Depending on who you talk to every single thing that is involved with sim racing is "easy".
My experience on this matter is that there are learning curves to most things that people tend to forget once they are past them. I'm no different. Then everything "was" past tense easy, even if it didn't seem so at the time.
I know the D-Box and NLRv3 are both very well sorted in terms of software configuration and support of various titles.
With regard to DD wheels I've read many contradictory reports detailing all the trials and tribulations of people trying to get their DD wheel to feel right for given titles. Once they are past that, "it was easy".
I've heard similar things about the SFX-100. I've read tales of people fighting with things with some gnashing of teeth and then suddenly, "It's just so easy." This basically means that it works now and if I knew then what I know now it would be a cake walk.
Now in a DD vs NLRv3 contest, I think you can configure the NLRv3 with a few sliders per game and be done. It supports pretty much everything. A DD doesn't support everything and the comments about having to adjust configurations on a car by car basis, seem like a lot of configuration to me, plus the learning curves and things you need to understand about how each system works.
All valid points - of course, and we have to keep in mind that we all have differing ideas about what constitutes good results.
Regarding FFB per car; very rarely have I felt the need to have custom profiles based on a per-car basis. I think that is more common among iRacers or those more intensely focused purely on competitive online racing where they need to squeeze every possible millisecond out of every lap. Having a very consistent sense of optimal-grip / grip-loss can be a very useful tool. Some even say it can feel like "cheating" because of the way it can improve consistency.
For immersive purposes, I think having general-use profiles and allowing each car to have it's unique character come through the FFB works great. In fact, I could use the exact same wheel-side profile for multiple titles with good results were it not for differences in how some games handle auto-rotation / auto steering-lock. Most of my SimuCube profile settings are the same (or very close) for most titles. The primary exception being filtering levels but, once set, they tend to work well across all of the game content.
Of course, it's easier for me to know these things to be true (for me) due to having years of experience using various wheels / dd-wheels. I now have an established sense of how I define good ffb and how to get those results. When I was still using a G27, I hadn't a clue about what was possible, what was / wasn't working right. When I moved to the CSW, things became less muddy; when I moved to DD, the FFB became more clear as did my understanding and preferences in ffb. Over time, I have come to better understand the limitations of both game-ffb and hardware-ffb systems.
Of course, I could be something of an expert (in my own mind
) in terms of my own ffb preferences while still being completely useless in helping others to achieve ffb that suites their own preferences. That's the nature of (personal) feedback systems and the more options we have for tuning, the more complex and challenging the process can be but, I'm glad to have the experience (in total) because ffb is so much less of a mystery than it used to be and it's all a part of the larger Sim Experience that I enjoy so much.
