Podium DD's VS Simucube 2's

[Darren Byrne]

Hi guys, the past while I was trying to find good comparisons between these two models of dd's. Has anyone tested both ? I understand that the software for these aren't complete yet but is there any clear winner here ? thanks.

 

[RCHeliguy]

OK, my highly opinionated 2 cents on family finances. My kids have no student loans and even though my daughter graduated suma cum laude with an engineering degree from GA Tech, she is not living large.

I have always had toys, BUT they never competed with my children's needs. I'm empty nesting now, self employed and can indulge myself but only after I indulge my wife. Priorities matter.

 

[Vunnible]

OK, my highly opinionated 2 cents on family finances. My kids have no student loans and even though my daughter graduated suma cum laude with an engineering degree from GA Tech, she is not living large.

I have always had toys, BUT they never competed with my children's needs. I'm empty nesting now, self employed and can indulge myself but only after I indulge my wife. Priorities matter.

It was a joke man. Lighten up.

 

[AlexN]

How does this relates to what happens in your car IRL? Is this how it works IRL?

With some sim wheels, the mass and inertia of the wheel will cause it to shoot past the target point. You counter this with artificial damping, basically a negative acceleration on the wheel. Real cars have natural damping because the wheel is connected to other components. Sim wheels are only connected to their own motor shaft.

There’s two ways this can go wrong with a sim wheel. One, the damping might not match the feel and behavior of real damping. Two, the wheel can overshoot the target point, then attempt to correct and overshoot in the other direction, never settling on the target point and instead violently oscillating back and forth. (This can happen even when driving in a straight line due to road bumps)

#2 is most noticeable when you take your hands off the wheel, because your hands act as an additional damper. I’ve never driven a car where the steering can fall into a loop of increasingly violent oscillation, so I’d say this behavior is undesirable (but very common) in a sim wheel.

I was pleasantly surprised that my SC2 doesn’t do this. Now, you can get it to do this by adjusting the settings to fairly extreme values... the SC2 software and firmware seems flexible enough that it can mimic the behavior of other wheels, both good and bad.

Edit: I should clarify that I believe this is down to better signal processing in the SC2. As @Spinelli has pointed out, the APIs for controlling the wheel are a bit lacking and it’s easy to see how stuff can go wrong when you are sending torque at 60hz (iRacing) and expect the wheel to magically integrate that into velocity and again into position, all without significant error from the game’s ground-truth wheel position.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

I was pleasantly surprised that my SC2 doesn’t do this.

This is generalization and highly depends on sim and settings.
Assetto Corsa and ACC for instance with Gyro in one and Dynamic Damping in the other, which is essentially the same thing, doesn't do it even with damper set to 0.
Other titles lacking that feature require healthy dose of Dampening to take care of it, which eats details and makes wheel numb and less reactive.
Seems like Ulra Low Latency filter in SC2 can help with oscillation at slightly lower damper settings, but it does some other things and GD is tight-lipped on what exactly, making it more of a mystery ingredient with some unexpected side effects.

 

[AlexN]

This is generalization and highly depend on sim and settings.
Assetto Corsa and ACC for instance with Gyro in one and Dynamic Damping in the other, which is essentially the same thing, doesn't do it even with damper set to 0.
Other titles lacking that feature require healthy dose of Dampening to take care of it, which eats details and makes wheel numb and less reactive.
Seems like Ulra Low Latency filter in SC2 can help with oscillation at slightly lower damper settings, but it does some other things and GD is tight-lipped on what exactly, making it more of a mystery ingredient with some unexpected side effects.

Yes, that’s a good point, it’s not going to be perfect for everyone. For me, and for the titles I play, it feels great. And I highly appreciate the additional flexibility to tune this over the DD2, where I was unhappy with it in every title and there was nothing I could do about it.

It’s hard to draw objective comparisons between all of the wheels out there. Their implementations and how well they integrate with each title will all vary. Personal taste and priorities will vary. Given that, I appreciate the flexibility the SC2 offers over the DD2.

 

[AlexN]

Also, I believe that it is not possible to have a “perfect” wheel given the limitations of the data coming out of the simulators - update frequency and latency, for example. The “magic” I describe where the wheel “just works” is a happy outcome from the SC2’s reconstruction filters. Better, more transparent signal processing is a good thing, and the SC2 offers more of this than the DD2 (even if it may not be perfect).

