Quote from Woz :

I am sure Scawen stated how it works although it might take a huge search on RSC to find the post. And as to it being strange to just base the FF on the front wheels, Why?

Simply because the only time the steering wheel really tells you anything is when the fronts have no grip and it goes light. Everything else that you need to know when driving comes from the feeling in your arse. You don't drive according to the feeling in your hands, if you did you'd always react too late.

Basically, the forces acting on a steering wheel in real life are not the most important ones, and therefore it doesn't make sense to use the only tool we have to translate feeling for that purpose.

Anyway, next time I fire up LFS I'm going to play with the settings. It's not bad by any means, but there are some things about it that don't seem quite right.

Quote from durbster :

Simply because the only time the steering wheel really tells you anything is when the fronts have no grip and it goes light.

That's not true, as I stated before:

Quote from bobvanvliet :

I do. And when the back starts going, I can also feel that in the wheel (because the fronts want to keep going straight).

So when that happens, you can feel the fronts wanting to steer outwards.

But you are right that you will always miss the feeling of the car through your backside. That said I don't know if it's the best idea to compensate this with unrealistic FF (as in more than just the force from the simulated front wheels).

Quote from bobvanvliet :

That's not true, as I stated before

OK, I thought you were talking about the effect in LFS, whereas my comment was about the effect in real life. Confusing eh

I'm sorry, but I DO feel the front go a bit light on the limit. I may not have the consistency to do well in every race, but I have the raw speed, so I kinda know what I'm talking about.

The wheel force seems to build up to a peak, then drop off a bit (although the drop off never goes back to zero, there's always some force there). It's a subtle effect, but I'm positive it IS there...

I will second the opinion of BWX232

[QUOTE]For the first poster- "Del-Dredd" -- just try this and see what you think.


Overall 55, spring 145, damper 0... See if you get more feeling "around the center"....
Or maybe even 60/140/0... Also try un-checking the centering box altogether.

Adjust FF in game while driving with < and > keys.. Some cars feel like they need about 100 in game and some feel really strong with as little as 30... so don't be afraid to dial it in with each car until it feels right. I have a driving force, a Momo racing, and a DFP.. DFP is great with LFS BTW, but so is the momo racing, it is just super sensitive compared to a DFP in 540 degree mode. [/QOUTE]

Since the arguement on RSC about the FF in RWD, I've tried these settings with my momo and can now feel the RWD much better. I use to have an occillation at center and couldn't countersteer the rear coming out at all. I would overcorrect everytime, then occillate the opposite way and around I went. BWX's settings cured this for me. I now find myself easily reacting and correcting the tail coming out in the FZR and FZ50. I'm not very good with a loose setup, I tend to hang the tail out quite often and these settings helped me tremendously. Trouble with these settings is that when I switch to FWD, they seem to do the opposite and I have to change the spring back to "0" for them. But I no longer like FWD since I've started using the spring setting for my Momo. I now want to drive RWD. In the S2 demo I had to switch to the GTi from the GT because of the FF. In S2 alpha I really wanted the FZR, but couldn't drive it until I tried the spring setting.

And FWIW, I think people set the FF way too high. I see people setting it at 100%, even saw a post here I think about setting it at 145%. I've never driven a vehicle that the wheel was that difficult to turn as when you have LFS set at 100+%. I use 60% in windows/profiler and about 35% in LFS.

Quote from mrodgers :

And FWIW, I think people set the FF way too high. I see people setting it at 100%, even saw a post here I think about setting it at 145%. I've never driven a vehicle that the wheel was that difficult to turn as when you have LFS set at 100+%. I use 60% in windows/profiler and about 35% in LFS.

I was going to post something similar. I use 100% in windows and 60% in game AND I DON'T CHANGE IT BETWEEN CARS. Why? Because some cars are supposed to have light FFB and others strong, so why make them all feel the same? They are supposed to be different and that's one of the plus points of the FFB in LFS.

