F1 2016 Head movement in cockpit view (Look to Apex)

[ivo63]

hello to all I always use the visual interior and would be better if the driver's head followed the right and left movement of the steering wheel. Is there any way to do this?

Bye

 

[Graham Laing]

Used to do this up to F1 2013 (Maybe 2014 too), it was my 'Look to Apex' function

All I had to find is how much I wanted to my head to turn (which wasn't much), by tweaking the saturation number in the lines detailed below.

I have not tested this in F1 2016, I used it in the games where each controller had it's own actionmap.xml file, but now all controllers are combined into one file. It should still work though.

In a good text editor like Notepad++

1. Open the action_map_preset_win.xml file in the F1 2016/actionmaps folder
2. Search the file for your controller, in my case I searched for G27, this took me to the 1st line of the G27 section
3. You are looking for the 4 sub-sections below that for the steer left axis, steer right axis, look left and look right
4. You edit the look left and look right mapping entries, pasting in the axis values for steer left, and steer right
5. You change the saturation value to suit the amount of look left/right you want you head to turn

So this is the G27's steering mapping :-

<Action actionName="Steer Left">
        <Axis axisName="di_x_axis" type="biDirectionalLower" deadZone="0.0" saturation="1.0" />
    </Action>
    <Action actionName="Steer Right">
        <Axis axisName="di_x_axis" type="biDirectionalUpper" deadZone="0.0" saturation="1.0" />
    </Action>

This is the Look Left and Look Right mapping :-

<Action actionName="Look Right">
        <Axis axisName="di_button_21" type="uniDirectionalPositive" deadZone="0.0" saturation="1.0" />
    </Action>
    <Action actionName="Look Left">
        <Axis axisName="di_button_22" type="uniDirectionalPositive" deadZone="0.0" saturation="1.0" />

You copy the 2 steering axis mappings :-

di_x_axis" type="biDirectionalLower
di_x_axis" type="biDirectionalUpper

Pasting them in and replacing the current values for Look Left and Look Right.

So the new section for the Look Left and Look Right would look like this :-

<Action actionName="Look Right">
        <Axis axisName="di_x_axis" type="biDirectionalUpper" deadZone="0.0" saturation="1.0" />
    </Action>
    <Action actionName="Look Left">
        <Axis axisName="di_x_axis" type="biDirectionalLower" deadZone="0.0" saturation="1.0" />

You must now change the the saturation values and test it. At their default you will swing your head very quickly all the way left or right, and no doubt crash the car

Whether to edit them to a higher value or lower value I am not sure, it used to be to a lower value ages ago. So saturation may be changed from saturation="1.0" to saturation="0.2" for example.

EDIT: Actually for saturation - see @Daveo 's post below - Follow This LInk

Finally you may have to disconnect your wheel and start the game via the keyboard (enter key). Then close the game, connect the wheel, reboot the game, and use the wheel buttons to go through the boot screens.

Certainly up to F1 2013, the controller's actionmap.xml file was only read once, and the mappings stored in your game save profile file. So if you edited the file, the mappings didn't happen because the game never read that file again.

By starting the game with keyboard (no wheel connected), the keyboard became the default controller. So the next time you started the game with the wheel connected, the game saw the new controller, and read that actionmap.xml file to get the mappings and set the wheel as the default.

 

[ivo63]

Wowww I hope for me no too complicated I will try many many thank my friend

 

[ivo63]

hi I use the x-box 360 controller I'no able to find it....

 

[Graham Laing]

hi I use the x-box 360 controller I'no able to find it....

It is probably one of these 2 controllers :-

xi_Preset1 - starting at line number 7795 of the same file

xi_Preset2 - starting at line number 8010 of the same file

This is why I like good text editors like the one I linked above in my first post .......... line numbers

Try editing one or the other preset or just do both at the same time. Keep a backup of your file. Just copy and paste the file straight back down into the folder before editing. So you'll end up with the original one you are going to edit, and one called "Copy of ...... blah, blah, blah"

 

[Sascha Guenther]

Hi, I have the T300RS and cannot find "look left" and "look right" under the T300 section...can I simply copy and paste the lines from the G27?

 

[Graham Laing]

Hi, I have the T300RS and cannot find "look left" and "look right" under the T300 section...can I simply copy and paste the lines from the G27?

Oh yeah I see that. Strange that it doesn't have one.

It's worth a try, I would guess that it would work, but there is no guarantee

In your case the mappings start from line 413 - thrustmaster_t300_rs

 

[ivo63]

ok thank for your help

 

[Sascha Guenther]

For the T300, it does not work. Just tried it.

 

[Graham Laing]

For the T300, it does not work. Just tried it.

So if you wanted to, how do you look left and right when using this wheel?

