Which sim has the most realistic FFB

[Deleted member 197115]

Not directly Sim Racing Hardware related, but couldn't find better place to post it as we don't have generic sim games subforum.
But as FFB applies to steering wheels which are hardware, I think it would right at home here.
Mod, please feel free to move if that breaks any rules.

So the question,
Which racing sim has the most realistic FFB.
Pick one.

You can also list sim titles you played from best to worst FFB in reply with wheel base in use if possible.
Sometimes favorite does not have the best FFB, please specify that as well if you can.

 

[GranDoxin]

1. Rfactor 2
2. Iracing
3. AC
4. Project Cars 2

 

[Oxtar_]

@Oxtar_ , which wheel base do you use? Sounds like what I've experienced on DD wheel before moving to SC2 with more advanced filters. Tip for SC2 owners - set Ultra Low Latency to 5% or even more if you want more "rubber".
But I digress, sorry for off topic.

Just T300 as maxed out as possible without clipping.. Next step will be DD for sure and soon!

 

[dud]

It also depends on the wheel.

I find that AC really doesn't mix well with my DD wheel (Accuforce 2) and requires a lot of fiddling to even be acceptable. With my Thrustmater wheel it was much more natural.

ACC on the other hand gives me feedback I expect with the Accuforce 2.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

I am sure we have more than 118 people voted so far using FFB wheels on this board.
Weekend bump.

 

[maelstrom]

The problem with polls like this is that they’re only really worthwhile if you have all the sims to try side-by-side and everyone is using the same wheel with the same settings in the same car. There are a few of the sims listed that I don’t have and one of them may be amazing and I’d have no way of knowing. Also, asking how realistic the FFB is presupposes you know what the car steering feels like in the real world. Otherwise, how would you know it was realistic?

 

[Joe Extraknow]

Interesting. I would have expected rF2 will be off the chart, like over ~80%.

I wonder how many people who voted for AC actually tried rF2. I know many people play AC don’t play rF2.

poll may be re-worded: rF2 FFB vs AC FFB. People have to try both in order to vote.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

I'd guess any simmer investing any significant time and money into this hobby to be a visitor of Simracing Hardware section have most of the listed sims in the library and tried them all to pick the favorite.
Kunos titles have very good and consistent FFB, nothing surprising that some prefer it over rFactor2 which can be hit and miss depending on the content. Largest user base is also indicative of the title popularity.
iRacing beating only PCars2 could be a bit surprising, esp. after reading all the praise on iRacing board, but not if you tried it yourself and spent time comparing it to the rest of the bunch.

Big surprise for me personally was rediscovery of R3E after December update, really encourage people to try it out, there were very positive changes in FFB department.

 

[maelstrom]

I'd guess any simmer investing any significant time and money into this hobby to be a visitor of Simracing Hardware section have most of the listed sims in the library and tried them all to pick the favorite.

But, as this is a comparative poll, how can their opinion be valid unless they have them all?

 

[Cote Dazur]

Interesting. I would have expected rF2 will be off the chart, like over ~80%.

I wonder how many people who voted for AC actually tried rF2. I know many people play AC don’t play rF2.

poll may be re-worded: rF2 FFB vs AC FFB. People have to try both in order to vote.

People who like rf2, are not a majority, look at average or peak daily usage. The minority who like rf2 think it is superior, the majority does not.
I am surprised rf2 reached 1/3 as favorite FFB, it is possibly more because in certain circle one need to say such a thing as rf2 has the best FFB.
And yes most sim racer have tried and own rf2, it has been around forever, but the majority move on or use it sporadically for special content.
You can be an avid sim racer and not like rf2 much, it is ok.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

But, as this is a comparative poll, how can their opinion be valid unless they have them all?

Don't you? And if not, why?

 

[DrRob]

But, as this is a comparative poll, how can their opinion be valid unless they have them all?

I think discussing over validity is kind of a moot point. You will not gain anything from this poll other than a subjective overall average opinion of currently 128 (possibly prejudiced) individuals on this forum.
Everybody is allowed to vote, also those who never tried rF2, F1, AMS, PC2,...like me.
In my case those titles just didn't appeal to me. End of story.