I dont think you should be switching your weel settings when changing cars, You should alter your driving to suit the car instead.

The cars are MENT to feel and handle diferently. And you will stunt the development of your driving skills if you refuse to adapt to the car your driving.

I think you should keep the settings the same for all the driving sims you have, it will make it easyer to compare them.

lfs doesn't use the damper effect you can set it to what ever you want, gtr might but I cant remember.

The most important one to have at 0% or off is the 'centring spring strength'
As the weel driver will add a fake force that pulls the weel to centre.

Interesting thread, I think I will toss in my 2 cents....

I've driven only a handful of cars in my life, and I'd like to think I know a thing or two about the dynamics of understeer and oversteer, and possibly how they apply to LFS.

I've found that the amount the wheel loosens up when understeering varies car to car slightly. There's still a definite FEELING to it, almost as though you've just driven over something slippery. The amount of bucking the wheel does is extremely dependent on the road surface, of which LFS's is utterly flat for the sake of argument.

I think everyone will agree that when you're understeering, your front wheels are not rotating at the rate which the road is passing under you... on top of that the road is not moving paralell to the wheel's preferred axis of travel. This means that a small perpendicular force is being applied to the side of the wheel, while at the same time, the usual forces that apply on the axis of travel are reduced (which is what causes that loose feeling).

Depending on the weight of the car, the amount of weight transfer during understeering, and more importantly the inclination on the steering assembly on the actual wheels, more or less of that force is translated to the wheel. An inclination perfectly centered on the wheel, you will feel very little, but an inclination slightly off-centre (normal for sports cars) will translate more of that perpendicular force caused by sliding the fronts to the steering column.

Now that we've lost the ability to adjust the inclination value for the cars, it's hard to test to see if this would give us more or less feel. I've found that in S1 that different inclinations send more or less road forces to the wheel. Driving in the dirt with higher inclination would give me sore arms sending the RB4 through the rally courses.

In real life, I'll equate this to driving my mom's old Pontiac Sunbird vs her Pontiac Grand Am. The Sunbird was a smaller car, but fairly heavy, and had a very tight steering column. Road forces were translated relatively well to the steering column, despite the power steering and everything. When I'd understeer (usually in the rain or snow) the steering column would loosen slightly, but it was still tight enough as the wheels were still trying to follow the road as much as possible. The Grand Am, on the other hand, is a larger heavy car with a little more power, but is much easier ride in terms of the steering column. I've found that understeering this car made a larger difference, possibly due to a different inclination on the steering assembly (possibly something else), where the wheel turns to nothing and it feels like I'm in mid-air (kinda scary the first time it happens).


So it's my humble opinion that the understeer feedback (or lack of force on the wheel, rather) is due to the static inclination set per car.

Personally, in LFS, when I'm sliding under coasting, I can feel the wheels slowly start to regain grip as it slows down, and this is how I can gauge when I can snap the wheel back into place. I've got a DFP running in 900 degree mode, and even then it's quite a quick ramp-up to full grip, so it's possible that on the MOMO's with a much smaller lock, that you're hardly even feeling it. And if you're going straight and you turn to lock instantly at 120mph, you're just going to have a wicked perpendicular force on the sides of the wheels... even at only 30 degrees lock, it's a much higher force than any lack of grip on the preferred axis of travel for the wheel, so don't be surprised if it doesn't go 'light' because the sidewalls are getting the workout of their life and all that perpendicular force is getting sent to the steering column.


That's my best diagnosis

Quote from Gunn :

Del it sounds like your FFB is not working properly, I use a Momo and I can feel everything in the game.

No, he just doesn't know, that the FF from a game like GTR "simulates" all forces that will take effect on the driver. LfS only simulates (like in reality) the forces that can be felt on the steering wheel.

Quote from T.K.Jode :

I think everyone will agree that when you're understeering, your front wheels are not rotating at the rate which the road is passing under you...

