Steering rotation and lock - yet another variable thats been confusing my poor brain along with the car setup variables....
A couple of weeks ago I saw a post about reducing the centering spring in Logitech Profiler - I was running it at 75%, but had not taken much notice since I thought that ticking the 'allow game to adjust settings' would take care of it. However when I reduced this way down to like 5% suddenly I found more 'feel' for the road and more control as I was no longer fighting a spring that wanted to pull the wheel back to centre - this brought my wheel back to life and meant I could turn 900 degrees of rotation back on, and actually use it...
but I was using 15 degrees of lock.. - now I know many use variable lock depending on the car/track combo and that setup advice often says, choose lock thats appropriate to the tightest bend on the track - however, I find this just adds to the confusion and learning curve. Think about it like this - If you set lock at 15 degrees for one track then at the next 20 degrees - what your actually doing is altering the steering ratio (or how far you have to move the steering wheel for a given amount of turn of the front wheels) - and thats gonna confuse your brain imagine you REAL car if you got in it one day and the amount you had to move the steering wheel to turn the corner out of your road had changed - instead of turning the wheel 1/2 a turn left to make the corner you now had to turn it 3/4 of a turn.. Think you would get to your destination? Would your brain be confused and disorientated?
Anyway this thread got me thinking and I decided to go for the OP and Jarrods' steering ration of 15:1 (for every 15 degrees you turn the steering wheel you wheels turn by 1 degree), which meant (with my 900 degrees of rotation) that I needed a steering lock of 30. (900/2/15 = 30).
Now its early days, as I only did this yesterday but first impressions are -
1) Applying a consistent steering ratio - is more important that the rotation and lock because it means you have consistent steering.
2) Turning the centering spring down or off in Logitech Profiler means you can feel the full FFB, as it was meant, because its not working against the centering spring.
3) Having the larger lock doesn't mean I have to use it, just that I have more opposite lock available for my frequent 'unplanned excusion corrections'.
4) because I am using 900 degrees I now have more sensitivity in not only my steering but also in FFB - if I went over a kerb with 200 degrees of Wheel Rotation the ffb would feel like a quick vibrating rumble - with 900 (and that dumb centering spring down) ffb over kerbs now has a definitive knock, knock, knock as I go over each raised lump and the bumps from it are transferred through my wheel. (Don't know if I've explained what i mean here properly)
5) This wheel setup seems to work for me - I'm not necessarily going to be faster, but I don't race to be fastest I race for the feeling and immersion, although having a consistent steering ratio will help improve my lap times I am sure.
6) 15:1 steering ratio examples would be Rotation/Lock - 900/30 - 400/13.3 - 540/18 - 600/20 - 390/13 - 450/15 - 270/9 - 360/12 = All of these setting will mean you turn the steering wheel the same amount for a certain amount of lock on the front wheels - obviously the 900/30 degree lock one will mean that you can carry on steering another 21 degrees after the 270/9 has reached its limit.
Sorry for the long post - It started out with the intention of, hopefully, helping a few others avoid the months and months of headscratching and confusion that I've had trying to get setups working - If it does that for one person out there then GREAT, although I do fear I may well just be adding to the confusion with all these numbers..