The following post is courtesy of F1 2012's Game Designer Lee Mather.
There’s been a lot of talk about the changes we’ve made to the steering on PS3 in patch 1.02. To try and help you all understand how best to set-up your wheels I thought it best to give you a little insight in to what we’ve changed and why.
Originally the game locked the maximum amount of rotation allowed by the wheel to 180 degrees on PS3. This narrowed down the amount of input required when using wheels with larger ranges of rotation, such as the Logitech DFGT and G25/27 and the Thrustmaster T500 RS. Due to some small changes in the tyre model this year that range made it much harder for the player to achieve peak slip. Peak slip being the sweet spot for maximum grip for the front tyres. With such a fine amount of input and a realistic F1 tyre slip graph, this made it harder to drive consistently and quickly.
Both PC and Xbox gamers have the ability to adjust the amount of steering lock they wish to use; PC users via the control panel, and Xbox users via device set-up of the Fanatec wheel they are using.
So in order for us to allow PS3 users the same level of set-up, and the ability to experience the game how it’s meant to be felt, we took the decision to open up the lock fully on all PS3 wheels. This does remove the actual lock stop, but you shouldn’t be steering up to that as it is. Instead you now need to adjust the Saturation slider to reduce the amount of input required. Using a Fanatec CSR Elite on Xbox 360 we’ve found using between 300 and 330 degrees to be best. So based on this we suggest a saturation setting somewhere between 60-65% on a Logitech wheel ,and around 70% on the T500 RS. If you prefer the previous, more direct steering then increase this number until you’re happy with how it feels.
All wheels behave differently, which makes it very hard for us to be able to set your wheel up for you as default in the game, which is why we give the option to adjust saturation, linearity and deadzone. With a combination of all of these, you should be able to get the feeling you are looking for.
A good starting point for a 900 degree wheel would be:
Steering Deadzone: 1%
Steering Saturation: 63%
Steering Linearity: 10%
Throttle Deadzone: 0%
Throttle Saturation: 0%
Brake Deadzone: 0%
Brake Saturation: 0%
For a 1080 degree wheel increase the saturation to around 70%.
I hope this has been helpful and will help you to set-up your wheel effectively in F1 2012.
