Saitek R4 Wheel

Have just set up GPL with a brand new Saitek R4 Wheel in full digital mode (dual axis pedals). The wheel is basically great and has improved my TOCA performance no end - I am now consitently placed in top 4 cars on any circuit - I was using the keyboard before - ouch!!! Have spent about 5 hours on GPL and am already hooked - this is easily the best Sim I have ever seen on a PC - I work for Silicon Graphics and am not easily impressed after a 180 degree 5 foot high wrap around screen and military flight sims to play with. However, the Saitek wheel seems to have a dead spot in the centre which means that when I try and turn in smoothly to a corner I am looking at and waiting for the wheel to turn on the screen rather than looking up the track. Is this a set-up problem (on the control panel calibrate dialog the cross-hairs move after a smaller wheel movement) or did '67 G cars get built with really sloppy steering(!!). Hope someone can help and as soon as I get good enough I look forward to racing on-line. Regs, Chris Hill

>the Saitek wheel seems to have a dead spot in the centre< Howdy Chris, I bought an R4 too but didn't keep it, as GPL always crashed on loading with it due to some driver problem. Glad to hear they got that sorted, as it's got some nice features. As for your dead spot, you might try the following: Move the linearity slider to the left on the GPL options/controls screen. The default setup is too far over to the right, probably to accomodate joystick users. Experiment; I run mine at or near full-left. If that doesn't do it, you can hex edit the dinput dll file in your Windows/System directory to reduce or eliminate the default Windows deadzone, which is set at 5% of device travel. That setting works OK for a 70degree joystick, but is too much for a 270degree wheel. You'll need a simple hex editor, which you can download from any number of sites, such as download.com or shareware.com. Open your dinput.dll file and go to hex location D8BC. You'll find the value B8 05, the 05 being the value you're interested in. Change the 05 to a smaller value, such as 02 or 01, or eliminate the deadzone entirely by changing it to 00, which I ended up doing. It makes your wheel feel much more precise. Hope this helps, Steve B. remove "edy" from address for email

Steve, Thanks for the advice - I will try tonight to see if it fixes my problem. The Saitek came with both a CD and a floppy with driver code in the box. In my e***ment I just loaded up the drivers from the CD and spent 2 frustrating days trying to get the wheel to work reliably with TOCA and GPL - then I tried the floppy and since then no complaints. Latest drivers are now available on the Saitek web-site and seem to solve any compatibility problems. Thanks again, Chris

On Wed, 6 Jan 1999 16:22:46 -0000, "Chris Hill"

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>Have just set up GPL with a brand new Saitek R4 Wheel in full digital mode >(dual axis pedals). >[...] >However, the Saitek wheel seems to have a dead spot in the centre which >means that when I try and turn in smoothly to a corner I am looking at and >waiting for the wheel to turn on the screen rather than looking up the >track. >Is this a set-up problem (on the control panel calibrate dialog the >cross-hairs move after a smaller wheel movement) or did '67 G cars get built >with really sloppy steering(!!).

It's definitely a setup problem. I've got a R4 FF and there's no noticeable dead spot in GPL, so I doubt that's different with the R4. When I turn the wheel a bit, so do the driver's arms. What the car does is another question...;-) However, I don't know a solution for your problem... Daniel -- Daniel Lichtenberger, Vienna/Austria

How are the pedals ? Are they any better than the rest ? Sensitivity/travel/will they last ? regards, B Hisham