Thrustmaster TMX - FFB lacking much in the way of feedback compared to the ancient GTR2!

[Stingraymx]

Having used AMS for 18 months and read much about the brilliant FFB, I had just assumed that the "less than perfect" feedback from my TMX wheel was due to it being a fairly low end model.
However over the weekend (following the GTR2 Power & Glory article on RD) I installed GTR2 and the feedback when under-steering is like night and day when compared to AMS. It has a real feeling of grip, grip, grip, no grip as you understeer into the gravel (yeah i need to practice more to not go in the gravel !!!).
On AMS I do not get that feeling at all, so have to assume that its a settings issue. With GTR2 i just launched the game, ticked the option to reverse feedback and off I went, with great (relatively) feedback. So no special config. With AMS I have tried various things but to no avail, so can only assume I must be doing something wrong.
Anyone out there using a TMX or close relative with AMS and if so, what settings do you use? Thanks

 

[Marc Collins]

Can't help you directly, but have hope. Guarantee that if your wheel works well in GTR2, it will feel amazing and better in AMS once you get the right settings.

 

[Stingraymx]

cheers Marc....i live in hope

 

[Case_]

You could probably start by mentioning what *your* settings actually are, both in the wheel's control panel and in game, especially given that you say you have "tried various things" (which might also imply your settings are now far from default and it might be a good idea to start from scratch). Would probably be a lot quicker...

 

[Stingraymx]

Thanks Martin for the reply. Current settings are as the attached JPG's. Default wheel rotation in the TM setup is 900 degrees.

 

[Case_]

Well, that's pretty much what I'm using for my T300, apart from the strength (both in the control panel and in game), but that's to be expected. You do seem to have a rather high low force boost IMO, 40 % is way too much IMO (I'm at 10 and should probably go lower).

Also, I'd advice to put Spring and Damper in your wheel's control panel to default values (100 % I presume). I'm not sure if AMS is actually using them for anything off the top of my head, but apart from a few very specific games, there's no reason to ever change these (contrary to what many simracers will tell you, based on a very oudated rule of thumb that no longer applies).

 

[Marc Collins]

Well, that's pretty much what I'm using for my T300, apart from the strength (both in the control panel and in game), but that's to be expected. You do seem to have a rather high low force boost IMO, 40 % is way too much IMO (I'm at 10 and should probably go lower).

Also, I'd advice to put Spring and Damper in your wheel's control panel to default values (100 % I presume). I'm not sure if AMS is actually using them for anything off the top of my head, but apart from a few very specific games, there's no reason to ever change these (contrary to what many simracers will tell you, based on a very oudated rule of thumb that no longer applies).

Yep, turn your low-force boost WAY down (I use 6%). And agree with the 100% on all control panel settings. These do get used in different ways by different wheels in various titles.

 

[Stephen O'Sullivan]

You've probably already tried this, but just in case...

If you had to reverse your force feedback for GTR2, perhaps your AMS FFB should be at -80% instead of 80%.

 

[Case_]

BTW I've just tried GTR2 side by side with AMS to remind myself of how the FFB feels in that game. I've gone with the Stock Car V8 in AMS, since I thought that's a car fairly close to a GT3 car, so they should feel somewhat similar.

Honestly, I don't feel that much of a difference there, not even when it comes to the feeling of understeer. But GTR2 certainly feels more fake and exaggerated with "canned" effects added on - fairly similar to how the "Pure + Effects 2" or "Pure + Effects 3" feel (including the braking vibrations that don't really make much sense). There also seems to be a fairly strong centering spring that kinda drowns everything else. I certainly think the AMS FFB (and by that I mostly mean the "Pure 360/180" presets) is a lot more nuanced and realistic (as far as I can assume what "realistic" feels like).

But again, this is on T300, don't know how TMX compares to that as I've sadly never had a chance to try that wheel. I expect it feels fairly similar, though.

 

[Stingraymx]

thanks guys for taking time out to reply. I will give it a go tomorrow night when i am back at my PC...cheers

 

[CMGARAGE]

You do seem to have a rather high low force boost IMO, 40 % is way too much IMO (I'm at 10 and should probably go lower).

Yep, turn your low-force boost WAY down (I use 6%). And agree with the 100% on all control panel settings. These do get used in different ways by different wheels in various titles.

40% is fine. Reiza recommends 40-20% for Thrustmaster wheels. I'm pretty sure the game defaults to 40 when it detected my T300 for the first time (it was at 80 for my previous G27).

