FFB canned effect?

rikirk · Sep 17, 2019

<I strongly advice you to not use more than 20% road effects. By using more you’re saturating your wheel feedback with “noise” losing actual feeling of what your car and tyres do.

Go down to 10-25% road effects and stick to it. At first you might think you lost feedback, but insist for a week and soon you’ll find many subtle informations of what your tyres are doing close to the limit.>

This was the developer answer for a t300.

I've inquired if it applies to DD as well, but can't ever get an answer from them.

Does anyone with good knowledge can confirm that Road Effect is not to be used at all with with DD wheels and or motion platforms to avoid any "saturation" in ACC?

Augusto Dufloth · Sep 18, 2019

It’s just that road effects are a gain over regular road effects.

In a DD you won’t saturate, but then you’re not having the most “accurate” ffb.

Of course it’s a matter of personal choice, but leave at 0 to get the most representative force.

rikirk · Sep 18, 2019

So, that means 0 = 100% signal and anything above is just distortion?

RasmusP · Sep 18, 2019

No it's not like distortion and saturation with audio signals.
You have the normal ffb that goes from 0% to 100%.
A sausage kerb hit will still spike to 100% even if you've set your overall gain to just 60%.
Didn't see a clipping meter for ACC yet but it's like that in ac, rF2 and r3e.
But that sausage kerb hit will be a much bigger ffb punch compared to the normal driving forces. That's called "dynamic of the ffb".
You'll compensate the lower normal driving forces by a bigger ffb wheel motor. Like a dd wheel that can give you 5x the force of a t300.

With a weaker ffb base you'll probably use 80-100% overall gain to have strong enough normal steering forces.
That will mean the ffb spiking into 100% even over standard kerbs or maybe even when you just hit a little road bump.
You lose dynamic that way though.

Summary:
DD wheel = 10 Nm, 30% gain = 3.3 Nm steering force, 10 Nm sausage kerb hit.
T300 = 3.5 Nm, 90% gain = 3.3 Nm steering force, 3.5 Nm sausage kerb hit.

Now the DD wheel setup has a lot of headroom. Throw in lots of road effects and it will just add them on top. You'll still only clip/saturate when you're hitting a sausage kerb.
However if you use high road noise gain with your wheel almost running at its limit during normal driving, the motor won't have any headroom left.

And yep, road noise isn't a true part of the ffb. It's basically vibrations from the tarmac texture. In reality you feel different tarmacs due to the vibrations and sounds from the car.

Anyway overall summary:
With a strong ffb base you can set the dynamic to your liking by adjusting the motor strength and the overall ingame gain.
Too much dynamic and a sausage kerb will break your wrists. Very low dynamic and a sausage kerb at 200 km/h will just be another little bump.
Road noise is another factor that comes in there and requires a bit of headroom in the dynamic to stay "clean".
Not enough dynamic headroom combined with high road noise will make you lose real details of the true ffb.

So what are your settings?

With a clipping meter one could see if and how much the ffb is clipping during normal cornering. And how much road noise would make it clip more.

Augusto Dufloth · Sep 18, 2019

rikirk said:
So, that means 0 = 100% signal and anything above is just distortion?

0 = 100% calculated road effect. Anything above 0 just increases the current road effect. That’s why in low powered motors, clipping might be an issue.

100 I guess would be 2x the calculated physics road effects. (Or whatever value KS decided as gain over this effect)

rikirk · Sep 18, 2019

Thank you both!
My wheel delivers up to 26Nm and to my understanding it's better to leave the driver gain at 100% and adjust in game accordingly, which in my case is around 35%.

What I am noticing is that in game FFB is more dynamic within the 60-80% value, so I am struggling in finding the best compromise.

Right now I have 35% road and 20% dynamic damping and still not sure I am getting the best out of it.

I read simucube users like 100% dynamic damping, not sure though it provides the more realistic feeling which is actually what I am aiming for.

Pawel Ziolkowski · Sep 18, 2019

Augusto Dufloth said:
100 I guess would be 2x the calculated physics road effects. (Or whatever value KS decided as gain over this effect)

You can't really separate "road effect" in physics. In AC (AFAIK) ffb effects worked by taking some other physics value, in road case it was the difference in travel between front wheels, and add a FFB force based on that. It might not apply for ACC, but I feel like it's the same system.

So a better way to put it is: 0 = normal physics (force coming from steering rods), 100 = normal physics +100% of additional calculation force (from wheel travel).

Augusto Dufloth · Sep 18, 2019

Pawel Ziolkowski said:
You can't really separate "road effect" in physics. In AC (AFAIK) ffb effects worked by taking some other physics value, in road case it was the difference in travel between front wheels, and add a FFB force based on that. It might not apply for ACC, but I feel like it's the same system.