If you're talking about RWD cars, then the front wheels aren't powered, and assuming you're not braking, won't the slip ratio of the front wheels be zero? In other words they will be rotating at the rate at which the road is passing under them.

Then you wouldn't be understeering, Bob...

Understeer is when the slip angle (not ratio) of the wheels exceeds the optimum of the front tyres (and the rear tyres have yet to lose traction).

So it is! My bad, I should start to read posts properly before I open my virtual mouth. I keep getting feet in it!

Yeah I mean even if you are in an under-steer situation, the front wheels in a RWD car are still rotating, they are just turning (rotating) while at the same time sliding laterally.

They still will put pressure on the steering wheel, but it seems like since they are sliding laterally compared to the forward motion of the car, that the pressure (torque) they put on the steering column will be less than if they were not sliding laterally.


Also something else to think about in a front drive car is torque steer.. If the LFS physics engine/FF code is actually working exactly right, it seems that torque steer would surface quite a bit in a FWD car while accelerating out a turn.. I do feel something happening that feels like torque steer, but it doesn't seem to be completely accurate.

Torque steer in a FWD car will be different when a car has a LSD compared to car that uses an open diff. - but I wonder how accurate LFS is in that regard?

I thought torque steer was caused by unequal length drive shafts? And that modern cars have greatly reduced this affect (by use of counterweights and stuff I think).

Quote from durbster :

Simply because the only time the steering wheel really tells you anything is when the fronts have no grip and it goes light. Everything else that you need to know when driving comes from the feeling in your arse. You don't drive according to the feeling in your hands, if you did you'd always react too late.

Basically, the forces acting on a steering wheel in real life are not the most important ones, and therefore it doesn't make sense to use the only tool we have to translate feeling for that purpose.

Anyway, next time I fire up LFS I'm going to play with the settings. It's not bad by any means, but there are some things about it that don't seem quite right.

You are 100% wrong on what your hands can tell you because the front wheels can tell you about the state of the rear along with the loading of the front wheels etc

Try this in a RWD car IRL... In a safe place. Induce oversteer and then watch the steering wheel spin as the front wheels try and track the direction the front of the car is going in. Or if you dont feel safe doing this watch an in car vid of someone drifting

Yes the most important feeling while driving come from your body via G force but, and this is a HUGE BUT, it is not possible to translate these G force feeling to a FF device which has a single axis that is not in line with any of the axis you will feel g force in. So the only way to create these is to map those axis to the FF which just results in noise that will mask the subtle feelings the FF is trying to tell you. Trust the FF that is there and just learn to listen to it a little more and not fight it.

Quote from Woz :

Yes the most important feeling while driving come from your body via G force but, and this is a HUGE BUT, it is not possible to translate these G force feeling to a FF device which has a single axis that is not in line with any of the axis you will feel g force in. So the only way to create these is to map those axis to the FF which just results in noise that will mask the subtle feelings the FF is trying to tell you. Trust the FF that is there and just learn to listen to it a little more and not fight it.

Actually I read an article about japanese scienists who invented a headphone wich stimulated the sense of balance eletronically. With this technology you could either simulate acceleration forces or remote controll humans (roughly... just make them think, the worlds flipping to the right, and they will go that way to compensate... for a similar effect, try turning yourself very fast for two minutes ) Anyways, all kinds of games wold could use this: Racing games, flight sims, and heck, even the ride-preview in Rollercoaster Tycoon
Thing is, I can't find the article anymore, but it can't be older than a week.

Quote from ColeusRattus :

Actually I read an article about japanese scienists who invented a headphone wich stimulated the sense of balance eletronically. With this technology you could either simulate acceleration forces or remote controll humans (roughly... just make them think, the worlds flipping to the right, and they will go that way to compensate... for a similar effect, try turning yourself very fast for two minutes ) Anyways, all kinds of games wold could use this: Racing games, flight sims, and heck, even the ride-preview in Rollercoaster Tycoon
Thing is, I can't find the article anymore, but it can't be older than a week.