As a general rule of thumb the stronger the output of your wheel hardware the lower the FFB, so logitech wheels ~80%, TM 40-20% and you can essentially run 0 with a direct drive wheel.

As it's all personal taste, if less than that works for you, that's great but 40% is not too high according to Reiza.

I'm not sure where the TMX sits in terms of power in the TM range of products but it's worth noting ,for example, the T500 is more powerful than the 300 (despite being it's predecessor). So, in theory, the 500 would need less boost than the 300; on the assumption we had a magical number that was perfect for everyone.

Also, I personally keep the Thrustmaster strength at it's default 75%(?) as I've read it's supposed to effect linearity (I won't pretend to understand that) and that full strength kills your hardware (purely anecdotal).

You can then increase the FFB from inside the game and adjust each car to taste by adjusting the realfeel commands or editing the realfeel file.

If Martin's right that GTR uses a selection of canned effects, explore the FFB options that are 'pure + effects' in the Controller/settings menu (in-game). These add back in effects Reiza took out of their 'pure' FFB model, as far as I understand.

 

[Case_]

As it's all personal taste, if less than that works for you, that's great but 40% is not too high according to Reiza.

Fair enough, I certainly won't dispute that. It just seemed way too high to me, but maybe I'm set too low myself. I guess it works differently than I assumed then.

TMX is certainly weaker than even the T300, that's pretty much the consensus of people who have tried both.

Also, I personally keep the Thrustmaster strength at it's default 75%(?) as I've read it's supposed to effect linearity (I won't pretend to understand that) and that full strength kills your hardware (purely anecdotal).

I'm running 90 myself - if you turn the forced fan mode on, it should be no problem, in fact I'd expect it to wear the HW a lot less still than the default 75 % without forced fan. And the thing about linearity being best at 75 % is based on a flawed measurement methodology - if you do the proper measurements, you'll see the wheel's output is pretty much perfectly linear all the way up to 100 % strength.

Just to reiterate, though - pretty much none of what I've just mentioned applies to TMX, as that's a quite different wheel from the T300, so the default/recommended FFB strength settings are likely different. I'm not even sure if there's a fan inside the TMX.

 

[Stingraymx]

No fan that I have ever heard running in my TMX !

 

[Stingraymx]

Well gents i ended up here for now, tho may have to lower something (feedback strength or centre spring?) as its a bit of a workout after 20 mins!!...cheers for help

 

[Case_]

If you feel like the FFB is too strong, I'd suggest just changing the overall strength in the game or in the control panel (I tend to adjust the game so I don't have to change the control panel back and forth all the time, jumping between sims), or adjusting the FFB strength for the specific car (in general, high downforce cars usually feel heavier). Though when it comes to AMS, I personally prefer not to touch the car settings, Reiza took great care to make the defaults as intended.

 

[Spinelli]

- go into the realfeel file and add a touch of FrontGripEffect. It's not perfect but may give you better results. Use very small numbers at first. like 0.1 or even 0.01. You have to set this for each car and save it while not in the game.

- go into the realfeel file and lower smoothing. More smoothing from the game's side is, I'm guessing, the last thing your particular model of wheel needs. Set the number to at least half of default (most cars are either 2 or 4) or even try 0. You have to set this for each car and save it while not in the game.

- go into your controller file and set FFB steer force neutral range to 0. Save this while not in the game and, once in the game, don't touch a single option but go straight to your control settings and save them so that you have at least one controller profile saved with the FFB steer force neutral range set to 0.

- try lowering the low boost FFB to maybe around 7-15% but then set the control panel's FFB to 90-100%. My best feel, as well as most fun feel, when I used the Thrustmaster T300RS/TX was when I had it's overall strength set to 90% (95 and 100 % compressed forces too much but I loved 90%) but, then again, if you're already getting tired out after 20 mins at 75%, you may not want to do this.

- keep periodic and constant at 100%.

- damper and spring, I would keep at 0% for the wheel you have regardless of whether the game uses it or not (especially damper). GTR2 and AMS (ISI engine) use these, at least the damper and friction (not sure about spring) but I don't think AMS uses them if FFB's set to pure-with-no-effects. Regardless, I would disable them just in case, especially damper.

- set in-game overall FFB to around 70-80% to avoid most clipping.

 

[Case_]

Can't say I'm a big fan of modifying the RealFeel files - you're basically changing the values carefully set up by the devs to something different, you have to do it for every single car in the game separately, and every time the game updates or you need to verify the files as part of some troubleshooting, you have to redo the changes again.

