Niels_at_home
Reiza Studios
As I mentioned it in a sub forum/tread, it makes sense to say it here too.
Years ago when Huttu ruled GPL, I believe he, or other aliens, used the Microsoft steering wheel. It had pedals that gave 64 steps of calibration. Nowadays I read on more forums that more is better. Some pedal electronics allow up to 4096 steps of calibration!
In our world, big numbers sell and this will probably never change. It doesn't mean it is better though as with everything, there is a point where it doesn't matter anymore.
Our feet and legs are not super sensitive or accurate. A long pedal may have 4 inches or 100mm of travel. If I ask you to press 86mm then 53mm, then 97mm, will you hit these targets? Even Huttu probably won't!
So really 100 steps of calibration is fine. For brake pedals with proper load cells, 100 may be on the low side. In an extreme case of 100kg (220lbs) that would mean 1kg steps and we are more able than that, so higher resolution matters there.
Now of course you are pressing the pedal at a certain speed and surely having more steps makes throttle aplication smoother right? Yes it does, but does that matter? Its not like 100 steps are so little that each step is large. Plus, big plus, when pressing the pedal down at a constant speed, the pedal calibration steps *AND* USB check time interval play a role. If there are 10000 steps of calibration but the pedal is only read ever second, and you apply from 0 to 100% throttle in one second, the game will see an instant full throttle readout, not a smooth application.
Standard usb devices usually have a 125hz update rate. Lets make this 120 for convenience and apply throttle from 0 to 100% in 0.6 seconds. Every % input then takes 0.006 seconds. At 120hz USB, the pedals are only checked every 0.0083 seconds. If your pedal has 100 calibration steps, in this example the USB frequency is already not high enough to 'get' each position. On top of that, the USB device may be updated faster, but sims may still check the pedals only at the frame rate which isn't uncommon although new sims should hopefully be better than this!
Finally there is signal filtering that tends to be a part of commercial mass market pedals such as the Logitech products. They know the potentiometers will wear out, so they filter its signal. For example the pedal electronics spend time looking at 10 readouts, then throw out the highest, lowest, and average the rest and send this to the computer as the pedal position. This filtering tends to add latency to the pedal. Changing from logitech electronics to a 'Bodnar Box' gets rid of this latency. So if you are better with the Bodnar Box, it is not so much because of extra calibration resolution, but from reduced latency.
So in short, except for extreme load cell brake forces, 100 steps of pedal calibration is enough. You will not get faster or anything if this is increased to 4096. Our feet / legs are not accurate enough instruments. USB polling frequency soon becomes a limiting factor, or worse, games that only read new positions at the framerate (may only be 60hz) are a weak link. There is nothing WRONG with more resolution, and technically it is not hard to do, so you may as well do it, but don't forget its just a nice big number, it doesn't really matter!
Years ago when Huttu ruled GPL, I believe he, or other aliens, used the Microsoft steering wheel. It had pedals that gave 64 steps of calibration. Nowadays I read on more forums that more is better. Some pedal electronics allow up to 4096 steps of calibration!
In our world, big numbers sell and this will probably never change. It doesn't mean it is better though as with everything, there is a point where it doesn't matter anymore.
Our feet and legs are not super sensitive or accurate. A long pedal may have 4 inches or 100mm of travel. If I ask you to press 86mm then 53mm, then 97mm, will you hit these targets? Even Huttu probably won't!
So really 100 steps of calibration is fine. For brake pedals with proper load cells, 100 may be on the low side. In an extreme case of 100kg (220lbs) that would mean 1kg steps and we are more able than that, so higher resolution matters there.Now of course you are pressing the pedal at a certain speed and surely having more steps makes throttle aplication smoother right? Yes it does, but does that matter? Its not like 100 steps are so little that each step is large. Plus, big plus, when pressing the pedal down at a constant speed, the pedal calibration steps *AND* USB check time interval play a role. If there are 10000 steps of calibration but the pedal is only read ever second, and you apply from 0 to 100% throttle in one second, the game will see an instant full throttle readout, not a smooth application.
Standard usb devices usually have a 125hz update rate. Lets make this 120 for convenience and apply throttle from 0 to 100% in 0.6 seconds. Every % input then takes 0.006 seconds. At 120hz USB, the pedals are only checked every 0.0083 seconds. If your pedal has 100 calibration steps, in this example the USB frequency is already not high enough to 'get' each position. On top of that, the USB device may be updated faster, but sims may still check the pedals only at the frame rate which isn't uncommon although new sims should hopefully be better than this!
Finally there is signal filtering that tends to be a part of commercial mass market pedals such as the Logitech products. They know the potentiometers will wear out, so they filter its signal. For example the pedal electronics spend time looking at 10 readouts, then throw out the highest, lowest, and average the rest and send this to the computer as the pedal position. This filtering tends to add latency to the pedal. Changing from logitech electronics to a 'Bodnar Box' gets rid of this latency. So if you are better with the Bodnar Box, it is not so much because of extra calibration resolution, but from reduced latency.
So in short, except for extreme load cell brake forces, 100 steps of pedal calibration is enough. You will not get faster or anything if this is increased to 4096. Our feet / legs are not accurate enough instruments. USB polling frequency soon becomes a limiting factor, or worse, games that only read new positions at the framerate (may only be 60hz) are a weak link. There is nothing WRONG with more resolution, and technically it is not hard to do, so you may as well do it, but don't forget its just a nice big number, it doesn't really matter!
