iRacing FFB

Meh. Love the tracks, love the structure, hate the way the cars feel. Oh well, enough off topic probably.

Yea, the online racing is second to none and its not even a close race there. I like it for that reason more than any other. Some of the cars feel good, but its really hit or miss and I've yet to figure out why in iRacing, you have to adjust the FFB for each car individually. Every other race sim out there, the game automatically adjusts the FFB per car to give you the feel of the car that they feel you should be experiencing. Never understood why I have to constantly adjust my in game FFB settings in iRacing for every car, that annoys me more than anything else about the game and its not like they even give you the option to save your FFB settings per car. And why do cars like the Radical give such detailed FFB but then the Mustang or Solstice is competely lifeless, unless you crank the FFB to clipping levels, grrrr.
 
Yea, the online racing is second to none and its not even a close race there. I like it for that reason more than any other. Some of the cars feel good, but its really hit or miss and I've yet to figure out why in iRacing, you have to adjust the FFB for each car individually. Every other race sim out there, the game automatically adjusts the FFB per car to give you the feel of the car that they feel you should be experiencing. Never understood why I have to constantly adjust my in game FFB settings in iRacing for every car, that annoys me more than anything else about the game and its not like they even give you the option to save your FFB settings per car. And why do cars like the Radical give such detailed FFB but then the Mustang or Solstice is competely lifeless, unless you crank the FFB to clipping levels, grrrr.

Dude you can save settings for every car...controls menu,,,,custom controls for this car...or something like that.
Need that in ac
 
Dude you can save settings for every car...controls menu,,,,custom controls for this car...or something like that.
Need that in ac

I've seen that box, but never did try it. Thanks man.

I don't really have a need for it in AC, every car has its own FFB and each feels right, only iRacing FFB varies from one extreme to the next in each car.
 
.

Because the cars in real life feel very different too. You cannot expect same feeling from Radical, with very direct steering, high downforce, hard suspension and Mustang with power steering, almost no downforce and soft suspension.
For me it's a great feature because it adds the variety to the experience.

I think you missed my point, if you play any other sim racing game, you don't have to adjust the FFB for each car, the developer has already done that for you individually, so if you drive an F1 car, its going to feel very different than a Fiat 500, but in iRacing, unless you customize the setting for each car, your FFB gain settinge gets applied to every car the same and to be quite honest, each car's FFB feel varies far more than it should. I understand every car is going to feel different, that's not what I was saying. For instance, I might use a FFB gain of 15 when driving the Radical, but if I don't customize settings for each car, and then drive the Mustang, Miata, or Solstice, there's almost no feedback at all at a gain setting of 15, and for the Mustang, I might need a gain of 32-34 before it starts to give me a satisfying level of feedback. That's a huge variation from car to car and other racing sims just don't do that. In fact, I never have to adjust the overall FFB for each car in any other sim, the sim just does it for you. in Ac for instance, I use a FFB gain of 75%, but I never need to adjust it for each vehicle, each car has its own unique FFB feel while still providing good feedback, there's no wild variation from the Fiat 500 to the Lotus 49, each car just feels like it should with no other adjustments and that's because Kunos has already made those individual adjustments for each vehicle for you based on what they think you should be feeling.
 
Different approach. FFB in iRacing is directly tied to the physics and the FFB strength just determine the maximum force generated on the steering wheel rack.

The force on the steering rack in real life can vary from less than 10Nm to more than 30Nm from car to car. If you launch the telemetry, you can check the forces generated on the steering rack by every car and you'll notice the obvious difference between cars with power steering like MX-5 and high downforce open wheelers like Dallara.

With high performance wheel it is almost possible to exactly match the real dynamics of the forces in different cars.
I really like this feature, first because it is simulation and it simulates real life, second, because it tells me much about the real car.

Of course on cheap and weak wheels, which can generate something like 2Nm you need to customize the forces, but I don't think it is a problem, because there aren't as much cars and you can save profile for every car separately.

IMO the FFB customization options and features present in iRacing are actually the best on the market, you just have to understand them.

Take for the example WheelCheck graph from the T500RS wheel:
0prXrX9.png

As you can see it has pretty huge deadzone, it starts moving at about 4% and generate week forces up to the about 15% and then works almost linearly up to the 85% where it saturates. iRacing is the only simulation on the market, which allows you to set the minimum force to 15%, compress the forces below (there are some in the range 4-15%) and easy calculate the maximum force generated at steering rack to set the maximum force to utilize it up to 85%, so you will get almost perfect linear response in the whole range of generated forces by simulation like you see on the green line.
 
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Different approach. FFB in iRacing is directly tied to the physics and the FFB strength just determine the maximum force generated on the steering wheel rack.

The force on the steering rack in real life can vary from less than 10Nm to more than 30Nm from car to car. If you launch the telemetry, you can check the forces generated on the steering rack by every car and you'll notice the obvious difference between cars with power steering like MX-5 and high downforce open wheelers like Dallara.

With high performance wheel it is almost possible to exactly match the real dynamics of the forces in different cars.
I really like this feature, first because it is simulation and it simulates real life, second, because it tells me much about the real car.

Of course on cheap and weak wheels, which can generate something like 2Nm you need to customize the forces, but I don't think it is a problem, because there aren't as much cars and you can save profile for every car separately.

IMO the FFB customization options and features present in iRacing are actually the best on the market, you just have to understand them.

