No, this isn't another one of those "it's getting worse and worse" threads, but since I have seen those and have been driving a ton of various sims in the past weeks, I think I might be on to what is going on, or at least I can present my opinion on the matter (totally biased, subjective and it's not me, it's YOU who is wrong ). To evaluate the 'quality' of FFB, we first need a baseline. For me this is Race 07 (GTR 2 also fits the profile I guess, but Race I feel is has better overall FFB and easier to setup out of the box). Being an old game now, it will not have fancy things such as telling you exactly what the road surface is and all that cool an immersive stuff, but it gets the job done for racing. So what should good FFB tell the player on a minimum level? Four things: 1. the loss of grip in the front tyres - wheel gets loose 2. the loss of grip in the rear tyres - wheel starts to counter-steer 3. the notion of turning the tyres too much into the corner - the wheel increases in resistance and then slightly and progressively decreases to indicate the tyres are starting to loose grip 4. locking up your brakes - the wheel vibrates or jolts slightly to let you know (Race 07 actually does this better than anything else) For Race 07 I use the 70's Camaro from the Retro Pack as a good example. It's V8-powered monster that takes corners in dorifto fashion... BUT it tells you exactly and in a very calm and progressive fashion that you are overdoing it, therefore, it's actually not that hard a car to handle and drive on the limit. I mean, you will overdo it this car sooner rather than later, unless the wheel tells you what is happening, the car will end up an undriveable pile of scrap metal. Hence why I decided to take an old sim like Race 07 as my baseline, because while the FFB isn't anything spectacular, it's very informative and easy to set up (I used my old DFGT settings for the T300 - strength to 75 and increase the effects to medium from low). It's also in line with everything I experienced while starting my adventure with simracing (rFactor 1, GTR 2, Richard Burns Rally) and my first experiences with driving a real car - hence I always considered it 'realistic enough'. Within all these FFB discussion here, I have seen a few comments mentioning ACC having bland FFB and this also kind of made me think about the subject, because I honestly love FFB in that game, since it reminds me of the FFB in Race 07 - there isn't much of a road texture feel, but it's very informative and most important of all, all the bad things happen progressively, so you know when you are overdoing it before it's to late (unless you're in a Porsche, when will they learn to put he engine in the front damnit?!). Contrast that with what many people praise as the best FFB ever: Assetto Corsa, all I can say is, I don't like the FFB in that game. In the early beta versions it was brilliant, and you could save almost any slide (though at that stage only some sports cars were available, which AC does extremely well, so that might be a factor), but years later and I am still puzzled why people love it so much. Sure there is something constantly going on in the wheel, you feel the road you are driving over, but loosing the car is sudden and violent. Often you just slightly overdo it and the wheel counter-steers like mad without even giving you a hint that you the front tyres regained grip and that results in this slide that ends up in an opposite-spin. I have tried various settings and just can't find anything that would alleviate the issue, that is not present in other sims. Another thing is that I have to edit the config file to get rid of this nasty FFB lag that has been plaguing the game since it went 1.0 (maximum frame latency thing, I'm sure you know). It's less of an issue with modern cars, but as mentioned, my baseline is an old Camaro from an old game - so I notice that as an problem, whenever I drive slide-happy cars like the Cobra or Lotus 49. Just to sum up this 'FFB quality' personal exploration, I'll just answer one question - what is IMHO the best FFB? Easy - Automobilista. For some maybe rF2, but this game still feels like early access to me, and I bought it in 2013 and still some promised things are missing, not to mention the quality of the content varies all over the place - getting any solid opinion on the matter, would require many hours testing various content in a game I don't enjoy. That said, I think Raceroom's FFB is good, simply because it does all those four things I mentioned as the bare minimum for FFB to be useful. What it doesn't do, is constantly bombard you with feedback on the road surface and 'what the tyres are doing'. I put that last part in quotes because from a perspective of someone playing a game, they should only be doing two things - rolling or sliding. Any other information, I feel is just extra and while brilliant for immersion, I am kind of asking myself the question, does the wheel in a real car tell me what the tyres are doing? I currently don't own a car, but considering the roads here a pothole and patch ridden dogshit, I never though thought to myself while driving that I feel every inch of the road in the wheel. It was mostly in my ass, but then again, we're talking a front-wheel drive french sedan here at 60 kph at most, so I don't think it might compare to a racecar on a track. Why I'm saying all this? Well, some time ago, another custom FFB settings file for Project Cars 2 got hype. It was all comments like 'this is like rF2' and whatnot, but however I try to set it up, I just get one conclusion after a few minutes of driving - sure the wheel definitely is active all the time, jolting and vibrating, but it does a crap job of informing me about those 4 crucial things I mentioned earlier that are kind of important for racing. My theory here is that people who complain about FFB in Raceroom and other games have been spoiled by Assetto Corsa - they are driving on a straight and smooth surface and the wheel just sits there, maybe slowly and slightly rocking left and right and that's it. So all of a sudden, no immersive wiggles and vibrations, I have no idea what the wheels are doing, hence FFB is shit. To be fair, I genuinely think that before this massive FFB update, I did perceive Raceroom's FFB as one of the best, almost on par with Automobilista, but maybe the devs just got rid of a lot of canned effects and overhauled it in such a way to just include the forces and effects coming straight from the the wheels? I mean, I don't find it bad and I certainly can drive confidently and push the car. What do you guys think? Am I on to something here or just wrong due to my personal experience? Does driving a race car fast provide more info through the wheel itself? I wouldn't know, since I have never driven one. One final thing to add, since I have also seen framerate complaints after the last patch. In many games, framerate is tied to the physics (I guess this will include FFB, as mentioned with the Assetto tweak). I also found that in some cases frames dropped when racing AI. I run a 144Hz monitor and 120FPS is my sweet spot for racing games, but from my experience, having a steady framerate is more important that having a lot of FPS. Today I just locked my framerate at 60 and it's solid now and I feel like my driving, consistency and overall speed is better than it was with the game fluctuating from 144 frames to 70 at time. Not sure if that affects FFB here, or has anything to do with anything other than having consistent frames, but something to keep in mind maybe.
