Hi,

I want to make a suggestion, that i think it is very important. When drive a real car, and turn wheel the feel is more hard, but if turn too much, the feel is very soft.

In LFS, the strong of wheel in a turn, is EVER the same. It is a problem for me becouse i don't feel when i'm in understeering

Sorry my bad english

I've never experienced the wheel suddenly going light IRL in the way it does in some games. It seems that those with physics based FF (LFS, RBR, RealFeel) don't produce this effect either

Steering becomes lighter when I drove on ice using RWD. Don't know how it feels when using FWD, because I have never owned one...

LFS only seems to use the constant force effect to apply forces, which does not (properly) allow adjusting the "stiffness" of the wheel... Its not that bad with the G25 since it is rather light to turn by default and the constant forces make it harder to turn if you're fighting against the constant steering column force. In contrast RBR felt really good with the Momo Racing, it seemed to properly take use of the capabilities of the FF effects.

To me, the FF feels almost completely different between the XRT and FXO, or XRR and UFR/XFR. It does get lighter, but only if there's reduced grip at the front from spinning or locking.

Also, I think a lot of people have their FF set rather strong such that it doesn't take very much travel to reach the peak output of the FF motor. This effectively clips off any additional forces you may otherwise feel.

Yes in real life, especially in the wet, if the front wheels loose grip they suddenly become very light, until you turn the wheel back straight and it becomes heavy again, its more or less the opposite of the current FFB effect you get when you get oversteer, in which case the steering becomes heavy again if you apply opposite lock.

Quote from 5haz :

Yes in real life, especially in the wet, if the front wheels loose grip they suddenly become very light, until you turn the wheel back straight and it becomes heavy again

ive spent a lot of time understeering in the wet and ive never felt any of that... probably because tyres dont lose grip and the self aligning torque is very small compared to the mechanic trail

Quote from Shotglass :

ive spent a lot of time understeering in the wet and ive never felt any of that... probably because tyres dont lose grip and the self aligning torque is very small compared to the mechanic trail

I think its more when the front tyres are aquaplaning in the wet, because the wheels are no longer in full contact witn the road there is very little force being applied to the front wheels, and so the steering becomes light, still this may be worth while implementing if wet weather is implemented into s3.

When I first saw this subject discussed at the age of 18 (didn't even have S2 back then), I took my smelling and unserviced fwd Ford Escort with too wide tyres (on chrome wheels!) to a local roundabout at a rainy night and was surprised that there really was no sudden drop in steering resistance until I had rediculous amounts of steering in and rediculous amounts of gas archieving almost zero grip. (something you won't encounter in racing situations, even in the tightest aston hairpins.)

The only case where i feel almost no ressistance from the wheel (not a servo wheel) is when i try to steer in the snow or the ice...

I've tried researching this on the road, and came to the conclusion that on a really slippery, greasy roundabout I can just about detect a drop off in wheel torque at extreme understeer, but it's not something you'd probably notice without looking for it, and it appears to only occur (on road tyres) at very high slip angles.

I also experienced it ONCE in a race environment - actually at a sprint meeting in 2006 at Lydden. It was a damp, greasy day, and the track is partly used as a rallycross sort of thing, so the tarmac is generally filthy. On ONE of my laps (I did about 8 that day, which sounds rubbish now because I do more than that in one session) at the hairpin when I got understeer [due to low tyre pressures, inexperience, trying too hard and the cold/greasy track, whilst on rain tyres] the steering went really light for a bit, but the natural reaction is to sort it out and reduce steering input until the understeer goes away.

It has never occured whilst on slick tyres, even when understeering in the 'dirty air' following another car, but that might be because I haven't put myself in such a ridiculous position for it to happen, simply by not being brain dead.

In short - I don't think it's worth bothering with, and nKP overdoes it. Not sure about rFactor because it's terrible anyway. It only applies to treaded tyres as far as I can tell. And I can tell if I'm understeering in LFS anyway.

I did some tests on a roundabout after it had rained. Road just damp, no standing water.

All I noticed as I stepped into understeer was that the build up of presure you notice as you wind in lock leveled off, no drop. This was with the car balanced on the gas to keep speed level and then me winding in lock beyond the point where understeer occured and back a few times to examine the feeling. Only finger tips used to hold the wheel to give better sense of feeling.

Quote from Napalm Candy :

Hi,

I want to make a suggestion, that i think it is very important. When drive a real car, and turn wheel the feel is more hard, but if turn too much, the feel is very soft.

