read more: FFB Tweaks

I've worked with x4fab to add a new feature to the Custom Shaders Patch (as of 0.1.51) and the description is fairly brief so I thought it's worth going into a bit more detail about what this does.

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Gyro Implementation

[ ] Active check to enable
Strength 25% adjust effect strength
AC has an "Experimental Gyro" FFB effect whose purpose was adding gyroscopic effects to the steering. It never lost the experimental tag and all it's generally recommended for is damping down oscillations on direct drive wheels.
This is that, developed slightly further based on my understanding of the nature of gyroscopic forces. I have a pretty solid case for making this change, and I believe this force exists in actual cars, and AC's original experimental gyro does not.

The developed version still suits the purpose of damping oscillations, but more importantly it decouples the body from the front wheels - so if the front wheels are pointing in a direction and the body moves around them, no gyroscopic precession happens, and no force is generated. Concretely, what we're talking about here is oversteer - on the original experimental gyro, the force acts counter to self-alignment during oversteer. With this new implementation, self-alignment is allowed to occur freely, or, if the oversteer is so quick that the wheels can't self-align, it'll actually push in the direction of alignment.

25% is simply equivalent to the original force multiplier used on experimental gyro when merging it with other FFB forces. Ultimately, the same as the other amplification ffb effects like road and slip effect, the slider is available to magnify it if your hardware's limitations are obscuring the effect.
As of CSP 0.1.53 the strength slider is outdated. A calculation using the suspension geometry now provides the right precession-based force for each car.
The description is a little bit misleading; this replaces "Experimental Gyro" so disabling it is superfluous, if this is Active, experimental gyro is not. Still, it won't hurt to disable experimental gyro and be certain it's off.

Now that I've said what the intent is, I will also note the following: this changes FFB in pretty much every dynamic situation. It's not just an improvement for drift cars or for vintage cars that oversteer constantly; any time the car moves around on the tires it feels slightly different from before. To me, it's a positive change, it's clearer what the car is doing, and I have heard similarly positive comments from testers. Nonetheless, I am not omniscient, I have not driven all these cars in real life, it's up to you to decide whether it improves your game or gives you better sim feeling the rubber or what. Modifying games to improve the FFB is a fine tradition starting with some extremely thorough efforts in rfactor1, and this is no different (maybe a bit easier to install).

I will note that it slightly increases max forces when cornering so if you have stuff set up to barely clip, you'll need an adjustment downward in global ffb mult.

Range Compression

Range compression 100% - 100% is the "default off" of this effect
[ ] Range compression assist - check to convert cars' "steer assist" into range compression.

New FFB Tweak available as of 0.1.53. The name comes from the audio world, where dynamic range compression means bringing up the quiet sounds while leaving loud sounds at their original volume. This is a much more second derivative friendly version of the Gamma effect.

The percentage is straightforward: Set it to how much you want to multiply small forces. Or adjust it in sync with your overall gain if you want to maintain the level of small forces and change large forces. For example, 200% compression + 50% gain = original 100% on small forces, larger forces decrease. If you're curious, the curve at the point of maximum force is simply the inverse, 200% compression will cause large forces 50% of the original delta in force. But in combination with 50% gain, you're moving the original maximum force downward and the ceiling before the game clips is much higher.

Think of this like power steering: you only want it to assist the heavy forces and give you maximum feel of the light forces.

This is very much an "adjust to taste" thing, it operates smoothly enough that you're safe running it upward of 300%, and I have seen IRL data indicating that manufacturers effectively go as high as 600% in power steering systems, when they want to bring 20+N forces down to a comfortable 2-3N.

Steer assist is a built in per-car feature of AC that applies a gamma function to that car's FFB. If you check Range compression assist, then FFB Tweaks will calculate an appropriate range compression adjustment, and disable steer assist. This should give you a far more normal FFB feeling (no weird bumps around center) while retaining the original goal of giving high downforce cars enough low-speed FFB to be drivable.
 
