I'm a recent owner of Clubsport v3 pedals (previously using of the (in-)famous Thrustmaster T3PA). There're not top-notch pro-pedals (compared to heusinkveld @1300€ ...) but for the price , it's a very good product at a very reasonnable price for that quality (in terms of materials, finishing, mechanical design). I'm very satisfied of the quality/price ratio. But for the rumble motor, it's another thing :
1. No connectors to remove them temporarily when you "work" on your pedal set (changing plates, extender, etc) or to change them, after a failure or for customization using 3rd party rumble motors.
2. The motors have no carter or casing around the asymetric weight to protect the motor axe which seems fragile.
3. The fixation system is badly done, mainly if you have the hydraulic damper, or if you wanna add the pedal extenders. Screws are quite one against each others.
4. The rumble motors are maintained with a bracket, with some mechanical play. To avoid motor's movement against the bracket, and to attenuate vibrations (I'm not sure it's a good idea for a rumble motor), they used a rubber band. This rubber band is compressed and deformed and if you have to remove and put back the motor (when you have the damper kit, it's mandatory because you have to use a different bracket), the mechanical play is not entirely eliminated and the motor move against the bracket, which produce a big vibration noise and amplify pedal vibration.
5. Effect intensity and reactivity problems.
- The motors are also mechanical parts : on every motor, there's a mechanical inertia when the motor starts, so it induce a delay between the start signal received by the motor (to run) and the effect felt on your foot. Meaning that shorts signals will be ignored : the motor receive the command to stop before it effectively starts. So the motor must have a very fast starting and inertia response, or, more simple and effetive, have to run permanently at low speed all time (= no felt effect) and just accelerate when effect is required, to avoid the motor start time. But I don't think if this motor is designed to run permanently like this (if not, it can die quickly).
- The motor starts at around 20% of effect (meaning applying 10% is impossible) and in any case, you can't felt any vibrations below 40% intensity. Moreover the intensity of the "force effect" is defined by the motor RPM, and the vibration intensity is not linearly related to RPM : at @80% of intensity (= 80% of the max RPM), the vibration intensity (felt) IS NOT the double the one you felt at 40% intensity. So the rumble motor effect intensity should be the vibration intensity and not the RPM (with a correctly measured transfert function). In the actual configuration, managing the real effect intensity is difficult (and mostly in the area of 70-100% of RPM where you effectively felt the vibration effect). Which is not the case. Not smart.
6. Fanatec doesn't provide any software to manage rumble motors inputs. Only a "test" button in the driver panel, and, obviously, in the SDK (programmation interface), to allow developpers to programmatically control of the motor. But old games doesn't manage rumble motors, and new one have a very limited and not very well done support (like Dirl Rally 2.0 : no options in FFB options, only by manually editing an XML config file which simply allow to activate or deactivate the rumble motors, and the effect is not well applied in the game ...). Moreover, only Fanatec use this feature and I'm not sure that games developpers use a proper implementation for one pedalset brand and model.
So Fanatec should offer, in addition of the SDK, a utility to manage their pedals effects. This utility mut have accesss to in game car parameters and, using those data, to pilot to effect intensity. From a practical point of view, you can't use a separate soft to "patch" your game. But all good sim racing games have telemetry options and you can capture the state of various elements of the cars (and other stuffs) to manage the rumble motor effects. So for that last point, and, in the end, to answer your original question, you must use a third party software.
And in fact there's an excellent one : SimHub. SimHub allow to get all telemetry data for major sim games and use them for different purpose :
- Provide access to all telemetry parameters, in native/raw mode, or mapped in SimHub "standard" variables. This last "mapping" allow to use the sames dashboards for multiple games without changing anything in the dashboard.
- Provide dashboards to display on a second screen : another screen but, mainly, your mobile device (phone or tablet). The software provides the dashboards to another screen using a web server and interfaces. You can use from your mobile, tablet or another computer, directly with the browser of the device (any device, any OS, everything that support a modern browser). There's also an android application (and maybe an iOS one) instead of using a regular browser.
- Provide overlay panels for your main game screen, to add extra informations.
- Provide a very well done dashboard/overlay editor to create new ones or customize exist.ing ones. You have access to et display them as you want (linear or circular gauges, text value, text color, etc.).
- Provide to pilot Arduino hardware for display (led segment, USB panels and so on) or rumble motor or other stuff.
- Provide a management for Bass shaker systems (using amplifier and sub-bass shaker for effects). The bass shaker system use the telemetry parameters to control intensity.
- Provide a management for "shaker" system, aka rumble motors. Inluded : management for seat shaker system and Fanatec pedal. But allow to manage any rumble motors, for each games. Parameter are pre-positionned (car speed, RPM, gears, tyres sliding on throttle or brake, corners, etc) and can be used to manage effect intensity, using curves and parameters, then all the individual effects can be affected for each motor using a mixer.
- And some other stuffs.
This is a free application but there's a licence if you want to support the developper or use multiple arduino outputs. However, it's not a commercial soft, well done but when you really wanna use it, you have to pay the licence. Here you can use 95% of the software without limitation. And for a one developper software, it's very well done with a stunning user interface. Moreover, it's also technically very well done (I'm software expert). The man really deserve some donation, it's an amazing job. And you can download it from Race departement !
Yes, I know, I can use a more direct answer to your question, but I thing that many people must say to Fanatec that having rumble motors is great but they didn't made a great job. In brief, the quality they claimed is not here (and we are far from here) when it comes to rumble motors. It's not a more than 1000€ + pedal set but, here, it's just about design, not costs. And they also can pay the great simhub developper to provide a utility !
