rec.autos.simulators

                            TIA, Doug D

/Carl

If you only play Papyrus sims, then I'd go with a TSW since the FF in GPL is
more of a hinderance than a help and FF has no place in Nascar sims, I'm
told.

The ff in gpl is far from a hindrance. If you're used to no ff, you'll
struggle for a while with the change, and your times will suffer. You may
find, as many people (myself included) have, that ff is ultimately
beneficial.

That said, a high quality wheel is probably going to be just as beneficial.
If you're not already using ff & are happy with your level of control over
the car, take the TSW.

Damien, I'd be interested to know what you base your opinion on, since it
doesn't appear to me to be in line with the common view.

Malc.
--
GPLRank -34.831
Monster Rank -73.550

I've played around with the core.ini settings for days on end and still
couldn't find a setting which remotely resembled the feedback from a real
car.  I've been to sim LANs where I've spoken to people who reckon they've
got the FF settings spot-on in GPL.  Some of them were ranked in the top 50
on GPL rank.  When I attempted to drive with their wheel setups, I walked
away wondering if they'd ever driven a real car...

I wouldn't exactly say that I'm Robinson Crusoe when it comes to criticizing
GPL's FF implementation.  Most of the people who praise GPL's (and N2002's)
FF are the same people who haven't played anything else in the last 2 years.

Maybe they can just drive better. This is technically possible I'm sure
you'll agree ;-)

Setups for ff, as well as car setups, are very subjective. Just because one
person can drive fast with it doesn't necessarily mean someone else can.
There are broad similarities, gear ratios etc, but you just have to find (or
make) a setup that suits your style and controller.
I find the most cricial ff setting to get right is the latency. I have two
identical controllers & even they need slightly different lat settings. You
have to tune it to your specific controller, so I'm not really at all
surprised that you think someone elses setup is bad.

years.

If another sim can do it better, that doesn't suddenly make gpl or NR2002's
ff any worse. It may not be state of the art, but it's very good, and many
find it far more of an aid than a hindrance.

That said, good ff controllers aren't cheap, and what they gain in features,
they inevitably lose out on quality when compared to a non-ff controller at
a similar price.
Personally, I'm used to ff so I'd buy the ff controller over the quality
one.
I would also go with ff if I were a newbie, but if I was an already
competent driver who was used to non-ff, I'd stay non-ff & spend the cash on
extra quality.

Malc.

I have looked around the net at various people's recommendations, and it
seems that most of them are using 20 msec or less of latency correction,
and are adjusting it based on how realistic it feels to drive over
curbs.  This is just plain wrong.

In the readme file that came with the patch that enabled force feedback,
it explains how to set the latency based on handling response.  Papy's
default timing using this method is 65 msec, which is based on an MSFF
wheel.  Using the same procedure on my LWFFGP, I need 120 msec.  It
comes out the same in both GPL and NR2002.

120 msec seems like an awful long time, but with my setup it is the only
way to keep the forces in phase with the car's handling during extreme
maneuvering, such as when trying to correct for a spin.  Anything less
and the forces are not connected to the handling.  Thing is, you can't
really tell the difference during normal driving, it is only when the
car gets really loose and you are struggling to maintain control that
the problem becomes noticeable.  And then it becomes so strong that it
will throw you right off the road.

With enough latency it feels fairly realistic in both GPL and NR2002.
But also in both games it creates anomalies in the handling if you use
assymetric camber.  Basically every time you cross over a longitudinal
seam in the road, such as the crown at the Glen, you get a small spike
in the steering.  And since all good setups use assymetric camber, this
is really annoying.  Again, this is only with high latency settings, so
I'm sure a lot of people haven't noticed it.

So in GPL and NR2002 I cannot get decent force feedback.  Either I get
the timing right and get spiking or I give up on the timing in order to
get smooth performance.  Right now I am living with the former choice by
keeping the force level low so that the spikes are not objectionable.
But I honestly don't like it as much as ISI's FF, which by the way does
not need any latency correction.

I can't say I totally dislike Papy's force feedback, because FF does
provide you with a more natural centering feel than a spring.  But to
the original poster I would say if you are really serious about your
driving get the TSW.  From what I hear, most of the really fast guys
don't use FF.  OTOH if you are just playing for fun, get a Momo but be
prepared to spend some time tweaking it.

--
Don Burnette

BS

I can recommend the TSW line of products. Support from Dave Jr.
and the lot is great, they are of very high quality and the
missing FF is not really an issue for me personally (I find I'm
slower using a friend's FF wheel).

Cheers & good luck,

uwe

--
mail replies to Uwe at schuerkamp dot de ( yahoo address is spambox)
Uwe Schuerkamp //////////////////////////// http://www.schuerkamp.de/
Herford, Germany \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ (52.0N/8.5E)
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                                Thanks again for all the help,
                                                             Doug D