In LFS, the strong of wheel in a turn, is EVER the same. It is a problem for me becouse i don't feel when i'm in understeering

Sorry my bad english

i have the same feeling, same as in GTR2.

But it can be corrected with FF settings though i've forgotten them now

Quote from adambrouillard :

Aligning torque caused my pneumatic trail is a very real effect and I am amazed how so many people don't understand it exists. As the tire approaches it's peak slip angle the force rises and then drops and will eventually reverse itself. This force is added to mechanical trail created by caster and kingpin angle scub radius. Some street cars have so much mechanical trail that will make it very hard to feel the pneumatic trail. Power steering also deadens the feel. That is what people are talking about when they say cars have great steering feel, that you can feel the aligning torque. Most racecars run minimal caster and don't have power steering so you can feel this effect.

Just google pneumatic trail if you need more info.

As with most things LFS related it comes down to exploit setups hiding most stuff then. So many setups are far from RL setups because the the huge flexibility in the setup options.

That said, my old 1970's mini gave great feeling about the state of the car and still didnt show much feel to understeer apart from just feeling the presure build as lock is wound in and then the level off of the forces as you get into understeer. No power steer to hide anything in that car

There is also the issue that many who claim the feel is wrong always cite ISI sims which have an overblown turn off the FF in understeer no matter the setup.

Many have call for limitiations on setup option in LFS for a long time. I hope they come soon and force the community into using realistic options instead of the faster exploits that would be a nightmare IRL.

I personally can easily detect understeer through LFS’s feedback…
The wheel does become a bit lighter and for sure less informative while using excessive steering lock.
The only reason you will experience extreme feedback drop in a road car, is the condition of a road with low and uneven traction, and the ability of a normal road going car to steer more than 36degs, going far away of the optimal slip angle.
Don’t forget that still the tracks have constant grip and there is no rain or anything else that could affect grip levels and the effective slip angle of the tire so drastically.

It is really possible though that LFS’s slip angles are a too wide… already the tire load sensitivity is not working properly so maybe the whole model needs improvement.

Anyway LFS’s feedback works brilliant, even though it is limited by some inaccuracies that it is logical to exist (for now) in any racing simulator.

It’s just that some other developers try to exaggerate some effects to give the immersion of a real effect but it feels fake.
Unless you get used to that “turn off feedback while being in understeering mode” that most ISI sims produce and then anything else feels wrong…

Quote from adambrouillard :

Aligning torque caused my pneumatic trail is a very real effect and I am amazed how so many people don't understand it exists. As the tire approaches it's peak slip angle the force rises and then drops and will eventually reverse itself. This force is added to mechanical trail created by caster and kingpin angle scub radius. Some street cars have so much mechanical trail that will make it very hard to feel the pneumatic trail. Power steering also deadens the feel. That is what people are talking about when they say cars have great steering feel, that you can feel the aligning torque. Most racecars run minimal caster and don't have power steering so you can feel this effect.

Just google pneumatic trail if you need more info.

at least in my case, this wasn't what was happening, it was some bad default settings with the FF wheel (DFP) or the setting in the profiler didn't match LFS or GTR2.
once they were fixed it felt alot, lot better

http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=539452#post539452

http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=539489#post539489

I wouldn't say the steering becomes light IRL, maybe in some circumstances...but the better definition IMO is "dead", it seems as if the feeling of Castor, wheel angle and tire friction go away and the steering wheel seems to go "neutral" when a fair bit of under steer is met. I'm guessing thats because you've overstepped the front tires grip and they are just pushing across the track instead of relaying force through the car, its suspension and the steering system as well.

I'm guessing sim's relay this feeling as the steering going "light" because they don't accurately relay centering forces, which would force the wheel back to center, thus killing the feeling of under steer. So the only way to do it is to make the steering very light, as the feeling of "dead" steering (@ a given steering angle, not straight) isn't the easiest thing to simulate with FFB.

I think maybe this effect is very much dependant on the car/tyres in use. All I can say is that my personal experience is that I've definitely felt a change in steering feel if i push a FWD car too hard in a tight roundabout. The steering definitely looses some feel. Granted it's not a drastic effect but it is definitely one that I've noticed. In fact it is the way I could tell that the car was understeering. It's never happened to me whilst just driving, but then I never push that hard when driving about, even when having a bit of fun. It's only ever occurred on one particular roundabout, (about 10m radius), which is often very quiet and where I pushed the front just for a laugh on occasion. I've never tried it in my present car, (I think it would take too much speed to be prudent before it started to understeer), but my last car was a 1.4 Clio with 165 tyres and it was very easy to get the car to start understeering, and every time it did I could feel the feedback from the steering change.

