His old wheel only has 180 degrees, as he said. Even the expensive, high-end wheels can feel like crap when all the FFB is compressed into too small a steering range. Glad he found something that helps until he can afford a new wheel
Won't the FFB be compressed into 180 either way?
I'd imagine if it's like with a gamepad the virtual wheel will look eratic with the discrepency between what the game thinks the rotation is and what it is set to per vehicle. If thats the case, and assuming OP drives in cockpit with a virtual steering wheel, it might help to have the wheel move 1:1 to their inputs.
Stuff like the Mini or the Camaro with their more road going figures highlight it the most with their high steering rotations and lock and such a low rotation on the physical wheel. Whereas the Karts should be pretty much bang on.
Reducing the lock in relation to rotation will soften the responsiveness of his turns but it's the same as reducing your brake pressure to avoid lockups. It will alleviate lockups but at the cost of braking performance. Reducing the lock too much might make it difficult to get the car turned on certain tracks, most notably slow speed tight corners.
It's the ratio thats important for responsiveness though. That's why the open wheelers feel the most direct. To match the ratio of the default open wheelers on a 180 degree wheel you'd need 9 degrees of lock. Which checks out with OPs findings as youre knocking 8 degrees off default setup.
To mimic the higher ratios doesn't seem practical for the wheel though as an equivilent to say the Mini at 180 degrees would be 6(?) degrees of lock. So sticking to OP's original plan sounds best in this scenario.
As a general rule a lower ratio between lock and rotation i.e 20 degrees rotation for 1 degree of lock in Formula cars will give you more responsive or twitchy handling which is multiplied further by the fact you are using only 180 on your wheel so for every 10 degrees you turn your wheel the game is reading that as 20 degrees in-game.
Lowering your steering lock will make the ratio bigger and therefore less sensitive to an already twitchy set-up so I think this is why you're noticing results. The lower you reduce it though, the more you restrict your front wheels from turning, reducing your turning circle.
The key to keeping a consistent feel, I'd imagine, is to reduce the steering rotation evenly with the reduce in lock, keeping the ratio consistent. That way your physical inputs and what the game recieve are better matched and hopefully easier to translate for you.
You ideally want your rotation to be 20-22 times larger than your lock for race cars. The rotation doesn't effect the handling of the car like lock does so I'd lower rotation as much as possible and then divide that figure by twenty (or the approx ratio of the default cars) and then tweak the lock down until you're happy with the balance between responsiveness and turning ability.
Also, I wonder if the new damping options (primarily added for controller users) would help here? Controller joysticks are essentially wheels with tiny degrees of rotation and no feedback.
