rec.autos.simulators

I have seen this mentioned and haven't really taken it seriously until now.

I was clearing out my loft and came across my old squash equipment,including
a few old balls.

I thought i would quell my curiosity and check it out.

Well now i have severe doubts,because when i placed the ball behind the
brake pedal of my Microsoft Sidewinder FF i then couldn't press the pedal
down fully and it was a real chore getting ANY movement.

So i remembered HALF a squash ball being mentioned...tried it...still felt
awful.

So...was it just an in joke i missed the point of or has anyone actually got
an improvement out of this little tip...?

Thanks

Morg

Like a real brake pedal?  The day I can get the brake pedal in my z down to the
floor is a day too late to save my arse, and probably a six months too late to
be checking fluid lines.

Brakes are meant to be activated by pressure on the pedal as opposed to
movement - remember you are squeezing pads against moving discs, not pulling a
throttle linkage like with the accelerator.

I think this would depend on your pedals/amount of travel.

I've been using it, but with LWFF instead of the microsoft wheel so I can't
comment on that  (I also did some creative cutting to keep it attached so again
YMMV).  It depends a bit on the game (some games have poor calibration) but I
found if I calibrated max braking force to be equal to a damn good press on the
pedal then it definately improved feel and improved laptimes (after practice).

iksteh

Xavier.

PS. You can also search groups.google.com for "squash ball gpl pedal".
Please ignore the 6-months old post suggesting that squeezing a young kitten
under the brake pedal improves your lap times: it does not work that well
because of the distracting squealing sounds.

I use a squash ball with my MOMO wheel. It replaces the spring for the brake
pedal, I don't know if that's possible with the MS wheel. When I had just
installed the ball, I thought it was far too stiff, I guess I didn't expect
that. I couldn't even push the pedal all the way down. But later on I
realized this was not necessarily a bad thing: you calibrate the pedal, so
that 100% braking requires you to push the pedal as far as you want (for
comfort), with some travel to spare. The last bit of travel isn't used, but
it's not really needed. The two biggest advantages (imho):

1. I can now rest my foot on the brake pedal, without accidentally pushing
it.
2. You have to push hard, in order to brake hard (feels more realistic).

Ice D

Andre

Ice D

I just checked, and it doesn't seem to be a problem as long as I keep the
weight of my left foot. Maybe not 100% comfortable, but at least my foot
touches the pedal, which I prefer. It's much stiffer that with the original
spring anyway. I might add that I use a blue squash ball, and it seemed
slightly bigger than other balls I've seen at the store (could be my
imagination...).

Ice D