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  • Deleted member 197115

You do know you're talking to the people who devved the addon and who have access to code which shows what it *really* does?
Access to the code (legal or not) means nothing if you break existing contract. Things are not black and white as it turned out, even if gyro calculation is mathematically correct now, it breaks dynamic damping portion that was part of the feature.
You can call that wrong formula, I see it as intended by design behavior, especially considering that feature was carried into ACC essentially unchanged and was even renamed to reflect that part of the function.
It works better for some wheels, makes it completely broken for others. No harm to have two flavors to keep everyone happy.
So yes, gyro formula is right now, DD wheel dynamic damping is broken.
Let's leave it there and move on.
 
Access to the code (legal or not) means nothing if you break existing contract. Things are not black and white as it turned out, even if gyro calculation is mathematically correct now, it breaks dynamic damping portion that was part of the feature.
You can call that wrong formula, I see it as intended by design behavior, especially considering that feature was carrying out into ACC essentially unchanged and was even renamed to reflect that part of the function.
It works better for some wheels, makes it completely broken for others. No harm to have two flavors to keep everyone happy.
So yes, gyro formula is right now, DD wheel dynamic damping is broken.
Let's leave it there and move on.
I don't disagree or anything, but I was just saying that a bunch of people are calling the devs trolls or whatever and trying to tell them how the code in front of their face works.

It's a bit unsightly.
 
  • Deleted member 197115

I don't disagree or anything, but I was just saying that a bunch of people are calling the devs trolls or whatever and trying to tell them how the code in front of their face works.

It's a bit unsightly.
I don't think anyone called anyone troll, except ask to keep irrelevant blabber out of context.
 
Access to the code (legal or not) means nothing if you break existing contract. Things are not black and white as it turned out, even if gyro calculation is mathematically correct now, it breaks dynamic damping portion that was part of the feature.
You can call that wrong formula, I see it as intended by design behavior, especially considering that feature was carried into ACC essentially unchanged and was even renamed to reflect that part of the function.
It works better for some wheels, makes it completely broken for others. No harm to have two flavors to keep everyone happy.
So yes, gyro formula is right now, DD wheel dynamic damping is broken.
Let's leave it there and move on.
An "intended by design behavior" that is entirely fictional...it's like using the enhanced understeer effect. The point wasn't to please the users, we don't really care if anyone likes it. It was developed because the FFB felt wrong and it turns out there was a physical reason for it, so we made the force feedback calculations more true to life. If you don't like that that fictional feature isn't present with this enabled, that's fine, but taking up 4 pages of a thread saying quite literally nothing more than that opinion is rather wasteful.
 
  • Deleted member 197115

Did you check with Kunos devs if it's indeed not intentional, as dynamic damping was advertised and still advertised as a feature?
 
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  • Deleted member 197115

I don't think I ever said it was unintentional, just that it was not physically based on anything. Could well have been intentional, could just as likely be a mistake, because it's certainly not correct from a physical standpoint.
I did not disagree on that. Could be side effect they liked in the end and promoted as feature.
 
The trouble is the principles of the two are similar enough that your effective range is from "twice as strong centering force" majority of the time to "cancel each other out" in situations where they disagree so running both at once doesn't actually work, it just has the same characteristics of the new gyro but much too strong.

The only way it should oscillate is if the actual simulated car is oscillating though, it's not too hard to create a fishtail positive feedback loop due to the small delay in ffb and I can't say whether that happens in real cars.

That said I did do a version of the patch where you can turn both on, just gonna come out whenever 1.53 is done I guess.
 
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  • Deleted member 197115

The trouble is the principles of the two are similar enough that your effective range is from "twice as strong centering force" majority of the time to "cancel each other out" in situations where they disagree so running both at once doesn't actually work, it just has the same characteristics of the new gyro but much too strong.
And I have experienced exactly that with beta version, this is very accurate description.
 
  • Deleted member 197115

Not sure if that helps any, but after playing with this again today discovered that gyro stabilization on straightaways doesn't work that well either.
Was driving BMW Z4 GT3 and after swinging wheel side to side it couldn't self tame and just kept oscillating with increasing amplitude, when with original gyro it was calming down pretty quickly, no matter what. Was using default 25% srength.
Guess at certain wheel angles new gyro starts acting in opposite direction to the original, making oscillation worse.
 

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