If I could get 1000Hz back-and-forth update rates between the wheel and game, I’d absolutely prefer that. But... that’s not where we are

 

[Cote Dazur]

With some sim wheels, the mass and inertia of the wheel will cause it to shoot past the target point. You counter this with artificial damping, basically a negative acceleration on the wheel. Real cars have natural damping because the wheel is connected to other components. Sim wheels are only connected to their own motor shaft.

There’s two ways this can go wrong with a sim wheel. One, the damping might not match the feel and behavior of real damping. Two, the wheel can overshoot the target point, then attempt to correct and overshoot in the other direction, never settling on the target point and instead violently oscillating back and forth. (This can happen even when driving in a straight line due to road bumps)

#2 is most noticeable when you take your hands off the wheel, because your hands act as an additional damper. I’ve never driven a car where the steering can fall into a loop of increasingly violent oscillation, so I’d say this behavior is undesirable (but very common) in a sim wheel.

I was pleasantly surprised that my SC2 doesn’t do this. Now, you can get it to do this by adjusting the settings to fairly extreme values... the SC2 software and firmware seems flexible enough that it can mimic the behavior of other wheels, both good and bad.

Edit: I should clarify that I believe this is down to better signal processing in the SC2. As @Spinelli has pointed out, the APIs for controlling the wheel are a bit lacking and it’s easy to see how stuff can go wrong when you are sending torque at 60hz (iRacing) and expect the wheel to magically integrate that into velocity and again into position, all without significant error from the game’s ground-truth wheel position.

Thank you for the long and detailled post, but my question in regards to your original comment was: How does this relates to what happens in your car IRL? Is this how it works IRL? Key word is IRL (In Real Life)
I believe that what you are describing is how a SIM wheel reacts to FFB input, but not necessarily how it works in areal car with a real wheel, hence my question to you.

 

[AlexN]

Thank you for the long and detailled post, but my question in regards to your original comment was: How does this relates to what happens in your car IRL? Is this how it works IRL? Key word is IRL (In Real Life)
I believe that what you are describing is how a SIM wheel reacts to FFB input, but not necessarily how it works in areal car with a real wheel, hence my question to you.

IRL, my car's wheel does not oscillate and become unstable, and if I gradually let my hand off the wheel in a smooth turn, it will smoothly unwind to center. I was able to reproduce this, for the games I play, on an SC2... but not a DD2 (the DD2 becomes unstable).

The SC2 offers more options for filtering the unwanted behavior out. You can also eliminate it on the DD2, but the less flexible filters mean that you have less control over the side-effects. In my experience, I couldn't get the DD2 to a happy place in this area, without compromising on the behavior when actually holding onto the wheel (which arguably matters more).

 

[Jivesauce]

IRL, my car's wheel does not oscillate and become unstable, and if I gradually let my hand off the wheel in a smooth turn, it will smoothly unwind to center.

Is this in a street driving situation, or on track? In a turn with the grip really loaded up the suspension can definitely snap back hard enough for momentum to carry it past center. But on the other hand the only times I can think of where an oscillation continued to build and got worse and worse until a spin is more due to a student overcorrecting or being behind in their corrections.

Regardless, I agree that FFB does some strange stuff sometimes in this area, and that the super-hard pull back towards center that Spinelli pointed out is weird. Not the motion so much, just the force of it.

 

[AlexN]

Is this in a street driving situation, or on track? In a turn with the grip really loaded up the suspension can definitely snap back hard enough for momentum to carry it past center. But on the other hand the only times I can think of where an oscillation continued to build and got worse and worse until a spin is more due to a student overcorrecting or being behind in their corrections.

Regardless, I agree that FFB does some strange stuff sometimes in this area, and that the super-hard pull back towards center that Spinelli pointed out is weird. Not the motion so much, just the force of it.

Yeah, not like what you’re describing... the behavior when smoothly exiting a gentle turn, and even when driving in a straight line, can result in the wheel bouncing left/right of center more and more until the wheel is making half-turns left/right at a dangerous (as in, don’t stick your fingers in there) rate. The overshoot gets interpreted by the game as steering input, so the game tells the wheel to go the other way, it overshoots again (by more), repeat.

