rec.autos.simulators

I've heard (though not through any official channels) that MS is
working on a USB version of their FF wheel.  And that would be an
exceptionally Good Thing.  It seems that clocking FF commands out
through the MIDI lines is rather slow.  These are the approximate
timings I've measured on my Win95 PII-400 for issuing our force
commands to three different wheels (your mileage may vary):

3,500,000 cycles - Thrustmaster Force GT (USB)
1,500,000 cycles - Microsoft Sidewinder FF wheel (MIDI/game port)
   55,000 cycles - Logitech Wingman Formula Force (serial)

Which translates to a 32% (!?!?!?!?!), 13.5% (!!), and 0.5% (ahhhh...)
CPU hit.

Randy

I have the only Gameport-->USB adapter that MS offers,  which was made
for one of their gamepads or jsticks I believe. It Ys off into a
seriel connector for some functions (similar to the CH FF Pro Sticks
cable). A MS rep was kind enough to send me one to try with the FF
Wheel a while back. It doesn't work at all. Its feasible that MS could
write a driver to get the axis functions, but....

G. Patricks

Uh oh.. looks like USB is the slowest one of these?
Are you sure you didn't mix up the results? (TM/USB Logitech/serial)
And how about clocking with the Logitech in serial and then in USB.
Should be easy with the accompanying adapter (and interesting to see
the performace results).

 -Juha
--

From what I could tell, when you keep the wheel and pedals stationary,
it takes about 550,000 cycles to issue the force commands, and while
moving either the wheel or pedals, it jumps to about 1,500,000 cycles
to issue the force commands.  This is how much time it takes to
actually call the functions we use to send the force commands.  It does
not include the amount of time it takes to compute what forces we want
to apply, or the time it takes to read the wheel/pedal positions.

Randy

Quite sure.

I hadn't been able to find that little doodad, but someone just dropped
one off, so I'll try it out and letcha know.

Randy

Please do. :)

Joe

do you have any info on the actlabs force rs wheel?

tim

Dave Ewing

No.  I can't get my machine to recognize the Act Labs wheel.

Randy

Well, apparently you can't use the Logitech in USB mode with Win95,
even if you have the version of Win95 that supports USB.  I don't plan
on upgrading my machine to Win98 just to try this out.  If I find a
Win98 machine around that has what I need, I'll get back to y'all.

Randy

Is there a simple [small] EXE program that can do this test for you?
Or is it part of GPL debugging code or something? I have Win98 and a
Logitech FF connected with USB, on a P2 300. I also have a cable
modem, so if the test program is less than 5 MB feel free to email it
too me and I'll run it for you (remove NOSPAM from my email address).

Joe

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cisko [AT] ix [DOT] netcom [DOT] com

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Header address intentionally scrambled to ward off the spamming hordes.

cisko [AT] ix [DOT] netcom [DOT] com