What he comments has its logic, but I disagree. What a simulator pretends is to simulate. The feeling of driving. But 90% percent of the players only have a steering wheel. So the game should provide as much information and immersion as possible. This is what asseto i motorist 1 does very well almost to perfection. Personally After years of playing simulators. And lover of racerrom I can not say the same, I repeat personally. As a reference it is the game with the most content and the longest hours I have played, but I already said enough. I have been in love with the game for more than 5 years. They are simple as the ffb does not transmit me or I feel that I am in a race car. And what I still do not understand, that I have installed some bodyshakkers. Reading the telemetry of the game, and perfectly transmit any irregularity on the track, and transmit me a fantastic dive. But behind the wheel ...... The main object of immersion. Not be able It has me indignant
The problem is that this game has been around for quite some time. After we've all grown to love the game and have spent a lot of money, then the devs completely change the feel of the game. That's what has me the most annoyed. I know they are trying to make it 'better' but honestly, after all this time it's not fair to people like myself who've had the game forever to now have to start from scratch. Not only this, but for some of us the new FFB is not great. It would have been a lot more reasonable to leave the game as it was and start a new project and make that whatever this game wasn't. It would have been only fair. This is what my gripe has been the last few months.
On the one hand, I do understand you, but on the other, if there are improvements in term of realism and overall focus on detail (and there are, tyre compounds, flatspots, damage, all that stuff), isn't this a thing to appreciate? I would generally agree with your approach, if it was a detriment to the game, but over the years Raceroom has gotten better and better, with more realism, content and FFB (remember when no one had a clue how to set it up correctly and there wasn't even a meter to check, if you're clipping?). So the question here is, have the updates made the game worse for you, because the physics suddenly went all wrong, or is it just that you can no longer get away with driving like you used to? Considering the date joined on the forums, both you and me, have been playing this quite a few years and honestly, I don't feel like stuff has gone downhill, quite the opposite. Would you rather go back to the time when there was just a few tracks and cars, not really behaving like they should, or the murderous AI from a few years back, just because it's something you learned to cope with and enjoy? I do realize that with patches, you sometimes need to start from scratch with the settings and the approach to driving certain cars, but would you really rather be stuck in the past, like what Raceroom was in 2018 just because you got used to it and like it and have Raceroom become a dead game, cause the devs moved on to something else?
I'm one of those for which the ACC FFB feels bland, but for the exact opposite reason as you mentioned. For me the loss of front tyres grip turns the wheel into a jelly, where you don't feel anything. It is not that much of a problem that it happens, but how fast it will happen. I feel like the pneumatic trail is just not pronouced enough, and there is very little resistance change in relation to slip angles. Which is one of the aspects of FFB that are actually real and present in a real car. This is something that R3E does exceptionaly well, and is also very pronouced in AMS. This, coupled with some of the slow speed spins that still sometimes happed out of the blue, makes it much harder for me to push the cars on the limit. As to road feel, it is a difficult topic, because you do feel road surface through the wheel, the problem is that doesn't jolt the wheel, you just feel the vibrations through the construction. Yesterday I was driving through a hard, bumpy, dirt road and the wheel (+ the whole car) was rattling like mad. But I let go of the wheel and it remained centered, with very little movement. This is something that basically cannot be done with FFB.
I very much doubt that 90% of players use a wheel. Another point is that for the PC there are so many types of control device with FFB that it must be very complicated to calibrate it to suit all devices. Then there is personal preference and style. Slash and Mark Knopfler could play the same guitar but have a totally different sound due to their touch and the way they learnt to play.
I think you don't understand me 90% is what you need a steering wheel the remaining 10% use some type of movement that helps immersion, regarding the guitar, two people can play a guitar and it will sound different. But it will sound! Here the guitar doesn't sound