PC1 Quick ? on FFB

[cthiggin]

After reading so many threads, and trying so many settings, for me, I have my FFB settings feeling real good - through Spindle / SOP / FFB, etc......took several hours..... and have FFB in game master at 100% - Tire Force at 116 etc. - and these settings feel good with feedback, bumps, kerbs, etc.

My ? - for this old guy, as good as the settings are, the wheel has just too much force....and just wears me out. I want to retain all my settings and their feedbacks, but how do I turn the overall force of wheel down so it doesn't wear me out???

I have a T500RS and in the TM Control Panel, the FFB is set to 65.

Your help in telling me where to turn down the strength would be most appreciated.

 

[Dennis]

Turning it down in the TM control panel to maybe 40 or 50 should do the job.

You might have to experiment a bit though how much you can turn down the strength in the CP before effects start to disappear.

Edit: No matter what, always keep the in-game strength at 100%.

 

[cthiggin]

Hi Dennis,
GREAT.........
First, turn it down in TM Control Panel where I like the feel, THEN, if I have lost some of the "feelings and settings" I have now and like in pCars UI - I "just" turn those up....correct???
FFB in game stays 100%.

Thanks so much for your quick reply.

Tom

 

[Dennis]

First, turn it down in TM Control Panel where I like the feel, THEN, if I have lost some of the "feelings and settings" I have now and like in pCars UI - I "just" turn those up....correct???

Yup exactly

 

[cthiggin]

THANK YOU so very much for giving me such an "easy answer"...
Appreciate it friend.

 

[Brandon Wright]

I have the same issue, to get the FFB feeling how I like it I end up with a pretty heavy wheel. But if I lower the gain value in my profiler it doesn't feel right, and if I lower the master scale it doesn't feel right, if I turn up any of the x,y,z,m values to compensate things start to feel weird. There seems to be no happy medium so I just end up with a heavy wheel that wears me out. I've spent close to 25 hours tinkering with the FFB and still don't have it to where it feels "good", just "acceptable".

 

[cthiggin]

Hi Brandon,
Yes, very same issue with me - FFB feels great now, BUT, wheel is just too heavy.....
As a "test" last night, I went into the T500 Control Panel and turned the FFB down from 65 to
30 and it made "very little difference"...........I even went down to 10 on the FFB, and the wheel
was much lighter, but I had lost the FFB feeling in pCars....SO, took it back to 65.
OK - next thing, I started turning the "Dampening" down in the Control Panel, and finally at
16%, the wheel feels "just right" not too heavy, not too light, but where I normally use it in AC.
Back into pCars, I have lost 'just a little' of my good settings, but they're still there, so tonight
I will tweak those and hopefully have it where I like it............FINALLY.
May want to give this a try, because when I started turning Wheel Force and Master Spindle down,
the wheel was still too heavy and I was losing the good feelings I have set up.

 

[Brandon Wright]

My dampening is always at zero in my control panel so unfortunately that probably won't do much for me. But I'm confident that another 25-100 hours of tinkering with FFB settings should finally get me to where I'm ready to race..........so, just in time for Xmas!

 

[Msportdan]

Ive just done some testing, and you can get the road feel, its lovely ,but it clips like a goodun! and I cant get rid of it.. So you have high SOP dif value and you cant turn the wheel around the corner lol

 

[cthiggin]

Fellows,
As I stated above, turning the dampening down in TM Control Panel has really helped me in making the wheel "easier to turn", not real soft, but not like having to be a lumberjack to turn the wheel around corners.
As I also stated, with the pCars setting that were just great, but wheel too hard to turn, I am going to have to "tweak" my settings up, just a little to get my perfect sweet spot again.
I am very opened minded and realize there is a learning curve, but gee whiz, you shouldn't have to be an automotive engineer to get it figured out.

Thanks fellows for your replies and info.

Tom

 

[Brandon Wright]

LIke I said, my dampening in my control panel is always at zero so I can't turn it down any more than that. I either have a lumberjack wheel, or a wheel that starts to tighten up and then goes light half way through the turn. I would like to find something in between the two.

