rec.autos.simulators

This new version works wonderfully with my Logitech Wingman Formula Force
USB wheel controller.

In a word, Awesome!

My problem with GPL has always been the over sensitive brake pedal.  Under
hard braking, I would experience wheel lock-up at roughly 2/3 pedal travel.
This makes hard braking difficult, since I have to hold my leg in mid air
with just the right pressure on the pedal so as not to lock up the tires.
With CTFJ, I can now adjust the pedal so that the wheels will not lock up
until I have the pedal all the way to the stop.  This makes an UNBELIEVEABLE
difference in feel and control of the car in GPL.

GPL seems to reverse the braking axis for some reason, so Bob Church (author
of CTFJ) has changed CTFJ to accept negative numbers in the axis sensitivity
field.  I've been trying it with the R axis set at -80 for a first run.

With this setting, the tires will lock up under full braking when cold, but
not when hot.
With more usable travel, trail braking is much much easier.  Just in time
for Mosport, where our league is set to race on Tuesday night!
I think I'll try a little higher setting, say 85 or so, till I get some lock
with hot tires, and then back it off a notch.

I highly recommend this utility to ALL players of Grand Prix Legends, and
want to shout a big THANK-YOU to Bob Church of stickworks.com for this
wonderful ( and free! ) software.

Thank's, I'm downloading it right now.

-don

Keith.

Hi Brad,

Thanks again, Brad, both for the kind words and for helping with test
the beta version. Both are much appreciated!

It looks like Bill and Andre aren't having quite as much luck, though,
so I took a look around the Logitech site today to see if I could pick
up any info. I don't have a LWFF, so I can't really check this stuff
for you guys, but here's some thoughts that might get things running
for you.

First, Brad says he's running fine with the 3.20 drivers without using
the Profiler, so I don't think there's any inherent incompatibility
with the basic 3.20 driver set. The Profiler may be another story, or
it may just be related to the basic problem. If I'm reading things
rightly, neither Bill nor Andre could get CTFJ to work regardless of
whether the Profiler was loaded or not.

So, here's some thoughts. The LWFF is one of those that "doesn't need
calibration" in the Control Panel. Which doesn't mean it doesn't need
calibration, it just means that the driver is doing the calibration
for you. Usually that means that the driver makes some arbitrarily
narrow estimate of what values the extremes of control travel will
produce, places those in the registry, then adjusts them as the device
returns values outside of that range. Eventually, it will track out to
the max and min that the device actually produces and achieve a
correct calibration.

That calibration has to be achieved before CTFJ is started for the
first time. CTFJ needs those final values to work correctly. The CTFJ
doc file mentions getting a good calibration before you start CTFJ the
first time, and that's what you need to do. Also, once that
calibration is set, you _must_ go into the CTFJ Configuration Editor,
center the wheel, and click the Center Axes button. Without that, CTFJ
will not work correctly and usually ends up pinning the indicators to
one side of the test panel or the other.

Here's what I'd do. First, if you've been running the DXTweak utility,
run it again and reset the Default values. A lot of Games depend on
default ranges being set, I'd be a bit hesitant about changing them in
the first place, and CTFJ pretty much overrides them anyway.

Next, remove the LWFF from the Control Panel and run the ClrCalib.exe
utility that's available on the Logitech Website. That will clean out
any backup calibration data and get you back to square one.

At that point, restart Window, but don't run CTFJ. Look in the CTFJ
install directory, usually \Program Files\StickWorks\CTFJ3 for a file
called CTFJ.DAT and delete it. That gets you back to what's
essentially a fresh install of CTFJ.

Next, install the LWFF in the Control Panel. Run it's test panel
routine and move the wheel lock to lock, depress the pedals, etc. What
you're trying to do is to get the autocalibration to set itself up,
and from the notes on the Logitech website, that looks to be the way
to do it. When it's all working well in the Control Panel, go ahead
and exit to the Desktop.

Now start CTFJ. Pop up the Configuration Editor and make whatever
settings you want to make. Make sure to uncheck the 'Center' boxes for
the Accelerator and Brake pedals (I'm guessing it's 'Y' and 'R', both
of which default to centered). Once that's done, center the Wheel and
click the 'Center Axes' button so CTFJ can collect it's data.

Try it out at that point. See if you have better luck in the sims. If
it works okay, then try starting the Profiler and see what happens
with that. If the Profiler doesn't work, you might want to go through
the process again, but load the Profiler _before_ you start CTFJ for
the first time after deleting the CTFJ.DAT file. If the Profiler is
doing something more to the Calibration Data, that would have to be
active when CTFJ is started for the first time for it to line up
correctly.

Let me know how it goes!

- Bob

The StickWorks
http://www.stickworks.com

Thanks for the post.  I'll give it a go, and let you know how it works.

Bill

Andre

Sounds like I need that to clear the registry so I can proceed with this
nonsense, any suggestions on where in that site it is? It really looks like the
problem you describe, where the wheel and the brake are cranked all the way
over and I can't recalibrate them no matter what I do.

Thanks,
Joe

Same problems here, doesn't work for me either. Too bad :(
But after ClrCalib everything is ok again.
You can download it at www.wingmanteam.com, look in the gadgets page.

Andre

Andre

Thanks,
Joe

Well, no luck with CTFJ and my system.  Sigh.

I followed your instructions to the letter (BTW, the use of ClrCalib
prevents  the need to completely remove the Logi software and reinstall in
order to get the Control panel functioning properly again!).  No matter what
I tried, it seems that the mere presence of CTFJ in memory causes GPL and
Viper (haven't tried the others), to fail to recognize the wheel for
calibration in the games.

If you ever find the answer to this, let me know, would you?

In the meantime, life goes on just fine..........

Thanks for all your efforts, Bob.  I appreciate them very much.

Bill Mast

Set axis "R" to -100%, calibrate inside GPL, exit, reset axis "R" to -90%
(or thereabout) and enter GPL without recalibrating, viola! :-)

/Bj.O.rn, SDK #1225

Andre

Yeah, that's got me scratching my head too.  I wonder what's different about
his machine..........?

Bill

Bill,

Me three. 8). There's another fellow that reported it worked for him,
too, and with the Profiler running. I still think there has to be
something going on in the calibration data. Nobody is reporting
'Joystick Not Connected' so the driver is apparently failing the
reads, the data just looks bad to whomever is receiving it. I'd like
to get a look at what that data is looking like, would you be
interested in exporting:

with Regedit and sending me the .REG file? If I could get two dumps,
one from before CTFJ is run while things are still working, and then
again after CTFJ is run when things go awry that would be greate. Be
best to delete CTFJ.DAT before the second one so that it starts fresh.

If you've got time and want to fool with, maybe it would help sort out
what's going wrong.

Thanks!

- Bob

The StickWorks
http://www.stickworks.com