Hi,

I started playing with force feedback wheels, and as I noticed this is the point where most people had already given up or it's just simply out of their interest.

Anyway, I'm having a hard time finding good writings about decent force feedback "simulation", so I have to take the hard way, figuring it out.

Hopefuly some of you are also into this topic :)

Here are some notices and questions that arose:

- There is a strange behavior even if driving straight, the steering wheel wants to "go slalom", I noticed the same effect with some AAA driving game, but not with Gran Turismo. Maybe it's the toe-in or camber that generates some torque, which are not equal for both wheels and "magnifies" with speed. My quick solution is to have a dead-zone and some damping at the center, so I can release the wheel at 300km/h and not hitting the wall :)

But it feels there is no grip around the center. It builds up as I turn but not instantly.

- I'm using the good old Pacejka to get the aligning moment, but it not incorporates the caster angle, is that an important factor, or can that be neglected? Also, where should the Mz curve's peak be? At the peak of Fy's? Or should it go back to zero at Max Fy?

- Road surface feedback is what I did yesterday. I'm using constant force for aligning moment, so it seemed obvoius that I should add some "noise" to the current FF force depending on the surface, but it just doesn't make that rumble effect that I expected. Am I on the good way or should I turn my attention to custom FF effects?

That's all I can remember now, and thanks for every help, ideas and opinions...ect.

By the way, this is where I'm now:

this comment is not about physics but about controls

I don't know why all racing games on PC do not support mouse for steering the wheel, it will be much more accurate than using the keys

So you should add mouse support instead of keys and change that rare tradition

I don't know why all racing games on PC do not support mouse for steering the wheel, it will be much more accurate than using the keys

So you should add mouse support instead of keys and change that rare tradition

Yes, the Racer does support mouse, and it's pretty weird, but it's only my opinion. :)

The keyboard support is already there and works very nicely, even easier to control the car with keys, but the wheel is much more fun.

I tried the mouse at the early stage, but it didn't work out.

mixing keys and mouse might be an exciting idea :D

If you move the mouse to the left the wheel will rotate to the left and mantain that position,how can't that work?

If you move the mouse to the left the wheel will rotate to the left and mantain that position,how can't that work?

Obviously :)

But, in case of mouse you don't have any physical feedback of the steering wheel's whereabout, and that becomes very annoying at high speed.

Even with the FFB wheel, a few percent of dead zone is needed, otherwise the car will never go straight.

I played around with the mouse steering for a couple of hours.

I added some dead zone, damping and speed sensitivity, but still having problems with small "correction" steering at high speeds.

Maybe those issues could be overcame in time, though.

Anyway, it was an interesting idea (throttle/brake with keys and steer with mouse)

But back to the original topic, any idea, anyone? Sim gurus, where are you?? :)

I read somewhere, an old sim (maybe GPL) used some kind of force feedback prediction.

Since the devices have some latency (10-20ms) it could be useful to set the future Mz instead of the current.

used_mz = mz + ((mz - last_mz) * prediction_time) / dt; << or something similar :)

I tried this in the weekend and didn't feel much difference. Still damping at the center, so more to the center the wheel gets the less the FFB is set to.

An other idea is to damp the FFB depending on the turning direction instead of the position.

Haven't tried it yet... I'llkeep you updated.