 

[Cote Dazur]

 

[Ghoults]

While the feel aspect is subjective I think the merits of the ffb settings and their quality can be more objectively analysed. Not just which has the most amount of options (which is poor metric anyways) but how the settings accommodate different wheels especially in different price ranges and how easily and nicely does the game allow the user to make his equipment work to his satisfaction.

I think ac is the only one which has an option to use lut to get linear ffb. Iracing has options for this as well but I don't think to that precision. I'm not sure tho, been a while since I played iracing. The rest I don't know. Another important setting is minforce which is useful for anybody who doesn't have direct drive wheel (the huge majority). I think pretty much all games have this except lfs and automobilista. Ams has its own weird setting that is purely adjusted by feel. It is sort of minforce but pretty artistic take on it. Which is odd considering minforce is a value you can measure so why they made it pure guesswork is strange.

Most sims do offer the basic fake stuff that can be turned off. Stuff like gear change ffb wonkiness and other fake shakings and rattles. Ac also has very useful setting called filter which allows you to get rid of high frequency stuff. I'd really like to see that in every sim. On other end of this spectrum there are sims which have really strong ffb for stuff like flatspots and no way to get rid of it (which will hurt your lower end wheel in the long term).

Another aspect is the quality of the settings. What you can and can not change. Or how well the physics create the ffb signal that is then adjusted to function on the hardware and with each person's feels. Raceroom and pcars2 have this very poorly done. It almost feels like the ffb settings adjust the suspension geometry but not really. Why should there be an option for stuff like vertical load, "understeer" or the other stuff? Those values should come from the steering geometry and physics. Stuff that should come from physics alone don't really make sense to be adjustable. It is like adjusting your throttle pedal by making the turbo lag smaller. I understand why there needs to be setting and parameters for things like corners and straights because most wheels don't have the ffb range and torque to avoid clipping in one situation and being limp in other.

Then you have the quality of life stuff. Things like auto adjust rotation for each car, soft stops, good default levels for ffb for each so you don't need to change ffb strength everytime you drive different car as the cars are balanced straight out of the box. I'm sure there are more of these things. I think another small thing is how the game handles the ffb in the menus. I don't personally like how in some games the ffb doesn't turn off if you pause the game or how it comes on strong when you enter the track. Or how the wheel sort of does stuff unexpectedly when you transition from one menu to driving and so forth. Also ideally all ffb settings should be available from the game. There should be no reason to edit some text files turn stuff on and off. A good sim also tells inside the game what the different options do so if you know your way around ffb you don't need to google what the weirdly named settings do.

In other words. Which sim has the best ffb settings.

 

[Joe Extraknow]

I think discussing over validity is kind of a moot point. You will not gain anything from this poll other than a subjective overall average opinion of currently 128 (possibly prejudiced) individuals on this forum.
Everybody is allowed to vote, also those who never tried rF2, F1, AMS, PC2,...like me.
In my case those titles just didn't appeal to me. End of story.

Agree 100% !!!

To me it is impossible to believe that one had tried both rF2 and AC with a DD wheel votes for AC over rF2. It would like to ask which one is sweeter: watermelon or tomatoes. It is so obvious if tried both. This is why I suggest to re-word and condition the poll makes more meaningful:

“Interesting. I would have expected rF2 will be off the chart, like over ~80%.

I wonder how many people who voted for AC actually tried rF2. I know many people play AC don’t play rF2.

poll may be re-worded: rF2 FFB vs AC FFB. People have to try both in order to vote.”

Here is a very simple task you can try, with a DD wheel:
Pick up a cheap and most unnoticed rF2 car, say the Renault Megan’s Trophy to drive up 20 laps at any track. Then take any AC car, as many as wish, drive as much as wish, then compare.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I agree that these polls are problematic.
I own PC2, AC, ACC, KartKraft, DR 1.0&2.0 but spend ALL of my time in iRacing except for short stints in Dirt Rally 2.0.

I've not even bothered to configure or tweak my settings for my SC2 Pro on anything but iRacing, because the other titles get zero use. The problem is that it doesn't matter to me which one is the best at this one thing or that one thing. I'm not going to invest any time in trying them out because I don't care what any of them can do at this point. I simply don't have time to waste doing that.