Perhaps it's a keyboard command? If so perhaps the keyboard entry can be remapped ........

 

[Daveo]

It works just fine on Fanatec Porsche 911 GT3 RS V2
I had to change Saturation to 5.0 (1.0 is 1:1 to the wheel so it was way to much, going to .02 was even worse)
Play around with the Saturation to your liking the higher the number is less movement.

<Action actionName="Look Left">
<Axis axisName="di_x_axis" type="biDirectionalLower" deadZone="0.0" saturation="5.0" />
</Action>
<Action actionName="Look Right">
<Axis axisName="di_x_axis" type="biDirectionalUpper" deadZone="0.0" saturation="5.0" />

 

[Graham Laing]

It works just fine on Fanatec Porsche 911 GT3 RS V2
I had to change Saturation to 5.0 (1.0 is 1:1 to the wheel so it was way to much, going to .02 was even worse)
Play around with the Saturation to your liking the higher the number is less movement.

<Action actionName="Look Left">
<Axis axisName="di_x_axis" type="biDirectionalLower" deadZone="0.0" saturation="5.0" />
</Action>
<Action actionName="Look Right">
<Axis axisName="di_x_axis" type="biDirectionalUpper" deadZone="0.0" saturation="5.0" />

Excellent, I've edited my post to point at your post regarding the saturation.

 

[Booth.the.doberman]

I like this. I think the extra head movement adds a lot and I almost thing it would help in cornering. I'll have to run with it some more. I have a G27 and 5.0 is a really good number.

 

[Graham Laing]

Yeah, to me 'look to apex' is more natural, and how you would drive any car.

You always tend to look where you going to, not straight ahead. So you look towards the apex and then to the corner exit.

You also have to keep aware of where the opposite side of your car is in your periphery. So in a right hand-corner don't lose sight of the left side of the car and the track limits. Some people may find it a little strange at first, but they'll get used to it, it suits me

 

[Daveo]

Glad you like it. Does take a few laps to get used to it though

 

[JoelGL]

Yeah, to me 'look to apex' is more natural, and how you would drive any car.

You always tend to look where you going to, not straight ahead. So you look towards the apex and then to the corner exit.

You also have to keep aware of where the opposite side of your car is in your periphery. So in a right hand-corner don't lose sight of the left side of the car and the track limits. Some people may find it a little strange at first, but they'll get used to it, it suits me

Just a clarification. Using a G27 wheel and pedals (but with a Bodnar cable, so it's recognized as G25 pedals), hence my settings are set as G27-custom in-game. Tried the procedure, unplugged wheel/pedals, started F1 w/ keyboard, exited, plugged in wheel/pedals, then restarted the game using the wheel. In settings, when I select G27, it already recognizes G27-'custom', so it's like it didn't re-read default action-map values? Tried it but didn't notice any look to apex view.

 

[Booth.the.doberman]

I think this whole thing with the action_map xml file and customized setup is somewhat screwy. When the game first starts, it appears to read the xml file and gives you the stock layout for the wheel. If you then go into the wheel setups and make changes, those don't get written back to the xml; they are saved somewhere special. I know the bodnar pedals are another variable, but it would be interesting if you did this: Go back into the customization screen and set both the Input Device and the Control Scheme to Logitech G27. Exit the game and restart it. See if the ApexLookee works (it works in the garage, so you don't even need to go on track). At this point the game should be reading ONLY the values in the xml file. If it works, then go back into the customization window again and make your other changes. Restart the game and see if everything still works. Do this all without the cable swapping. I could be FOS on this one, but this has been the nature of things as I have tried to do stuff with both the xml and the customized setups. I've decided to do all my customization within the xml. It seems to give a little more flexibiliity as is evidenced by this addon. Using the xml, you could do such crazy things as tie the DRS to upshifting (don't do this because each shift would alternate between DRS open and DRS closed).

 

[Graham Laing]

All through this series the game stores many of it's custom values in the your encrypted game save, never to the controller's actionmap xml file.

The game save at least through the first 4 years (2010-13) has been flaky to say the least. So the frustrations of getting a corrupted game save was bad enough, but then you had to remap your controller as well. This is part of the reason why direct editing of the xml file is/was a good thing. You may have lost your game save, but at least you kept your mappings.

When it comes to real customised setups with multiple controllers, then I don't know anything about how this game handles the situation. It may have been @JoelGL that not only do you start with the keyboard, you actually select it in the options and save the game then close it. Then reboot with a connected wheel/pedals, and reselect it.

It's all trial and error.

To this day, with every iteration of this game, I automatically backup my game save every night using Gamesave Manager. So if corruption occurs my career is not blown. It maybe more reliable now, but I will never trust this series to keep the game save 100% uncorrupted.