This would work on the fact that your ear is the centre of your balance information and this is the fact that motion platforms use to trick you into feeling G etc. Without input from other senses or context it is actually impossible for your body to tell the difference between lying down and going through 1G acceleration because they are both the same.

Not sure how the headphones would work though because they would need to effect your inner ear. Also any lag between visuals and the effect of the headphones would make you vomit very quickly.

Quote from Bob Smith :

I thought torque steer was caused by unequal length drive shafts? And that modern cars have greatly reduced this affect (by use of counterweights and stuff I think).

Yup, correct. And modern FWD cars go to greater lengths (no pun intended) to ensure that the affective length of the driveshafts are the same. But balance weights, counterweights are other such 'stuff' is also widely used.

Therefore an LSD mades little or difference to torquesteer on a car. It either suffers from it or it doesn't.

All this talk made me look into things a bit more about adjusting the 'damper' and 'spring' forces as I don't believe it is right to recommend they should be set to zero. I came across this, apparently tom writes the drivers for the logitech wheels.

I'd quote some of the text but can't seem to paste into the reply window.
Essentially what he says is that the defaults (overall force 100%, damper 100% & spring 100%) will give you what is intended by the programmer. I'd like to see what the devs say about this, from memory and what woz said the devs have said that 0% is best for spring and damper. It would be nice if one of them could clarify this for us all.

btw, I also agree with bob that it shouldn't be necessary to adjust ffb for different cars.

Quote from tailing :

btw, I also agree with bob that it shouldn't be necessary to adjust ffb for different cars.

Whether is should be or not is debatable.... whether is actually is necessary or not is another question. Just like the volume of the engines of the cars are on a scale too large.. (some too loud, some too soft compared to all the other sounds, making you constantly adjust it in-game for the sake of "realism")- so is the scale of the difference of the FF between the cars.

If you want good feel "around the center" for some of the lower power - lower grip cars, you need to crank the FF up a lot in game compared to the settings you would use for the GT cars- especially with a DFP.

The FF in LFS is not perfect enough to just leave it the same for all cars.. It has a lot of little bugs that make it necessary to adjust it I think. Oscillation around the center is one reason- if the FF was completely accurate, it would not do that.. that oscillation is caused by lag in the FF or something. That causes you to have to adjust the FF down for the higher grip cars unless you want a lot of oscillation.. If you adjust the FF down enough to avoid that oscillation if the cars with the strongest FF, the cars with weakest FF have no feel to the FF at all around the center.. in a real car, no matter how much grip it has, you still have a lot more feel than that coming through the steering wheel.

Quote from Scawen :

Quote from undoz :

what about spring effect strenght and damper effect strenght , do they have any effect on LFS?

I don't know what they do but they should be set to zero whatever they do. Because LFS will handle the forces by simply sending the steering axis torques straight to your wheel.

Anything the wheel software would add, due to incorrect (non-zero) settings, would simply interfere with those LFS forces and be wrong, because the wheel software does not know what your car is doing.

...

Quote from Scawen :

OK... so... maybe i'm wrong to say that the spring strength should be zero. It seems strange - i can't understand what it can really mean. The thing is, i've always assumed that "Spring Strength" was related to an auto-centering spring.

But then, "enable centering spring" is switched off, so there shouldn't be a centering spring, so what "Spring Strength" means, i don't know.


Anyway here's a simple test to check for "correctness" of your wheel driver settings :

- Start LFS and sit on the track in any car
- Press the "<" key to set the force right down to zero
- Now, your wheel should be loose - no force, stays where you put it


LFS sends no forces when the force is zero, so that's why the wheel should be loose. If it has any centering forces with force set to zero, then that force will be interfering with the FF provided by LFS.

If the wheel is loose when LFS force is set to zero, then that should be ok, anything else will be down to user preference.

