I tried Bob's road going setups last night and noticed that the dead-zone-like feel is almost entirely gone with those. So it obviously is a largely setup related issue. Although, I wonder if my rL steering wheel would feel the same if I ran an LFS race setup on my Clio.
I've been driving the FXR for a few days now, and when I switched back to the LX4 and XRT I really noticed how "dead" these felt around the center compared to the FXR. So it's definitely setup related, or maybe it's just supposed to be like this with these cars, like BBT said. I think I'll try to play around with the setups a little and see if I can get rid of it though.
IMO sensitivity around the center is very important, becuase this is where you can pick up the first warning signs that you're about to loose your rear or whatever. It's not a big problem, by any means, but I like to strive for perfection.
Thanks for the tip, I'll try them out! Any particular cars you tried?
I mainly tried the XFG (closest to my rL car) and, as opposed to your regular race setup, it's almost impossible to get the back stepping out. So quite like it should be in rL.
I have a big problem with the FF. The overall feel is pretty good, but there seems to be a problem with the front tyres force feedback. I just can't feel them, there is no feedback about the available grip and no force drop off. I tried different profiler settings and changed the ff rate in the .cfg from 256 to 128, but it didn't help either.
My setup:
G25
Profiler settings: center spring off/ 105%
Ingame: force set to 64
@Nordic: Probably becuase you're maxing out your FF with it set that high in game. I typically run max caster, max steering lock (regardless of the car) and about 20% FF in game. I use 540 degrees in both the profiler and LFS, with 0 turn compensation, and 102% FF in the profiler.
The motors in the wheel are only so strong, and with 64% FF, you're probably getting max force within about 20 degrees of travel in either direction. Turn the wheel farther and the output torque stays the same. Hit a bump that would normally cause the wheel to lighten a bit and nothing happens to the output torque because you're already well past the peak threshold.
In short, your FFB output is clipped due to the limitations of the hardware.
That shouldn't stop it getting weaker when you're really overdoing it...
Drop-off is there, but more subtle than in ISI-sims (due to their canned effects), but it definitely is there (or I'm imagining things)... 101% with no center spring in profiler, 60% in LfS here...
ISI's FFB overshoots the drop-off, due to the fact they take only the lateral force and modify it according to % of contact patch slipping. In short, their FFB
is closer to what you get from the self-aligning torque with 0 caster. That thing drops to 0 when you're totally sliding the front tyres, and is reflected in some hands-off stable understeering in all ISI games.
LFS instead takes the real forces through the steering column, and the effect of caster is implied. Positive caster should exert a torque that somewhat drowns out the simple drop-off in self-aligning torque, so
a) the drop-off point, if any, should be delayed
b) ultimately the FFB never goes to 0
In one, the wave is smooth with no clipping, and the dip has a peak to peak amplitude of about 0.3-0.4.
If we then amplify the wave a bit, we see the wave is no longer smooth and clips, as shown by the plateau at the peak. We also see that, although the dip is still there, its amplitude is greatly reduced, down to about 0.2 peak to peak. If we amplify the wave further, the dip goes away completely.
Quoted for possible truth. In LFS, changing front end setup (suspension, steering, tyres) causes large differences how dead or crisp the FFB feels. Silly low tyre pressures makes it feel like soft cookie dough.
Thx! That makes sense, unfortunately it doesn't change a thing. I still can't feel any force drop off .
I don't know if any of you guys tried netkarpro, but the force feedback is pretty awesome and the best thing about netkar.
AFAIK, the only times you should feel a force drop off at the steering wheel are when the front wheels are on ice, locked up, or spinning wildly (in the case of a FWD car). All of these are extreme examples of grip loss that result in a reduction of self-aligning torque, and as I recall, LFS simulates the latter two cases pretty well. Under normal racing conditions, there should not be a force drop off from normal levels of understeer.
FF feels kind of alright in the FWD cars, you can feel whats going on alot more compared to RWD, now that feels sluggish and dull. need to feel that understeer too.. canned or not lol
Feeling a drop off all depends on:
- how well alligning torque is modelled
- how much the weight of the car / downforce acts on the caster
- how you set your wheel up; do actual max game forces correspond with the maximum FF your wheel can take or does it 'clip'?
Pretty soon, some caster will outweigh so much of the alligning torque that the FF wheel won't be 'smooth' and subtle enough to let you feel the difference.
Do we know any fail proof method of finding out what is maximum we can go without clipping?
Also if some user uses centering spring, isn't this actually over riding force effects of LFS or is it just added to top so that it may start to clip earlier?
On the software side it is easy to check; well if you use a 3rd party program (realfeel in rFactor, hopefully soon a hotkey will show it in LFS..)..
The hardware side, you'd need to measure the power draw on the FF motor, which isn't as easy. Surely with 150% force set in the driver, you'd be maxing things out on the hardware side very quickly.
101-110% from windows is quite common setting among community I believe, but setting from LFS might vary then quite a bit, I use 5-11% depending from car, it has faults when going this low, but I believe that this way I will feel bigger variety in forces.
Steering feel is bit like in 1959 Cadillac, not too strong centering effect I must say, but other than that it is good
Mail says they did sent G25, wondering if that will make it to friday here
I didn't want to start a new thread so i posted here in this fairly old one.
I just noticed that Flat spots are noticeable in FFB wheels, its just very faint. In order to notice it, with out turning the effect strength all the way up is to (first get some flat spots) turn the wheel slightly and break at maximum W/O locking the tires. Also if they are bad enough they are noticeable while going straight.
OK to clear things out: I'm NOT starting this-sim-is-better-than-that discussion because it isn't It is now quite old...
Today I tried old netKar 0.9.9 "namie" - and what a surprise, after maybe more then one year of not "playing" it, I was surprised alot - with it's forcefeedback, I loved it back in the old days when it was my favourite sim, and today I see that it's FFB os better then anything around - why I quoted what Nordic said - understeer - I just cannot figure out through FFB when the car is understeering in LFS - i just see that it wants to go straight - and in old netKar - i CAN FEEL IT! And netKar also didn't have FFB generator, it was just like LFS direct! So it isn't Logitech drivers
So, seems to me that in LFS suspenison masks tire forces, maybe devs should incerase them somewhat? - this idea came from RealFeel (rF plugin), which combines tire forces and suspension... Actually does not "combine" them, but to make it simpler...
Also as Niels stated, "too-much" caster could "kill" some of the forces...
EDIT: Did some testing... So - take LX4, decrease Caster to lowest setting - go out on track. You don't feel almost nothing... Kerbs are felt tough. Also locking front wheel can be felt, but other than this almost nothing. I've increased FFB ingame to 200 so I could be able to feel any feedback... So it seems that tires aren't much involved into FFB delivered to our wheel
You don't squeeze tyres with your hands, it is FFB steering wheel that you grab when you like to turn, steering axle is what delivers forces to wheel and those forces are simulated, from those only forces that pulls either left or right are what you can feel, sending anything else to wheel would be nonsense as your wheel is not capable of producing such movements
. 
