Joystick/Wheel dilemma!

Yeah, so I've been racing GPL and Viper for months now with a joystick, slowly getting faster but always feeling kinda limited by the joystick. I go and buy a wheel and after several days, I'm still hopeless with it! I'm still nowhere near my old joystick-set times and I'm constantly hitting things! I thought a wheel was going to *improve* my driving! Anyone else experienced this helpless feeling? What should I do? (I know.. "practice, practice, practice".. anything else?) Frustrated and flummoxed Pants

You forgot practice and more practice. <G> seriously though, it takes a bit of time to translate to wheel from stick. For one thing, your steering reactions on the wheel are going to be a lot slower when correcting for quite some time. Keep with the program. You'll get there Mark

On Fri, 4 Jun 1999 01:09:43 -0700, "Got Pants?"

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>Yeah, so I've been racing GPL and Viper for months now with a joystick, >slowly getting faster but always feeling kinda limited by the joystick. I >go and buy a wheel and after several days, I'm still hopeless with it! I'm >still nowhere near my old joystick-set times and I'm constantly hitting >things! I thought a wheel was going to *improve* my driving! Anyone else >experienced this helpless feeling? What should I do? (I know.. "practice, >practice, practice".. anything else?) >Frustrated and flummoxed Pants

One thing you should look into is the wheel lock setting within your game. The same wheel lock setting may feel differently when using a wheel vs. using a joystick. Also, you may have to re-learn your braking point. After I've gotten my wheel, I had to re-learn the tracks, as far as when to brake and when to get back on the gas. That's because I'm now using pedals for gas and brake rather than buttons. Generally, it's not a good idea to slam on the gas and the brake. Try learning how to gradually get on the gas and the brake. You'll drive smoother that way. Hope this helps out a bit. Ricky

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> Yeah, so I've been racing GPL and Viper for months now with a joystick, > slowly getting faster but always feeling kinda limited by the joystick. I > go and buy a wheel and after several days, I'm still hopeless with it! I'm > still nowhere near my old joystick-set times and I'm constantly hitting > things! I thought a wheel was going to *improve* my driving! Anyone else > experienced this helpless feeling? What should I do? (I know.. "practice, > practice, practice".. anything else?)

Don't forget to move the linearity slider as far left as you can manage - the wheel can cope with much a much more linear setting than a joystick. If you have it too non-linear it's tricky to control in the corners, as the wheel won't move much in the centre and then suddenly accelerates as you move it past a certain point. Try it with the drivers' arms on, then see how the on-screen wheel moves as you move your wheel.

I have to disagree... :( I use a wheel (Thrustmaster Formula One), and have the slider far to the right. My lap-times are within 0.5 - 1 second of Wolfgang W?ger's times, so it is surely not slowing me down! :) Ciaooooooooo! ;) -- Roland

On Fri, 4 Jun 1999 01:09:43 -0700, "Got Pants?"

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>Yeah, so I've been racing GPL and Viper for months now with a joystick, >slowly getting faster but always feeling kinda limited by the joystick. I >go and buy a wheel and after several days, I'm still hopeless with it! I'm >still nowhere near my old joystick-set times and I'm constantly hitting >things! I thought a wheel was going to *improve* my driving! Anyone else >experienced this helpless feeling? What should I do? (I know.. "practice, >practice, practice".. anything else?) >Frustrated and flummoxed Pants

Check under your desk. There might be a set of pedals there that came with the wheel. The left pedal is called a "break" pedal. Use it occasionally. That will stop you from hitting things. Seriously, I feel your pain. Started off my racing career with a crummy old joystick and finally got around to plonk down the money for a MS FF Wheel. It took WEEKS before I could beat my best times in Colin McRae with the new wheel. Not to mention GPL. Frustrating! But now it feels like an extension of my arms, going straight into the monitor, pushing those racing pixels around various tracks faster than ever. :-) If there is _one_ word of advice I'd like to give (apart from the obvious practicepracticepractice) it's "slow down to go faster". Try it... /petern P.S. The FF patch for GPL will see laptimes all over the world dwindle at first.

