rec.autos.simulators

Thx all for your reply's....:-)
Nice to know that we can get answers for our questions here...:)
I'm glad the USB-thing was just a MS-annoyment....:-(
I will take an extra look at the Guillemot thing and the LWFF....
If I not just order a TSW2....i believe they will be present at:

So I will get a close look and maybe "hands-on" there...

--
Med venlig hilsen / Best regards

DK-2700 Bronshoj - Denmark

I won't bother describing what a d-pad is since that's already been done,
but you can be sure it is a total gimmick.  Four or six buttons is way more
useful.  The wheels you'll probably want to look at are the Act-Labs 'Force
RS' and the Guillemot 'Ferrari'.  If you don't need force-feedback then the
MS 'Precision Racing wheel' is good value.

I'm looking for a wheel and pedals....:)
Several wheels are fitted with a "8-way D-pad"....but i don't know what
that is....please fill me in...:)
All I need is a good wheel with a good set of pedals for

1) RM(rally on gravel, ice/snow and tarmack)
2) STCC2 ( Touring-cars on swedish tarmack racetracks)
3) Maybe I will dig out my copy of SCGT someday....:) I've read
something of new cars/tracks here in the forum...
4) GP3...i've also read about something new add-on for this

--
Med venlig hilsen / Best regards

DK-2700 Bronshoj - Denmark

The only "good" wheel that has a D-Pad is the ACT Labs RS.  Most of the
wheel setups that have such feature are targeted towards the arcade crowd.
They are mostly cheap plastic wheels.  What it is, it's a gamepad that is on
the wheel.  It has 8 direction (up/down/left/right/diagonal) and is shaped
like a NES gamepad.

--
-- Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard>
-- May the Downforce be with you...
-- http://www.ymenard.com/
-- This announcement is brought to you by the Shimato Dominguez
Corporation - helping America into the New World...

I have a similar PC (PII-333/128MB) and a USB wheel (Logitech Wingman
Formula Force) and there is *no* CPU hit as far as I can tell.

I believe only the Microsoft FF wheel causes a USB hit because it doesn't
use the Immersion technology for force feedback, but rather Microsoft's own
implementation, which is CPU-intensive.

Having a USB wheel isn't a problem, USB is actually a faster interface than
a gameport or serial port.

What you've probably heard is stories about the slow-down with the MS FF USB
wheel, but that's unique to that wheel, and not a general USB problem.  I
briefly owned the MS FF USB and it produced quite a big slow-down with GPL
and Sports Car GT (in the region of 25% frame rate drop under demanding
conditions like race starts), so I obviously returned it, and I wouldn't
recommend it to anyone else for the same reason.

There's been plenty of speculation as to why this wheel has this problem,
centring on the amount of cpu time the wheel needs to generate FF effects,
and also possibly faulty drivers/software, but I'm pretty sure it's nothing
to do with being a USB wheel.  The reason I say that is because the
slow-down disappears when FF is switched off, and other usb wheels don't
have the slow-down.

I own the old Logitech wheel and the Guillemot Ferrari, both of which have
usb connectors and neither of which produce any noticeable slow-down.  Same
with the non-FF version of the MS wheel (Precision Racing Wheel), no
slow-down, but if you can afford a Thomas and you're happy without FF then
you shouldn't even be looking at the Precision racing wheel :)

On Thu, 15 Mar 2001 13:00:35 GMT, "Simon Brown"

Thx for ur statements ymenard and simon...
I was only curious that the 8wd-pad  was something to look for in
future...but it isnt...:) so I will forget about that...

2 paddles (or shifter) for gear up/down and 1 button (handbreak) is all
I need..:) And pedals for speeder/break ofcourse...

My PC (for now) is a PII-400 MHz/256MB and I worry about those USB
wheels...is it gonna take too much CPU power? If it's so I will look for
a wheel with standard gameport interface...and I believe the MS Prec.
cant be delievered with that..:(
Hmmmm... im confused...maybe I'll take a Thomas wheel...it looks nice..
Or a....   or a....:(

BTW: The Guillemot Ferrari ...is that the same as Thrustmaster 360
Modena?

Next week I visit Cebit in Hannover/Germany...maybe I should take a real
look there for every wheel in the world...and become more confused...

--
Med venlig hilsen / Best regards

DK-2700 Bronshoj - Denmark

While working on FF for Heat, I was puzzled by the incredible amount of time
the MS wheel took to do force feedback (IIRC it was something like 10-20
milliseconds to update the wheel force) compared to less than one
millisecond for Logitech et al.  The original (slow) MS wheel used the MIDI
port, to which I initially attributed the slowdown, but when I tested a USB
wheel and found it just as slow I was pretty amazed.
I posted a question to the DirectX group, and got a response a long time
later (well after we shipped) from someone in the MS DirectInput group (not
the Sidewinder group); it seems like the problem is that when you send a
force feedback command to a wheel, the DirectX interface is supposed to wait
for it to complete, which involves sending a USB packet to the wheel, and
then waiting for a reply...

The conjecture was that the Logitech drivers were being more clever and
perhaps spawning another thread to wait for the reply and let the computer
go off and do work while waiting... the MS guy said they were trying to add
an "asynchronous" call to DirectInput so that the game could just send a
command and not have to hang around for it's return.  Perhaps the MS drivers
were sticking to the "letter of the law" of DirectInput, while Logitech was
playing "fast and loose", but who knows.  It's possible that there is
something about the firmware for the MS device that requires the slow
interlocking access, but I really suspect that it could be fixed with
drivers.

In theory the games could "work around" this problem by using a seperate
thread for force feedback, but the problem is who knows how robust calling
DirectX from multiple threads will be--I think nobody wants to be the first
to use a particular code path, especially one that could expose all kinds of
*** synchronization problems in DirectX, just to speed up one steering
wheel which has already been "tarred and feathered" as a slow wheel. (I
think there was at least one other "slow" wheel but I forget which one it
was; definitely both Logitech and ACT labs had fast FF times circa a year
ago)

  The next time I work on another PC product I may try the multi-threaded
approach if they haven't fixed their drivers by then.  As I recall the MS
wheel had a pretty nice feel, and it would be a shame not to be able to
utilize it properly... but maybe in the mean time someone could get on the
Sidewinder driver guys to speed up the existing programs ;)

But anyways, a non-FF USB controller is _much_ faster than a gameport
device, unless the drivers are really broken.  If you look up how the
gameport works on PC's, you will understand why!  There are some dedicated
"digital" gameport cards that speed this up, but those are pretty uncommon
these days.
-Dave

  Thanks for the info Dave...don't be a stranger...we need more coders
***
around..
dave henrie

Well that's what we hope for in the X-Box...  ;)

<snip>