Using a TM T-300 if you apply 'Minimum Force' it introduces a very noticeable notch or deadzone at the 12 o'clock position that only gets worse the higher % you apply. (It also happened with the T-150 so it might be Thrustmaster specific.) Is there any way to iron this out? Perhaps a .cfg file I can tweak?
Sorry to resurrect but I just had an idea - if increasing 'minimum force' creates a horrible notch in the centre then would it be possible to attack the problem from the opposite end? So instead of increasing a 'minimum force' value to reduce the dynamic range of FFB, how about an option to 'decrease maximum force'? Thus we compress the FFB minus the notchy side effects.
No. It doesn't work like that. You get the notch because literally everything is raised to that level, so it's like a small wall rather than a ramp. It doesn't scale the overall forces. If you have a notch then reduce min force, min force should not be used unless it's needed and only to the level that it's needed. Eg on a t300 2% is enough. It's a misconception that raising it brings out small details, it does the opposite, it hides them.
You mean performance? It's basically one additional scaling operation, doesn't look all that demanding to me...
There would be not a lot of point scaling as those forces at the bottom end are so small you would barely feel them anyway. The only reason for min force is to overcome the natural friction within the wheelbase (from belts, gears etc), any tiny force would not overcome that and so would not be felt, hence the deadzone. So all it does is say ok, everything below 2% becomes 2%. Which is no problem, those are tiny tiny forces anyway. The problem is when people misuse the setting, to try and get "more detail", and set it to say 15%. At that point you then lose everything below 15% which includes values at 6-8-10% etc which definitely would be felt and are useful. The vast majority of wheels need very very little min force, certainly below 5%. Only the G series wheels which have a stupid double motor gear mesh system inside them (and so create a distinct mechanical deadzone) need higher min force. Why it is just a floor rather than dynamic scaling is probably just because that's the way it's always been done and is the same across all sims, if it (mostly) works, then don't fix it etc.
What prompted me to start thinking about this again was driving the X-17 (which I hadn't until two days ago). I adjusted the FFB to a manageable setting at high speed, but at low speed there was nothing there - completely lifeless. It's not a request to add more 'detail' per se - but the ability to customize the steepness of the scaling 'ramp'. So you can have useable FFB at low speeds without incurring arm-breaking FFB at high speeds. So instead of this... We can have this... ....and then adjust the overall FFB strength to taste without having to mess about with 'minimum force' settings.
If you edit your rcs file and look for the line that says "FFB steer force exponent" if you edit the number there it will do something similar. 1.0 is linear. If you go lower than that it will boost smaller forces. Don't go too low or weird things happen though. Try 0.8 or 0.7 for example.