 

[Wmacky]

I'm rather new to sims and such, and was quite shocked at the prices of rims. I'm not cheap. I've purchased a P1 cockpit, added full motion, bought a SC2, and even a $900 Hotas for DCS. Didn't bat a eye at pricing. But, this rim situation! I'm just having a real struggle with the perceived worth. I feel a very good rim with buttons, and shifters (No LCD) should be closer to $400. I got frustrated with what I feel was a lack of value, and bought a plain Sparco rim for now, while I think this thing through.....

 

[RCHeliguy]

Everyone has built in sensibilities about what they consider reasonable and what is obscene.

I just had new soles and heels put on some Johnson & Murphy oxfords. A new pair of good quality oxfords are about $400-500 and a really nice pair can go above $1000. Some people see that as obscene. I got the shoes I'm having resoled in 1993. These shoes are typically good for about 3 soles. BTW J&M has had a downturn and fallen out of favor. Their highest line shoe is now only about $270.

Anyway, I considered much of this sim racing hardware obscene and then one day I had a WTF moment and haven't looked back.

 

[Wmacky]

Anyway, I considered much of this sim racing hardware obscene and then one day I had a WTF moment and haven't looked back.

Haha, I've done the same, just currently having a tougher time applying that mindset to rims....

BTW, I've been meaning to message you for a little bit of your mechanical expertise if you don't mind?

 

[Deleted member 197115]

I'm rather new to sims and such, and was quite shocked at the prices of rims. I'm not cheap. I've purchased a P1 cockpit, added full motion, bought a SC2, and even a $900 Hotas for DCS. Didn't bat a eye at pricing. But, this rim situation! I'm just having a real struggle with the perceived worth. I feel a very good rim with buttons, and shifters (No LCD) should be closer to $400. I got frustrated with what I feel was a lack of value, and bought a plain Sparco rim for now, while I think this thing through.....

Wheel plates prices are all over the place, there are:
- extremes like Precision Sim Engineering (will cost you soul, but guess you can resole it, like 3 times )
- midrange like SimFai, Fi-Tech, Ascher Racing (my favorite), Cube Controls
- budget options Polsimer, Sim Racing Coach
The list if far from complete, seems like we are getting more and more options these days with DD wheels gaining popularity.
So yeah, you can find option in $400 range.

 

[mrbean_phillip]

Just for those guys battling oscillation, the best filter to counter that is primarily friction, with a bit of damping and inertia. Not the other way around...

Cheers,
Beano

 

[Deleted member 197115]

But the way it works is a bit crude as a "constant resistance to turn the wheel".
Damper is more intelligent and gets stronger with acceleration it needs to resist, better for preserving details esp. combined with ULL that let you drop damper even more.
But there is no one formula that works for every sim and everyone. Another advantage of SC2 is that you can tune it to your personal taste.
BTW, SC2 native friction implementation is tons better than that DirectInput buzzing thing we had in MMos.

 

[TheNatural]

Ascher Racing (my favorite)

I decided to go with the Fanatec GT3 R Replica Rim with the Ascher B16L-SC. I've heard too many good things about the Ascher wireless button boxes

 

[RCHeliguy]

BTW, I've been meaning to message you for a little bit of your mechanical expertise if you don't mind?

Sure. Now I'm curious what you are trying to solve.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Wheel plates prices are all over the place

Your favorite Ascher makes great stuff that many swear by. In fact PSE uses Ascher analog clutches if you want clutches on a wheel.

My PSE wheel has is a custom rim, thicker than the stock Sparco rim, with a custom cover over it that is grippy with or without gloves and is very low maintenance compared to leather or suede.

I've noticed that Cube and a couple other custom rim companies have picked up on the 3D surfaces around the buttons making them easier to feel for in VR, but that was a big selling point for me.

The rotaries even Barry at SRG said were the best he ever felt and he was going to try to fund the source.

Just saying that there is some value and from what I can see PSE is currently best of breed.

 

[TheNatural]

Well, after all of your input I just ordered my SC2 Pro and B15L-SC from Simracingbay. Those guys over there are legends.

Picked up the GT3 R replica rim from fanatec to put on the box. I was considering a momo mod 30 but the 100 euro price difference seemed a bit much. I've held the fana rim in my hands and it's definitely quality.