECKED instead of the other way around. Most sims nowadays don't use combined pedals.