A FWD under hard power is different from a RWD, though. There are forward/rearward forces involved there that aren't present in the RWD case.

As someone else mentioned, power steering changes the whole game. You can make a power steering system give whatever kind of torque response on the steering wheel you want these days.

From my own (limited but carefuly observed) experience, when you turn more and more, the wheel resists strongly, and the resistance increase as you turn until you reach the grip limit. You have to push stronger and stronger to turn the wheel. There is a direct relation between the wheel angle and the force you have to apply. It helps our body to have a very precise control of the wheel.

Then, when you overcome the grip limit, the wheel resistance does not drop suddenly, the most important thing is that it ceases to increase with angle. Because of that, the wheel feels lighter to turn, but it is not. It feels loose because there is no more relation between the wheel angle and the force you have to apply as before...

I think from the FFB point of view, when you overcome the grip limit it is very similar to what you feel when you push a heavy object on a concrete floor:
http://www.lightandmatter.com/ ... 5/figs/friction-graph.png

Resistance does not drop suddenly, but become "flat" as the object starts sliding.

Quote from Juls :

I think from the FFB point of view, when you overcome the grip limit it is very similar to what you feel when you push a heavy object on a concrete floor:
http://www.lightandmatter.com/ ... 5/figs/friction-graph.png

Resistance does not drop suddenly, but become "flat" as the object starts sliding.

You may well be right about the lack of increasing torque feedback on the steering being perceived as a drop in resistance by the driver, but unfortunately you've picked a bad analogy. As that graph, (of the standard friction model), clearly shows, kinetic friction is of a lower level than the peak static friction reached just before an object starts to slide.

It's described here: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/frict2.html#plo

Quote from Juls :

From my own (limited but carefuly observed) experience, when you turn more and more, the wheel resists strongly, and the resistance increase as you turn until you reach the grip limit. You have to push stronger and stronger to turn the wheel. There is a direct relation between the wheel angle and the force you have to apply. It helps our body to have a very precise control of the wheel.

Then, when you overcome the grip limit, the wheel resistance does not drop suddenly, the most important thing is that it ceases to increase with angle. Because of that, the wheel feels lighter to turn, but it is not. It feels loose because there is no more relation between the wheel angle and the force you have to apply as before...

I explained how this works in quite some detail here:

http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=539489#post539489

Quote :

I think from the FFB point of view, when you overcome the grip limit it is very similar to what you feel when you push a heavy object on a concrete floor:
http://www.lightandmatter.com/ ... 5/figs/friction-graph.png

Throw away that graph. It has no bearing on tires. The dynamic friction of tire rubber is higher when it's sliding at some velocity than when it's not

Quote :

Resistance does not drop suddenly, but become "flat" as the object starts sliding.

Almost. It does tend to flatten out which may give an impression that it drops just because it stops increasing, but there is some measurable drop in steering torque as the aligning torque drops. It's just not vanishing completely because there is mechanical trail in addition to pneumatic trail per my post.

Quote from jtw62074 :

I explained how this works in quite some detail here:

http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=539489#post539489

Great expaination, I read it before. I just wanted to make a very very simplified explaination. With mechanical trail, pneumatic trail, and even tyre torsion... finally, steering wheel force feedback remains quite similar to a stiction/friction.

The FFB drop above grip limit is certainly not 90% or 100% like in ISI engine. As I read some time before here, nothing magical happens when the tyre starts sliding, changing rubber into wet soap. Rubber is still resisting as much as it can and trails do not vanish...

The self-aligning torque curve one can find everywhere is misleading, because many people took it for the overall steering wheel FFB.

Quote from Napalm Candy :

Hi,

I want to make a suggestion, that i think it is very important. When drive a real car, and turn wheel the feel is more hard, but if turn too much, the feel is very soft.

In LFS, the strong of wheel in a turn, is EVER the same. It is a problem for me becouse i don't feel when i'm in understeering

Sorry my bad english

I noticed this effect irl when understeering with my previous car which had good standard road tyres, My current car also this effect but less severe, but this car is equipped with very high performance road tyres. The downside is slightly less ride-comfort.

So i think the difference is the tyres, from personal experience, high performance tyres are better on the limit and thus steering does not get suddenly a light feeling with slight understeer, but just a small drop off which tells you, you are getting very near to the limit. On standard tyres it is more likely to happen that the steering gets very light when understeering. Its all about the tyres..