So a better way to put it is: 0 = normal physics (force coming from steering rods), 100 = normal physics +100% of additional calculation force (from wheel travel).

That’s what I meant

RasmusP · Sep 18, 2019

rikirk said:
Thank you both!
My wheel delivers up to 26Nm and to my understanding it's better to leave the driver gain at 100% and adjust in game accordingly, which in my case is around 35%.

What I am noticing is that in game FFB is more dynamic within the 60-80% value, so I am struggling in finding the best compromise.

Right now I have 35% road and 20% dynamic damping and still not sure I am getting the best out of it.

I read simucube users like 100% dynamic damping, not sure though it provides the more realistic feeling which is actually what I am aiming for.

I can just tell you that even my "weak" csw 2.5 has too much dynamic when at 100% and dialed down ingame gain.
For ACC I use 75% base strength (6.5 Nm) and 60% ingame gain.
The problem you create with low ingame gain and full base strength is that your base driver might lose accuracy.
Dd wheels are hi tech so not so much of a problem but I know a lot of analoge music amplifiers that only work well between 40-80%.
Below this the left channel might be quieter or the dynamic will be worse and above you might experience some distortion.
And we don't know how many internal steps ACC has.
Do you still have as many sub-percent between 20-30% (cornering example force) as you would have between
40-60%?

And there's the question whether or not ACC is made for high dynamic wheels or does it replicate reality in terms of dynamic of cornering forces when the dynamic is reduced?
The higher the ingame gain the earlier a strong force will be clipped and locked to 100%.

For me, using raceroom as an example here, it wasn't realistic at all to run low ingame settings and 100% base strength.
Cornering felt great but then I would hit a sausage kerb and couldn't hold the wheel at all.
Looking at Blancpain gt I don't see drivers snapping their wrists over sausage kerbs at Silverstone...

So I like my sausage kerbs clipped

rikirk · Sep 18, 2019

@RasmusP
Thank you twice for the accurate clarification.
Actually I had initially went your direction and I was stirred away:
https://www.racedepartment.com/thre...ring2-direct-drive-wheel-review.165223/page-6

Problem is that even Bodnar is contradicting himself providing both min 30% or full 100.

Very difficult to keep driver FFB higher than in game in my case since for realistic forces they have to be set both in the 50% range.

Pawel Ziolkowski · Sep 18, 2019

Augusto Dufloth said:
That’s what I meant

Yeah, this nitpicking was really just an anchor to chime in with details as Rasmus usually covers everything else so neatly. It's a bad habit i gotta get rid of haha

Gergo Panker · Sep 18, 2019

rikirk said:
I've inquired if it applies to DD as well, but can't ever get an answer from them.

OSW here, I recommend road effect at 0%. Actually what I recommend overall is already in the OSW preset in the game.

rikirk · Sep 18, 2019

@Gergo Panker

Thanks for chiming in. Will follow your suggestion and 0% now on.

As far as the profile, I was not aware there are presets already available, guess because I am on Simsteering v2.

Not sure ACC would add one, but rF2 pleased the few Bodnar owners this year and if I remember correctly even raceroom has it.

Anyhow, congratulations for the great work with ACC, it delivers big time.

Novotny · Sep 19, 2019

Could/would anyone be kind enough to extrapolate some/or all of that to the CSL Elites?

Maybe it would be a good idea to have forums for specific wheels. So instead of cluttering up particular game forums with 8-9 guys looking different help for different set-ups, they could all be in a forum for their wheel, looking at threads about their issue?

rikirk · Sep 19, 2019

Can't agree more. I tried twice in the ACC forum but didn't go too far.

ThugUK · Sep 19, 2019

So I have a AF V2 DD wheel.
I don’t run Simcommander when gaming, I let the game set the FFB effects. But I do set the wheel up through SC by downloading its basics (strength etc) to the wheel before exiting SC.

What settings am I best using both in game and downloaded to my wheel through SC?

Am I best setting strength to 100% (currently 80%) in SC then reduce it in game? If so what do I put it to in game? How about the other settings?

Augusto Dufloth · Sep 19, 2019

Novotny said:
Could/would anyone be kind enough to extrapolate some/or all of that to the CSL Elites?

Maybe it would be a good idea to have forums for specific wheels. So instead of cluttering up particular game forums with 8-9 guys looking different help for different set-ups, they could all be in a forum for their wheel, looking at threads about their issue?

I have a csw 2.5, but the settings should be the same.

In game, gain set to 70-75. This is what will drive your clipping.

In wheel:
Force 100 (set to taste)
Dri -2
Damping 100 (low speed forces goes through this channel)
Spring 100 (never felt difference on this)
All other settings at default.