Also, I fail to see the logic of keeping damper and spring at 0 %, especially when it is supposed to be regardless of whether or not the game uses these. That doesn't make any sense to me. If the game doesn't use these, then it doesn't really matter what you set them to, they won't affect your FFB in any way (contrary to popular belief), so you can leave them at default values no problem. And if the game uses them, you want these to *not* be set to 0 % because if you do, you're effectively taking away parts of the FFB the devs intended to be there. I believe AMS does not indeed use these, so it shouldn't matter how you set them, but for example AC uses the damper for simulating the steering resistance at very low speeds or when stationary, which you lose if you turn the damper to 0, and for example Dirt Rally uses both of these fairly extensively and if you turn them down to 0 %, you lose a considerable amount of tyre feel in the game (which basically means that anyone playing DR who follows this outdated advice to keep spring and damper at 0 doesn't get correct FFB in the game).

So really my advice would be the exact opposite - leave these at default and only turn them down if you have specific reason to do so. Only game I recall playing in the last year or so that required doing so was WRC7 before it was patched because they didn't originally provide enough options to tweak the FFB and were using these to a large amount to model the game's FFB, so adjusting these values was pretty much the only way of tweaking the FFB for the game.

 

[vee10]

Can't say I'm a big fan of modifying the RealFeel files - you're basically changing the values carefully set up by the devs to something different, you have to do it for every single car in the game separately, and every time the game updates or you need to verify the files as part of some troubleshooting, you have to redo the changes again.

Also, I fail to see the logic of keeping damper and spring at 0 %, especially when it is supposed to be regardless of whether or not the game uses these. That doesn't make any sense to me. If the game doesn't use these, then it doesn't really matter what you set them to, they won't affect your FFB in any way (contrary to popular belief), so you can leave them at default values no problem. And if the game uses them, you want these to *not* be set to 0 % because if you do, you're effectively taking away parts of the FFB the devs intended to be there. I believe AMS does not indeed use these, so it shouldn't matter how you set them, but for example AC uses the damper for simulating the steering resistance at very low speeds or when stationary, which you lose if you turn the damper to 0, and for example Dirt Rally uses both of these fairly extensively and if you turn them down to 0 %, you lose a considerable amount of tyre feel in the game (which basically means that anyone playing DR who follows this outdated advice to keep spring and damper at 0 doesn't get correct FFB in the game).

So really my advice would be the exact opposite - leave these at default and only turn them down if you have specific reason to do so. Only game I recall playing in the last year or so that required doing so was WRC7 before it was patched because they didn't originally provide enough options to tweak the FFB and were using these to a large amount to model the game's FFB, so adjusting these values was pretty much the only way of tweaking the FFB for the game.

Thanks for the information Martin, been running my T300 with spring and damper at 0% since I got it a few years ago I had read you should set them to 0% somewhere, but I tried putting them back to 100% last night, I didn't notice any difference on Rfactor 2 so I then tried it on Project Cars 2, wow what a difference. I thought I had a good setting anyway using one of the Jack Spade custom profiles and adjusting the various settings in game, but with the profiler settings now enabled my usual test car of a Porsche GT3 road car at Oulton Park felt stunning I could not stop smiling.

So once again thanks for posting this useful information and improving my setup

 

[Case_]

Cheers. The advice to set spring and damper at 0 originates in times when these were "add-on" effects basically hardcoded into the FFB drivers and applied on top of the FFB the game was sending to the wheel. So it made sense to set these to 0 to get a more "pure" FFB. That's not how it generally works anymore, haven't been the case for many years - spring and damper are now fully programmable, so it's up to the game to decide what to do with them, and if nothing, then they don't alter the FFB in any way. But people have been told to set these to 0 so many times by everyone they just do it possibly without even knowing why or understanding what they're doing - they've just been told by someone more experienced this is what you're supposed to do, so they do it (and I don't blame them).

 

[Marc Collins]

Well gents i ended up here for now, tho may have to lower something (feedback strength or centre spring?) as its a bit of a workout after 20 mins!!...cheers for helpView attachment 254736 View attachment 254737

It's supposed to be a workout

That's what makes AMS fun and immersive

Are you happy with the quality of the FFB now, though?

P.S., you have no center spring set, which is best. AMS will control that and it does not use an artificial center spring--no need with "pure" FFB.