On Fri, 4 Jun 1999 19:11:22 +0200, "Roland Ehnstr?m" >>Don't forget to move the linearity slider as far left as you can manage >I have to disagree... :( I use a wheel (Thrustmaster Formula One), and have >the slider far to the right. My lap-times are within 0.5 - 1 second of >Wolfgang W?ger's times, so it is surely not slowing me down! :) FWIW, the Thrustmaster wheels use 250K ohm pots, whereas most others user 100K ohm pots. This makes the TM products a bit more sensitive, I think. The larger resistance value on a 250K ohm pot also causes more CPU polling which creates slower frame rates (on lower-end systems especially), which is why most other wheels use 100K pots. At any rate, the 250K pots may be why your slider is set to the far right. People have VERY different driving styles, too -- my friends can't use my ICR2 setups, and vice-versa, for example. Obviously, though, you're doing something right! <G> -- JB

It's a big change. Biggest difference I found is that you can't correct nearly as quickly with a wheel, making it much harder to save yourself and maintain control. You can set your steering ratio down to 12:1 to improve correction speed, but that makes you kind of twitchy on the straights. You can also play with the steering linearity slider to try and find a comfy compromise between it and steering ratio. Basically, I believe that when you switch from stick to wheel, you have to evolve a whole new driving style, smooth versus aggressive, at least initially. Once you've become more confident of yourself with the wheel, you can re-introduce the aggression and start*** the ass end out around turns again. Or, just stay with the stick. I use the wheel because it just seems more realistic for a car racing sim, but look at any hot lap page and it's apparent that you can go very fast with either. You said it yourself, practice, practice, practice. LOL. Zog

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> Yeah, so I've been racing GPL and Viper for months now with a joystick, > slowly getting faster but always feeling kinda limited by the joystick. I > go and buy a wheel and after several days, I'm still hopeless with it! I'm > still nowhere near my old joystick-set times and I'm constantly hitting > things! I thought a wheel was going to *improve* my driving! Anyone else > experienced this helpless feeling? What should I do? (I know.. "practice, > practice, practice".. anything else?) > Frustrated and flummoxed Pants

-- Don't let the bastards grind you down. Doug Schneider Bedford, Nova Scotia Canada

I also use full right, because my wheel is _not_ accurate if I set it to left, it keeps turning wheels to every direction at the same time even that I wouldn't even touch the whole wheel.. (bad potentiometer -> impossible to drive...cleaning would help though...). I sure would like to try to set it to left, but that's impossible, at least until I get a new wheel... and btw. I'm not "that" slow with the "right-side-setting", works well for me :) Note: _If_ your wheel is so worn that it's not accurate in the center anymore, you can try to set linearity more to right to remove unaccuracy :) Ps. Thrustmaster Formula 1 Racing Wheel = Thrustmaster Nascar Pro.

My Mad Catz Andretti wheel doesn't do that stuff...Hmmm....Must be the digital microprocessor........

On Sat, 5 Jun 1999 03:10:32 +0300, "Marko Viitanen"

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>Roland Ehnstr?m wrote... >>>Don't forget to move the linearity slider as far left as you can manage >>I have to disagree... :( I use a wheel (Thrustmaster Formula One), and have >>the slider far to the right. My lap-times are within 0.5 - 1 second of >>Wolfgang W?ger's times, so it is surely not slowing me down! :) >>Ciaooooooooo! ;) >>-- Roland >I also use full right, because my wheel is _not_ accurate if I >set it to left, it keeps turning wheels to every direction at the same >time even that I wouldn't even touch the whole wheel.. >(bad potentiometer -> impossible to drive...cleaning would >help though...). I sure would like to try to set it to left, but that's >impossible, at least until I get a new wheel... and btw. I'm >not "that" slow with the "right-side-setting", works well for me :) >Note: >_If_ your wheel is so worn that it's not accurate in the center >anymore, you can try to set linearity more to right to remove >unaccuracy :) >Ps. Thrustmaster Formula 1 Racing Wheel = Thrustmaster >Nascar Pro.

You have to ask yourself the point in sliding it to the left if you're using an analogue wheel or joystick. If you wanted your analogue control to feel like it were in fact digital, why wouldn't you just use the keyboard? ;-) The Excelsior "To Boldy Go Where No Man Has Gone Before... - Doh! I'm On The Wrong Ship!"