rec.autos.simulators

Now my question for everyone, is this... I'm not sure if it's the wheel
that is ***or my PC. You see, I've been putting off a PC upgrade until
WSC is released. Obviously my PC is a little old now. It's a Celeron
466, V3, 256mb. The typical old system. Since I've seen a dramatic drop
in frame rates, I'm wondering if the PC performance is also affecting
the performance of the wheel. Is it time to bite the bullet and upgrade?

I still don't want to upgrade until I know something about WSC, so I
could set the wheel aside for a few months (if WSC isn't out in demo
form by the end of the year, then***'em.). But I don't want to set
this thing aside if the wheel just isn't as great as it has been touted.

For those of you who have owned the original LWFF and the MOMO, along
with a modern PC, what do you think of the MOMO?

 > Now my question for everyone, is this... I'm not sure if it's the wheel

It's your PC, spend $50 and upgrade.

It's awesome on a decent computer.

Pick

It seems extremely unlikely that the MOMO caused yer fps to nosedive.  As a
USB device (like yer LWFF), it shouldn't be sucking any more CPU cycles
outta yer system than yer old setup.  OTOH, it is a different s/w
environment.  Make sure you've got the latest s/w d/l's from Logitech and
the Wingman Team...and any other controller applets you think might help
(DXTweak, TM Pro, etc.).

We should hear something abt. WSC within a few days.  If it is ever
released, it likely won't demand the latest h/w, because it has been in
dev't so long that most of the chalk marks on the floor (the h/w params)
were prolly laid down anticipating a 1.3-Gig Athlon and a GeForce 3.  IOW,
it ain't gonna be no Unreal Tournament 2003.

And yes, the MOMO is a great wheel (it's the pedals that suck 55-in. of Hg),
altho Alison Hine was over the other day and complained the FF f/x didn't
feel a *thing* like her beloved red-rim, ball-bearing Logi.

--Steve

- Isotrip?

I meant it ain't gonna be no DOOM 3.

Speaking of Alison.  I went back to my original LWFF settings for GPL,
the ones I found on Alisons' site.  These seem to work much better and
are closer to what I remember from the original wheel.  The settings I
found on this forum that were created specifically for the MOMO were not
good at all.  Too over powering.  I can still feel the gears, but the
wheel reacts better to what's happening on the track with Alisons' settings.

Thanks for the reply.  I guess I'll know after this weekend (post
Goodwood) when I'll be upgrading my PC.  I'll have to kick the "maybe
there's something better on the horizon" thought process and buy
something now.

Why don't you let her borrow it for a few days and see if she can come up
with the core.ini settings for it. :)  I thought her settings for the cable
driven LWFF were great, but I have not been able to get the MOMO to feel the
same. My guess is the main reason is the differance between the cable drive
and gear drive setups.

MadDAWG

Turn up the latency to the 30ms range.

Jan.
=---

(P.S. I'd be happy to loan her my MOMO...but she's 400 miles away, so we
don't get to visit as often as we'd like.)

What are your other settings (& basic system info), please?

--Steve

That's sort of the point, Steve, once I followed the advise to crank up the
latency I found I could adapt the other settings to taste.

It would appear miss Hine is getting a little conservative nowadays. To me
the MOMO is more responsive and "crisper" than even a ball bearing equipped
LWFF. That said, I found it does need a bit of a "break-in" period. It
definately smooths out with use.

I think the comforting feel from the LWFF stems from the "give" which is
present in the steel cables and therefore switching to the more direct gear
drive is a bit of a shock. Once over the initial shock though, one finds
one's even more connected to the sim than before. IMO this effect is more
pronounced in N2k2 than GPL.

Anyhow, for reference:

Athlon XP2000+, 512Mb DDR Ram, GF3 Ti200, Win98se, DirectX8.1, WingMan 4.11
drivers.

I use the standard setup of the overall strenght setting at 100%, other
sliders at 0% in *** Options.

GPL core.ini

[ Hack ]
steer_ratio = 1    ; Enable low speed ratio override

[ Joy ]
allow_force_feedback = 1             ; Use FF if device has it
force_feedback_damping = 70          ; force feedback damping coefficient
force_feedback_latency = 0.030000    ; force feedback latency (secs)
max_steering_torque = 298.000000     ; steering torque in N*in giving max
device force

100% steering linearity in the game and I usually use a 16:1 steering ratio.

N2k2

Strenght : 65%
Damping  : 37%
Latency  : 30ms
Steering Linearity : 100%

Jan.
=---

I've forgotten how much fun it is to drive with a FF wheel.  I'm using
my top-hinged, steel pedals from SRC and GPL is a blast to drive!

Since then I tried a lot, different drivers, windows memory settings,
but the problem still remains. Yesterday I read a post on Legends
Central from a guy who had the same problem, and wondered if it could
be caused by his Momo. I never though about the momo software being
the possible cause in the fps drops, but I did buy the momo a while
after my GF2 card, so it -could- be the case..

I will uninstall the momo drivers and software when I get home and
test if the drop in fps is gone in GPL.. will post the results here.

Andre