rec.autos.simulators

Having a problem with a USB wheel. Sometimes, when the game (Nascar) goes to
the disk to read spotter messages, the wheel stops responding for a short
time. On straights it is not serious, but had gone lots of times to the pit
very fast (black flaged of course) because this happened exiting a curve.
Using a gameport wheel, this problem disappears. Found this on Microsoft:

http://www.racesimcentral.net/

"When your computer reads from the hard disk, floppy drive, or CD-ROM drive,
Universal Serial Bus (USB) devices may not function properly.
....
Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the Microsoft products
listed in the applies to section of this article."

My harddrive is already using DMA and the problem is on a notebook (no
gameport). The tests I have done with gameport, I am using a PCMCIA gameport
adapter.

Does this have any solution?

Thanks,

Brian

The "article" you reference is correct.....but not entirely applicable to
racing sim controllers.  Particularly, racing sim controllers and CPU/video
card systems of sufficient size and capacity one should be using for racing
high-end racing sims like N4.  If you have a cpu, video card and sound card
of sufficient capacity.....this issue will never arise.  I have never had
this problem on any of our race systems where the cpu is 1.0 gig or higher,
using a V5 or GF-2(3) video card....along with an SB Live sound card.  And,
I've been using USB controllers now for over a year on many of our racing
sim rental units.  Insufficient horsepower....under the "hood".....causes
lots of problems with the high-end racing sims......the one you refer to is
only one of many.

You didn't specify any "specs" for the system you run.........but my guess
is that it is not sufficiently at or above specs required for N4.  If it
is....then I suggest you may have something else going on (like "swap file"
size, defragmentation...issues)?

Regards,

Tom Pabst

My system spec is a Toshiba Notebook, PIII-600, 128 MB RAM, S3 Savage 8MB
with D3D and OpenGL on Windows 98SE.

The game is not Nascar 4, it is 3. I also have and run other games like
Descent 3, F1 Championship Season 2000 and Rally Championship 2000 and the
frame rate is good enough. The USB wheel have been tested only on Nascar 3
using D3D for now. All other sims are still using the gameport ones.

I have and can use without problems joystick and wheels if I use a gameport
adapter. As notebooks doesn't have gameports, I have a PCMCIA gameport from
EXPNet and it works perfect. But, I was willing to go to USB devices as they
are easier and the response on the sim seems to be better.

For other programs running in background, I allways close everything
including Virus Scan and, most of the times, I also do a fresh reboot and
then launch the game as Windows seems to grab some resources as times goes
by.

Brian