rec.autos.simulators

What I think is hard to simulate in racing sims is race cars wish to go
straight. If we let go off the steering wheel in a corner in a real race car the
steering wheel would center, but this is not because there is a spring somewhere
(as in our desktop steering wheels) it's because the wheels design forces them
to be pointing straight forward. This is also the case on a straight. If your
real race car pulls to one or the other side on the straight, you pit and tell
the mechanics to fix it, cause you dont want to fight the wheel on the straight.
What you would want is that if you let go off the wheel on a straight the car
travels on a straight line. This is not the case with our desktop steering
wheels, but could be so with force feedback. I dont believe going straight back
in '67 was as hard as it is in GPL. If it was, noone would ever race the cars
and especially not for 2 hours, at least that's what I think :o).

/Christer, at 1:28.10 at Monza... well, I'm happy about it and I practice way
too much :o)))
--
http://www.racesimcentral.net/~w-41236/ (Read all about the "Global online
racing"-proposal under "For developers". Read it a couple of times, cause noone
has understood it the first time they've read it yet :o)).

I was able to spend a lot of time with the ACT Labs Force RS wheel
this weekend.  Most of that time was spent with a new game called
Motorhead, from Gremlin Software.  It's a "Gran Tourismo" type
of game, with fairly realistic car physics.  The FF effects are
very well done, and I noticed _no_ latency in them.  The ACT
Labs wheel operates through a serial port, which isn't as fast
as USB, but is a lot faster than a game port.

In Motorhead, pushing the car too hard will result in a slide.
The wheel would give you feedback that you were getting
close to a slide by reducing tension.  It was pretty
effective.

--
Pat Dotson
IMPACT Motorsports
http://www.racesimcentral.net/