Sorry if this is already answered. I own a Fanatec CSL elite PS4 edition and as you know it's not fully supported by R3E. It doesn't have automatic steering lock and so on. So I'm on my Force Feedback settings and try what makes sense for me. My question is about the Red line in the FFB. I know, that I don't have to go ahead it to avoid clipping. But how does the FFB meter know where to put the red line when the wheel isn't fully supported. Does the wheel give the FFB meter a feedback or is it hard coded or is it a setting which sector 3 sets? Thank you!
Hi, I can't fully reply to your questions. But one thing for sure, when you go above the red line, you feel it. I can't explain it properly, but when it happens with my wheel (a CSL Elite, so +/- same as yours), you hear the wheel making strange and loud sounds. You feel that the FFB is at its maximum. Clipping is just having the wheel that sends its maximum force, and that is really high. I suppose that you read this? https://forum.sector3studios.com/index.php?threads/ffb-guide.55/ It's only my experience, maybe I'm completely wrong (but I don't think that).
Yes, I read everything in this thread but think this point isn't explained much. As for the noises at clipping: problem is, that the CSL Elite is rattling much more than other wheels. You can't do anything about it. Fanatec gives the user the chance to flaten the power of this device a bit to decrease the rattling. So end of the story is, that I hope that there's a setting for FFB meter to see, when CSL elite is in clipping. But I guess I have to wait until Sector 3 supports this wheel. Or anyone has an answer. (Can't believe that this wheel isn't fully supported from R3E...) Could you send me your rcs file to check some values? Your wheel base is fully supported, isn't it? (You can have automatic wheel rotation percent depending on cars, or do you have it blanked out and n/a)
Yes, I know about the sounds. But it makes a different sound when it clips. Yep! Wheel rotation is fully managed by the game (and set to "AUT" on the wheel base itself). Here is my .rcs (I think that I use this one). For your information, I also use a logitech G25 shifter.
Ok, when wheel rotation is on aut and fully managed by the game, your CSL Elite is fully supported. So thanks for your settings. I will later have a look at the values. I guess, that there's one value for this red line.
I asked myself the same question when I was creating my FFB setup. Just a thought: maybe this red line is the same for all wheels and just represents the maximum numerical value that can be sent to the wheel driver, like a range [0, 255]. A S3S developer should be able to answer that.
I believe that's how FFB meters generally work, yes. Because we have to remember there's two kinds of clipping - there's clipping on the game (software) side, and then there's clipping on the hardware side. The game can only affect the software side. By setting the FFB sliders in the game, we're creating a sort of master mix of the FFB, and we have the in-game FFB meter to show us when the signal the game is outputting to the hardware runs "out of range" and the game just outputs the maximum value (or a value very close to that) instead. And then it's up to our wheel drivers to translate these values into actual forces based on what our wheel control panel settings are - allowing us to (possibly) introduce secondary clipping right within the wheel's drivers themselves. It's just like with audio playback - if your recording is clipping/distorting, it will never sound good on any equipment. If your recording is fine, then you obviously have the potential to play it back perfectly fine on your equipment, but if you set the volume on your amp too high for the speakers you have, the sound will still be bad and the audio player has no way of detecting that, just like the in-game FFB meter has no way of detecting possible FFB clipping on a hardware level.
Sounds like a very promising point. Thanks for that. That explains why there are peaks higher than the FFB Meter show so it flatens them out. So the software point. But this gets my question: What about the red line? It must have a reason to be there and, as in the FFB Meter instruction written, that you don't have to go ahead the red line to avoid whell clipping. My only point is: Is there a setting in the FFB Meter what tells it where to show the red line or is it a hard coded One-for-all thing (what doens't make any sense in my opinion) But only people with a 100% supported wheel can check where their red line is AND/OR a friendly developer can have a look. Could be that I'm totally wrong and the point from @Karting06 is the only valid point: Go as high as the FFB Meter can without flatened curves and if it rattles too much, go lower. But at this point I can't believe it is such an easy answer to this question and the devs had more skills by programming this tool.
Why doesn't it make sense to be a one-for-all thing? The game can't tell you if your wheel is actually clipping, because there is no way for the game to measure what the wheel's FFB response actually is. It can only tell you how strong are the forces it is asking the wheel to create. The FFB meter is not showing you an absolute value of force - it's showing you a relative one, and as such can always be plotted within the same range of values, no matter if you're using the DFGT or a 30 Nm OSW. Say the game asks the wheel to create a constant force of 75 % strength, and it's up to your wheel whether 75 % means 1 Nm of force or 20 Nm of force. In both cases, that constant force would be represented by the same horizontal line 25 % below the red line. The red line (as I understand it) is basically a warning to you that "hey, we're now asking your wheel to put out the maximum force it's set to allow right now (even though we have no way of telling how high that force actually is in absolute values)". The game's FFB engine still has some headroom, so it can calculate forces above this limit, say up to 125 %, before it reaches its internal maximum value above which you'd just get flattened line on the FFB meter, but once you cross that red line, you're extremely likely to be experiencing clipping *at your wheel* because your wheel should already be at its maximum force there and trying to go above is pretty much pointless, it can't put out more than 100 % of force. And if you raise the in-game FFB forces gain to the point where you get flattened curves, you are *guaranteed* to be clipping, because you're now clipping even the values *within the game* that the game sends to your wheel.