...

Quote from drapin :

No, spring strength and auto-centering spring are absolutely not related.

Auto centering ( the bottom slider in Logitech driver adjustment panel ) is a driver specific force, centering the wheel, returning the wheel to its center position from whatever position it is. It is not game/engine dependent, as it is a force imposed by the (Logitech) drivers to whatever game/engine. Being completely unrealistic, no such force exist in a real life car, it should absolutely be turned off.

Spring strenght ( the second from top slider in Logitech driver adjustment panel ) is indeed fully engine dependent. I'm not a programmer to know exactly what kind of forces it handle ( see above post(s) ), but Scawen should know best if there are such forces in LFS. For a fact, it is known for example: the Papyrus engine ( GPL/NR ) does not use/generate spring forces and Spring strenght should be set to 0%. The ISI engine (EA F1 series/GTR ) on the contrary, uses/generate Spring forces and the slider should be carefully adjusted, or better kept at 100% not to disturb any specific in-game FF adjustment.

A side note about Centering spring: it was reported several times during past years that disabling it completely can with some Logitech wheel lead to some oscillations and other negative effect. It was recommended to keep it enabled ( checked ) but adjusted to 0%...somewhat illogical but worth a try, good results were always reported.

Snippnets of a conversation found in this thread.

Just to try and clarify a couple of things, firstly understeer is when the slip angle of the front tyres is greater than the slip angle of the rear tyres. Doesnt matter if its above optimum or not.

Secondly, FF systems work in a number of different ways. You can either send 'effects' to the wheel via directX, ie preset patterns of forces like a wave or ramp, which the wheel software interprets and sends to the wheel, or you can send a 'constant force'.
The way that the effects feel on your wheel will be determined by your 'spring strength' and 'damper strength' in the control panel. For example, directX might send a bounce effect of given magnitude, then your wheel driver software will modify the actual spring force and damping amount based on your control panel settings.

However, if the software isnt sending 'effects' but rather is sending a constant force, then that force will not be modified by the spring and damper settings in the control panel, it just gets sent as is.

Thats why for sims that use constant force variation like GPL and LFS, the spring and damper setting in the control panel are not relevant. As I understand it, ISI sims and most arcade racers do use the spring and damper effects, so they will be effected by those settings.

Quote from colcob :

Thats why for sims that use constant force variation like GPL and LFS, the spring and damper setting in the control panel are not relevant.

They make a difference when adjusting them though- especially the spring force.. The damper to a lesser affect, but the spring really makes a big difference, you can "tune" the FF with it.. when you adjust it in relation to the overall force. It helps with the oscillation and feel around the center a great deal- especially with a DFP using high rotation (same as car in game)...

Although it is a driver level adjustment, I think it tunes the output of the FF affects.. not necessarily giving you a "false" or "canned" affect either. I think in LFS, when adjusting the damper in the Logi. CP, that is introducing a canned affect. That is just the way it feels to me after testing for countless hours, not based on any hard evidence found in the code.

It is indeed a canned effect, a simple constant centering force, where the force is set by your spring strength. This force is added to the forces created by LFS, so it does alter them quite considerably. If you have a LFS generated force to the right, and you are currently steering left (from the wheel center), the centering spring will add to that force and make it stronger. On the contrary, if you steer to the right, the centering spring will counteract the intended force generated by LFS and make it weaker. So overall, depending on your current steering, it will alter the forces of LFS in a completely unrealistic way with a force that doesn't exist in real life.

Any centering forces in RL are generated by the front wheels alone and these forces are already in LFS with varying degrees of strength, depending on your setup.

The damper value shouldn't do anything, as it would only affect "spring" forces which aren't generated by LFS anyways.


Also try what Scawen said in the post quoted above. Set your ingame force to 0% - if your wheel generates any forces now your wheel alters the one generated and inteded by LFS. It's like you added a device to your real car that always tries to center the steering wheel no matter what.