Take for the example WheelCheck graph from the T500RS wheel:
0prXrX9.png

As you can see it has pretty huge deadzone, it starts moving at about 4% and generate week forces up to the about 15% and then works almost linearly up to the 85% where it saturates. iRacing is the only simulation on the market, which allows you to set the minimum force to 15%, compress the forces below (there are some in the range 4-15%) and easy calculate the maximum force generated at steering rack to set the maximum force to utilize it up to 85%, so you will get almost perfect linear response in the whole range of generated forces by simulation like you see on the green line.

Thanks for the info, I'm using a Thrustmaster TX wheel with T500 pedals and TH8RS shifter, I still have my T500 wheel also, but the TX is just a better wheel in my opinion. I'm not telling you this because you posted a chart of a T500, just letting you know what equipment I'm using so you understand where I'm coming from. One question though, you state the T500 has a huge deadzone of 15% or so, is that data coming from one particular car in iRacing or does it apply to every car since the FFB varies so much car to car? Setting the minimum FFB setting to 15% might feel good in a loose feeling car like the Mustang, Miata, or Solstice, but would feel very strong in a car like the Radical or Dallara.

I guess iRacing is just totally different than ever other sim in how they approach FFB. Maybe its because I don't fully understand how it works, but clearly I need to do more research to understand how it works. I've been adjusting the FFB just based on feel for each car. I'm aware of the minimum FFB setting but its just been trial and error for me, same with damping. Some cars feel jerky with damping set at 0, some feel better with a setting of 10-20. Thus far, I guess I just prefer that AC is a one time set it and forget it FFB setting and each car still has its own unique characterstics and the FFB feels great.
 
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One question though, you state the T500 has a huge deadzone of 15% or so, is that data coming from one particular car in iRacing or does it apply to every car since the FFB varies so much car to car?
It does apply to the wheel itself. It's not related in any way to the simulation or the cars. The only thing you need set individually is the maximum force for the car.

You set minimum force once, the same for every car. and I would really like this option present in Assetto Corsa - without it the FFB feel on my wheel (G27 which has even bigger deadzone than T500RS) in AC is much inferior than in iR - I've even created a topic on Assetto Corsa forum with the suggestion to create this feature and AFAIR they're now working on it.

Check the WheelCheck thread:
http://members.iracing.com/jforum/posts/list/1473510.page
You can try minimum force = 14%, but you must ensure, that the force compression below the min force is active, so in app.ini you should have option: FFBUseSimpleMinForce=0.
Edit. I've read, that TX wheel may need another min. force. Make the step2 log test with WheelCheck and attach the result - I'll try to help you find the proper min. force :).
 
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It does apply to the wheel itself. It's not related in any way to the simulation or the cars. The only thing you need set individually is the maximum force for the car.

You set minimum force once, the same for every car. and I would really like this option present in Assetto Corsa - without it the FFB feel on my wheel (G27 which has even bigger deadzone than T500RS) in AC is much inferior than in iR - I've even created a topic on Assetto Corsa forum with the suggestion to create this feature and AFAIR they're now working on it.

Check the WheelCheck thread:
http://members.iracing.com/jforum/posts/list/1473510.page
You can try minimum force = 14%, but you must ensure, that the force compression below the min force is active, so in app.ini you should have option: FFBUseSimpleMinForce=0.

Thanks, I'll give that a try later when I get home. I know with some vehicles though, if you set the Min FFB value too high, the wheel will start to turn itself while sitting in the pits.
 
Edit. I've read, that TX wheel may need another min. force. Make the step2 log test with WheelCheck and attach the result - I'll try to help you find the proper min. force :).

Yea, I would expect the TX to be slightly different than the T500. They are very similar, but different in a few ways. The TX is about 10-20% weaker in max FFB output overall but by no means weak. The T500 was just really overkill, never had a need to max the FFB output on that wheel. Other things that are different, if I'm being honest, I feel like the center deadzone is less with the TX but at the same time, not nearly as damped either.
 
It does apply to the wheel itself. It's not related in any way to the simulation or the cars. The only thing you need set individually is the maximum force for the car.

You set minimum force once, the same for every car. and I would really like this option present in Assetto Corsa - without it the FFB feel on my wheel (G27 which has even bigger deadzone than T500RS) in AC is much inferior than in iR - I've even created a topic on Assetto Corsa forum with the suggestion to create this feature and AFAIR they're now working on it.

Check the WheelCheck thread:
http://members.iracing.com/jforum/posts/list/1473510.page
You can try minimum force = 14%, but you must ensure, that the force compression below the min force is active, so in app.ini you should have option: FFBUseSimpleMinForce=0.
Edit. I've read, that TX wheel may need another min. force. Make the step2 log test with WheelCheck and attach the result - I'll try to help you find the proper min. force :).

I have the wheel check program, then I went to the Spring Force block and chose Step Log 2 (linear force test), took about 1 minute to finish the test, but where do the test results output and how do I view them?
 
The graph does look strange, it's nowhere near linear:
X5dpqhb.png

How much force did you set? It does look similar to 100% on T500RS. As far as I know you should set 60% on Thrustmaster wheels.
Even now it's clear that you should set 12-13% minimum ffb force in iRacing options.
 
The graph does look strange, it's nowhere near linear:
X5dpqhb.png

How much force did you set? It does look similar to 100% on T500RS. As far as I know you should set 60% on Thrustmaster wheels.
Even now it's clear that you should set 12-13% minimum ffb force in iRacing options.

Remember I stated the TX feels slightly weaker at the exact same settings. The default T500 control panel setting is 60%, the default TX control panel setting is 75%, but I keep mine at 80%, just feels best to me. Were there any other settings I should change in the Wheel Check program? I left everything at default. Just want to make sure there's no other factors that would skew the results. I'll run the test again at 60% even though that's below default, and I'll run it again at 75% which is default just to see if there's any difference.
 
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