I spend my time learning new tracks, learning how to drive faster and learning how to race against real people.

I was originally planning to buy a copy of Automobilista 2, but at this point I don't see the point even if they do a great job with it. I won't end up using it, so why bother buying any more sim racing titles. I'll likely uninstall the all but the two I'm actually using shortly. The two that have gotten the least use are AC and ACC.

How hard it is to gift a title over to someone else in Steam? Can you do that?

 

[Deleted member 197115]

Agree 100% !!!

To me it is impossible to believe that one had tried both rF2 and AC with a DD wheel votes for AC over rF2. It would like to ask which one is sweeter: watermelon or tomatoes. It is so obvious if tried both. This is why I suggest to re-word and condition the poll makes more meaningful:

“Interesting. I would have expected rF2 will be off the chart, like over ~80%.

I wonder how many people who voted for AC actually tried rF2. I know many people play AC don’t play rF2.

poll may be re-worded: rF2 FFB vs AC FFB. People have to try both in order to vote.”

Here is a very simple task you can try, with a DD wheel:
Pick up a cheap and most unnoticed rF2 car, say the Renault Megan’s Trophy to drive up 20 laps at any track. Then take any AC car, as many as wish, drive as much as wish, then compare.

Denial. LOL.

 

[Joe Extraknow]

Denial. LOL.

I bet you never tried rF2. Your poll is meaningless and reply so stupid.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

I bet you never tried rF2. Your poll is meaningless and reply so stupid.

Afraid you've lost your bet. I do own and spent quite a seat time in rFactor2, a while back with OSW, and most recently with SC2 Pro. But outside occasional stints, it's just not my cup of tea.
Why it's so hard to accept that people can prefer different qualities in force feedback.
This is the beauty of these polls, no matter how vocal and opinionated you are, you can only vote once or not at all, your choice.
Why results even matter to you if you already have the favorite?

 

[gecco]

For me, it has to be Assetto Corsa. Lacking the experience of having ever driven a real race car in anger, I can only relate to road cars. Somehow Assetto Corsa manages to perfectly emulate the body roll and weight transfer of the chassis in the FFB (Simucube1). Since playing AC I also briefly tried out iRacing and lately also the new rF2 demo, but neither ones interpretation of translating the steering forces, tyre deformations, and weight transfer of the chassis into the mere left/right motion of my simwheel, is feeling right to me.
AC lacks in simulating any steering forces when standing still, yes, rF2 does this a lot better, and feels like real rubber. But that's not an important aspect of the FFB, is it? In AC I get around it, by applying some direct input forces through the driver, so the steering has some weight on standstill.
To get this into perspective, rF2 has perfectly good FFB, but for me, it's only Assetto Corsa that makes me feel to actually be in a car and driving.

 

[RaceNut]

I'm not sure the FFB of any title is realistic but, I do find FFB to be necessary in order for me to enjoy the experience. I'm also not convinced that "realistic FFB" is something I'd actually want in Simulation.

Having said that, if I'm going for greater realism in FFB, I'm going to increase damping significantly (DD) so the wheel has the slower speed and weighty-ness I'd expect in RL with reduced details. Wheel rotation during slides/spins will be slower and easier to catch/control but, front grip-loss cues may be very subtle to non-existent. Achieving the proper balance is important.​

Different title's FFB can have good and poor aspects just as each simulation can have them in various ways. For example, I find rF2/AMS/ and iRacing convey an excellent sense of cornering intensity through progressive resistance forces. AC/AMS/rF2/R3E provide an excellent sense of front grip-loss whereas iRacing may provide none at all (certain cars). Some titles FFB represent FWD cars very well, R3E for example, whereas rF2 tends to exaggerate torque-steer and requires a massive amount of damping or other means to compensate.

I find the FFB of AMS/rF2 and probably R3E, to be among my favorites overall but, there are certainly other aspects to be enjoyed in pretty much any title's FFB. So just as I like each Sim for various reasons, so goes the FFB and I'm actually glad that they don't all give the same result.