 

[Ryan Soucy]

Spindle value too high? For my Fanatec wheel, the sweet spot is 42-46 depending on the car. (from the ridiculous -to me - default of 26)

 

[bmanic]

LIke I said, my dampening in my control panel is always at zero so I can't turn it down any more than that. I either have a lumberjack wheel, or a wheel that starts to tighten up and then goes light half way through the turn. I would like to find something in between the two.

If it goes light half way through the turn it's because you are not at optimum grip/slip-angle. This is one of the features of a highly advanced tire model. You can check it yourself if you download the community telemetry app thing.

However, having said that.. there are instances where the wheel can go too light even though you have not lost too much grip (that is, you are NOT understeering even if the wheel feels light). If this happens it usually means you do not have Arm Angle (a FFB setting in the individual car setup menu.. FFB tab) for a car set correctly. Try increasing this value until the "wheel goes light suddenly while turning" goes away. You can also tweak the FFB to be much closer to other simulators simply by making a FFB setup where Fy is dominating (tire lateral forces). This kind of guarantees that the wheel never goes completely limp.. but be warned, this WILL slow you down and you will not learn how to drive faster laptimes as you will not have the exact optimum grip information.

 

[bmanic]

Spindle value too high? For my Fanatec wheel, the sweet spot is 42-46 depending on the car. (from the ridiculous -to me - default of 26)

42 to 46 spindle multiplier is guaranteed FFB clipping in most cars if you have the main Tire Force setting (in controller preferences) at default 100 or higher.. unless you are also using soft clipping. Then you can safely bump up the spindle multiplier. The default 26 spindle multiplier is there for a reason.. it guarantees that most of the FFB signal is not clipping (except on high peaks on very high downforce cars).

To be clear, this is the topology:

Tire model -> Spindle multiplier (26 default) -> Fx, Fy, Fz, Mz, SoP lateral and vertical (these are all parallel of course) -> Arm Angle -> Relative Gain Adjust -> Body -> Arm (stiffness or whatever it's called) -> Soft Clipping -> Scoop -> Tighten Center -> Damping (in-game damping saturation in controller preferences)

 

[Brandon Wright]

If it goes light half way through the turn it's because you are not at optimum grip/slip-angle. This is one of the features of a highly advanced tire model. You can check it yourself if you download the community telemetry app thing.

However, having said that.. there are instances where the wheel can go too light even though you have not lost too much grip (that is, you are NOT understeering even if the wheel feels light). If this happens it usually means you do not have Arm Angle (a FFB setting in the individual car setup menu.. FFB tab) for a car set correctly. Try increasing this value until the "wheel goes light suddenly while turning" goes away. You can also tweak the FFB to be much closer to other simulators simply by making a FFB setup where Fy is dominating (tire lateral forces). This kind of guarantees that the wheel never goes completely limp.. but be warned, this WILL slow you down and you will not learn how to drive faster laptimes as you will not have the exact optimum grip information.

Thanks. I have your base settings applied and the Arm Angle is pretty much the only thing I adjust. But, even when I make huge arm adjustments I don't notice a whole lot of difference and still can't get a feeling I fully like. It feels very bizarre to me when it goes light part way through a turn and really reduces confidence in my inputs/car control. And the lightness happens at the same spot every time (when I move the wheel more than about 70º in either direction) so it doesn't feel like something random, such as having the wrong grip/slip-angle. I also notice little-to-no difference when adjusting the x,z,m settings, even if I go to extremes. I can feel added weight if I crank up the Fy setting, but it feels artificial and numbs most of the other feedback.

As I said earlier, I have close to 25 hours just in fiddling with the FFB in this game and honestly I've just about reached my limit and feel like throwing in the towel at this point. I bought the game to race, not spend my life in settings menus. It really confuses me as to how so many other sims have managed to have "great" FFB with just a handful of settings, but it's near impossible to achieve even "good" FFB with two or three dozen settings in pCARS. It doesn't help that only a game developer can understand what any of the settings do. Oh well.

 

[bmanic]

Could it be Scoop that is bothering you? Also, is it the same problem no matter what car you are using? If it always goes light in at the same angle then it's definitely not a slip/grip thing but a real problem.. perhaps even a bug.

