rec.autos.simulators

Andre

On Mon, 02 Aug 1999 13:21:23 +0100, Richard S Beckett

Interesting, but do your car have power-steering ? If it do I think you loose
out on a great amount of forces.

I've tried to notice the force through the wheel in my old Volvo, and the
amount of forces through the wheel are enormous. If this is usable information
i don't know.

--
Olav K. Malmin
remove spam when replying

: I had a chance to have a play with my real car, and analyse the FF from the
: wheel.

: It actually gave me surpsisingly little information, most of the infoamation I
: got came from the seat.

: IMO, we want _exaggerated_ FF from a wheel. Realism doesn't matter as much as
: the amount of information conveyed.

: Comments?

  In your road car, unless your "play" was life threatening you're not
going to feel much because you're not going to feel the steering wheel
lighten as the front wheels lose grip or it snap back as the back end
steps out.  

  I have no idea how exaggerated these effects are in GPL but it seems
to me, as a physicist, that in a sliding car in a four wheel drift there
would be extremely little resistance to turning the wheel - you won't
feel that in a road car unless you're cornering fast enough to generate
significant understeer.  (Don't try this at home kids).  In other words,
the things you have to be doing with the car to get effects which pull
the wheel are "extreme" to say the least.

--
Richard G. Clegg     Only the mind is waving
Dept. of Mathematics (Network Control group) Uni. of York.

www: http://manor.york.ac.uk/top.html

As someone already wrote, your car has probably power-steering and also the
steering is not direct. (I don't know what the name for it in english are) In
a F1 car as in a go-cart you only have to rotate the steering wheel a little
bit for a turn that in your normal car you have to rotate the wheel maybe 360
degrees. So the power on the tire doesn't make so much power on the steering
wheel in a car that does not have direct steering.

Also in a normal car the shock absorbers are not as stiff as in a race car so
the whole body of the car move more easily than in a F1 car. So you can not
simply compare your feeling of a normal car with the feeling of a -67 F1 car.

I drive go-cart from time to time and boy I tell you I get feedback from the
steering wheel.

/Magnus

As for the real-life forces, what kind of car were you driving?  I drive a
1970 El Camino with a 350 V-8 and the steering is way overboosted.  There is
absolutely no road feel transmitted through the wheel (this is probably good
so that the wheel doesn't jerk out of your hands when shift in a race
against a Mustang or something).  However, in my dad's 1988 Grand Prix
(read: front wheel drive), which has the wider tires and the SE suspension,
there is lots of road feel transmitted.  You can feel every bump and
expansion joint, and, if you go about 38 mph through a left hand turn at an
intersection, you can feel the front tires wash away as the steering gets
very light and unresponsive and the tires wail and moan very loud.  So I
guess it depends alot on how your car's steering and suspension and tires
act together.  I would think that a sports car's steering would tell you
alot, but a family car would tell you nothing at all, while muscle cars
don't handle to well so nobady cares about road feel anyway.

Just my two pennies,
Ryan

    Is your car front or rear drive? Makes a big difference.    Try this;
get your car near the limit and modulate the gas pedal while trying to keep
the car in a constant radius turn. You will notice that the force needed to
keep the car in the turn changes as you press/lift on the gas pedal. Now try
it in a Lotus 49 :)

I feel both of these effects in my road car, but since I value both my life and
my road car, I only feel them in the rain.

Don McCorkle
Libertarian Motorsports

I do not agree to this. If you get forces that wouldn't normally be present on
a wheel how would you know what information is in those forces. I have not
driven a F1 car. But I have felt the forces from the wheel in a go-cart. It is
not exactly the same as I get from GPL. For many reasons. But I can sense some
similarity.

/Magnus

I would say that GPL has pretty much hit the mark.  The only
thing lacking is that the steering force should decrease when
the front wheel are locking up.  I've never noticed this effect
in GPL.

--
Pat Dotson

: I would say that GPL has pretty much hit the mark.  The only
: thing lacking is that the steering force should decrease when
: the front wheel are locking up.  I've never noticed this effect
: in GPL.

  Then you haven't got the front wheels near enough to locking up in GPL
or there's something wrong with your FF set up.  The best place to try
this is a really long bend - say BARDAHL (sp?) the first long right
hander at Spa.  If you push really hard through that it will be as if
you've turned FF completely off - there's almost no force feedback
because the front wheels are completely on the edge of traction and can
freely turn.  (By contrast, you should have a lot of grip into Eau rouge
- especially as you start the climb up and you should feel the wheel
heavily loaded).

  If you can't feel that, I would suggest that your FF isn't working
properly or you've left return to centre switched on.

--
Richard G. Clegg     Only the mind is waving
Dept. of Mathematics (Network Control group) Uni. of York.

www: http://manor.york.ac.uk/top.html

My FF is set up just fine.  Weight transfer and lateral cornering
force are the two things that affect GPL FF most, and they
work well.  But, I'll stick to my original argument, and say
again that the steering does not lighten up when locking
up the front wheels.  Again, I'm talking about  while braking
in a straight line...

--
Pat Dotson
IMPACT Motorsports
http://www.impactmotorsports.com/pd.html