Direct drive brake pedal?

pullmehome · Aug 12, 2022

I've been wondering ever since I got my direct drive wheel if the next logical step to take is making a brake pedal that has forces controlled by a dd motor as well. It would give the possibility to simulate all kinds of pedal situations without needing to adjust mechanical parts of the pedals. I am not smart enough to know what it would take but since the wheels work so well I can't see why it wouldn't work. Maybe someone with more knowledge could chime in.

BrightCandle · Aug 12, 2022

The first step of this with haptics and simhub already exists and it can definitely enhance the information available through the brake pedal. However there is no doubt we could go a lot further if we had a pedal that was providing countering force via a motor, we could provide the detail of ABS through the pedals but also simulate whatever type of pedal we wanted from very soft to extremely hard purely from software. Initially it would just be easy to configure but you could absolutely see games setting up a profile for the pedal to simulate the car and providing a far more detailed and realistic feel for the pedal. Arguably a clutch could benefit too and it might be a better way to simulate it than a fixed bite point based on a mechanical design.

There are a couple of challenges to building one though, our feet are pretty strong and its going to be a challenge to get the force into the right direction to counter the amount of power we produce with out feet while also producing fidelity and its will be initially be only the shipped software supported and maybe from simhub for effects.

I like the idea if it can be made to work it could produce pedals with a lot more interesting differences for different cars.