Keep in mind though that if you turn a wheel 70 degrees in a GT3 or another car with slick tires, in a moderately fast corner, you are in fact turning the wheel too much. Most of the cars with default setups and camber seem to have optimum turning lock at just 45 to 60 degrees in many of the corners.. it's very uncommon for me to turn more than that or the car starts scrubbing/understeering/biting less. However, with many of the street cars you'll be able to turn a lot more.

You can kind of check this / rule it out as loss of grip or a bug by changing the steering ratio of the car in the car setup. Set it to very slow so that you have to turn the wheel a lot.. now see if the "light FFB spot" is still in the same place. If it's still in the same place then it is a real issue/bug but if it moved then you are overdriving the car/turning too much and thus losing grip.

 

[Brandon Wright]

Could it be Scoop that is bothering you? Also, is it the same problem no matter what car you are using? If it always goes light in at the same angle then it's definitely not a slip/grip thing but a real problem.. perhaps even a bug.

Keep in mind though that if you turn a wheel 70 degrees in a GT3 or another car with slick tires, in a moderately fast corner, you are in fact turning the wheel too much. Most of the cars with default setups and camber seem to have optimum turning lock at just 45 to 60 degrees in many of the corners.. it's very uncommon for me to turn more than that or the car starts scrubbing/understeering/biting less. However, with many of the street cars you'll be able to turn a lot more.

You can kind of check this / rule it out as loss of grip or a bug by changing the steering ratio of the car in the car setup. Set it to very slow so that you have to turn the wheel a lot.. now see if the "light FFB spot" is still in the same place. If it's still in the same place then it is a real issue/bug but if it moved then you are overdriving the car/turning too much and thus losing grip.

I have no idea what scoop is or what it does, most of the descriptions are complete Greek to me. But yes, it's pretty much the same in all cars. 70° is just a guesstimate, it feels like it's usually somewhere between 45° and 90°. In faster corners where I don't have to turn the wheel as much it usually feels good, but in slower turns I definitely have to turn the wheel more than 66° even in the cars you mentioned, and that's when things start to go numb. Maybe that's just how it's supposed to be? I'm still fairly new to PC's so all I have is a decade+ of console racing to compare to, which obviously isn't the best. But I don't really feel it in other PC sims, I kinda did in AC but was able to cure it by upping the min force. I've upoed the dz removal which helped some.

Brings me to another question. pCARS automatically changes your steering lock based on the car you're driving, right? Because some cars I have a helluva time getting to turn around slow turns or hairpins. I had the R18 around Spa last night and the final chicane and La Source required a LOT of steering input (like 180° and more), even in first gear. Is that normal? Wheel is calibrated per your recommendations, when it's physically vertical and not when it shows 900.

Thanks for all your help. I'm still fairly new to the PC world and many years of console mediocrity seems to be making it difficult for me to figure some things out.

 

[Brandon Wright]

Ok, maybe disregard all of that. I just got the F1 rim today, got it all calibrated and applied your settings, took the Oreca out to Spa and it felt bloody great. Totally different than how this game has felt so far. The car FFB settings were untouched, the only real difference is I had a lower gain value in the profiler.

Then I took the R18 back out and it felt a lot better too. Still took a lot to turn it, but I guess that must just be the lock on that car because the Oreca turned nicely. I'm not sure what's different, but I think this would suggest I just have some words crossed on my end and it's not an issue with the game.

 

[SnappyDEe]

Ok, maybe disregard all of that. I just got the F1 rim today, got it all calibrated and applied your settings, took the Oreca out to Spa and it felt bloody great. Totally different than how this game has felt so far. The car FFB settings were untouched, the only real difference is I had a lower gain value in the profiler.

Then I took the R18 back out and it felt a lot better too. Still took a lot to turn it, but I guess that must just be the lock on that car because the Oreca turned nicely. I'm not sure what's different, but I think this would suggest I just have some words crossed on my end and it's not an issue with the game.

You got your F1 rim! Yes!
You won't be taking that thing off for quite some time. Enjoy.

 

[Brandon Wright]

You got your F1 rim! Yes!
You won't be taking that thing off for quite some time. Enjoy.

Yep, I like it. I like driving the vintage cars so I'll take it off for those, but it will be ok for modern race cars. I'll have to re-do the settings for the calibration on the regular rim to see if I can get it feeling as good.