rec.autos.simulators

My MSFF does a fair amount of that, though there is only so much end
swapping you can feel in the wheel, it's more in the visual bias.  You can
map the Y axis forces to the X axis so you get some sense of it, but by
nature it's going to be artificial.  One thing the wheel does well in VR is
give you a sense of the ups and downs of the road surface.

The centering force is adjustable and is pretty good on high.  I leave it
one notch below that.  I noticed two things though:

1.  It is clumsy to try and hit the shift buttons behind the wheel when it
is turned.  I have big hands and I really have to wrap my hands around to
get to them.  If you have smaller hands, you might not be able to reach
around the FAT wheel rim very well.  The wheel has places in the *** part
of the outer edge to hook your thumb, also, and yourthumb can get stuck in
them ifyou have to turn the wheel very far, say, for opposite lock or
something.

2.  The wheel is small, about 10" in diameter.  I have wide shoulders and it
gets uncomfortable to have to hold my arms that way to 'focus' my hands in
front of me with a good range of motion.  I have the same trouble with a
computer keyboard.  Putting my hands straight next to each other in front of
me is all but impossible.

email me if you want more specific answers to anything.  Remove the
'nospam'.

daxe

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Looseness is the back trying to take over the front, sort of...

Visually you see the scenery yawing in relation to your direction, thats how
you can tell if your front or your back is not going in a straight line.
When you feel it in a real car, you are not really getting that feedback
through the steering wheel so much as your eyes and your butt.

X and Y axis as they relate to the world, not your joystick/wheel.  The X
axis is left to right, the Z axis is front to back.  Y axis is up and down.
If you did any 3D modelling.rendering/animation, this would make more sense
to you.  The software for the wheel allows this option and it is labelled as
such.  Ever hear the term 'Z-buffering'?  That means buffering the data in
the Z axis, or what you perceive as depth.

daXe

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Anyways, I like the MS wheel. Actually, bought one, tried it with GPL, Viper
& N2, and took it back (the same day) because it would work (for me) in N2.
Got a TM NPro, used it for a week, realized I wasn't actually PLAYING N2 at
this point in time (GLP - 'nuff said) and took it back & got the original MS
FF wheel back (I know this from how I repacked it, though they did replace
(or re-shrink wrap) the driver/game CD - thanks again EB. Had the wheel
about a month now & it still seems solid - even after lots of FF (ab)use
last weekend when I picked up the new Computer *** World with NFSIII,
Speed Busters & Jonny Herbert GP demos (all FF).

Good luck

Randy

l8er
ronny

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kiddo?"

          |\      _,,,---,,_        I want to die like my Grandfather,
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        |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'     Not like the people in his car,
       '---''(_/--'  `-'\_)            screaming their heads off!

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cisko [AT] ix [DOT] netcom [DOT] com

This demo doesn't tempt me to buy the full version at all - the NFS
demo, though...

Demo CD also had Castrol Superbike on it, but would just freeze when
started, which was strange since I've heard it's just a 2 wheeled
version of JH GP, which ran fine (didn't say it was any good, just ran
fine on my PC)

Randy

Yeah.. I read what I wrote about it and realized it didnt explain it very
well, but thats what I meant.  In fact, I believe that though the Y axis of
the Joystick recieves FF data, it is in the Z axis of the world that that
data is generated.  Some of the confusion comes in that there are 3 axes for
everything, it depends on your frame of reference.  Object XY and Z are not
the same as World XY and Z, etc.  The Z axis of the object (in this case,
you) is actually up and down, though the sim Z axis is "in and out".

Ugh..my head hurts

daxe

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-Larry

That is almost _exactly_ my story, except for me it was the Nascar
SuperSport wheel I traded for, and after I bought the MSFFW for the
second time I decided to keep the SS for Nascar2/NROS.

Viper is 100% responsible for this madness :)  It's FF effects are so
damned good that I couldn't live without them.

-Larry

The engine starts yawing up and down, the car starts bobbing up and
down, the sound sounds exactly like it should, and the wheel is jiggling
in _perfect_ harmony with all those other sensations.

That one corner (actually, just before you get to it), is one of the
best computer simulated stretches of road I've ever seen/heard.  It'd
done _perfectly_ in Viper Racing.

-Larry