How to set up Force Feedback the RIGHT way (imo)

fForcefeedback is one of the most important features in your simrig, and setting it up to your taste is important. Its also important to set it up to make you go faster. Todays video is going to be about how I set up the forcefeedback. Youd be welcome to disagree, saying my settings or method sucks, but remember its what I feel it should be with my reasoning, its not attack to you no need to take it personal. Forcefeedback, though is personal. Just like pressing that like and subscribe buttons. Im trying to get to 100k, and it has been so long already.

While the software is different between wheelbases, the underlying method I use between each wheelbase is absolutely the same. If you want some settings already done, go check them out at randomcallsign.com, i have a few profiles available for multiple brands. 

Anyways this video is brought to youtube todays sponsor, Coach Dave Academy Delta. Coach Dave is an excellent resource for those of you who want to get better at simracing, including Le mans ultimate. Delta has a treasure trove of telemetry data, setups, AI info and even coaching to help you out getting better, like they have been helping me. They cover Le Mans ultimate, iracing, assetto corsa competizione and even GT7. Check the link in the description. 

Every wheelbase is different, every sim is different. Forcefeedback is the connection between the ones and zeros and the hospital with a broken hand if you go hard enough. Forcefeedback in essence is artificial and imperfect. Subject to whims of imperfect digital wizards which themselves are not all knowing and bring their biases to their model. They are false gods I tell you.

Where I like to  start is at a baseline, something that can be a start and then expanded and modified. You know, a mazda miata.

So, what do I want in my forcefeedback?

What I want as final product is a mostly undamped, responsive, tactile profile with no strange reverbs through the wheelbase or rig, sounds, grittiness and sharp peaks, and a decent and not over the top force feedback strenght. The reason is that I want something comfortable yet informative, a forcefeedback easy to turn, but not necessarily inexistant. I want the ffb to work for me and not be a gym workout or break my shoulders more than a full strength uchimata. Those hurt. 

I think, I may be wrong, that a lighter forcefeedback is faster, as some tracks will have sequences of corners that you will need to flick between, like chicanes. Having something heavy makes you physically slower and tire faster. Something overly filtered will remove a lot of basic information from the tyre, and subtle front end feel, but it cant be so informative it becomes chattery and distracting. 

To achieve that I like to start with a baseline with zero damping, zero springs, zero filters. Just pure signal to the hands, raw power. So, we go to the software and turn those off. This is done to figure what the wheelbase is capable of, and what the game is doing to the signal. This way I can start working on altering the profiles. 

In terms of power what is generally recommended and in reality it is technically correct its to raise the power of the wheelbase to maximum and lower gain on the sim. While this is technically correct, I wont recommend it for a couple of reasons

Number 1 - some wheelbases get hot to the point they start clipping force feedback strength

Number 2 - accidents or ffb bugs happen and when they do happen its easy to get slapped in the hands with a frantic wheelbase. This is especially true with high powered wheelbases. You may say “thats why the e stop exists”, on which ill say, “your hands wont care if you have an e stop once they get slapped”. Better safe than sorry.

So what I do is set the wheelbase to a value I feel comfortable around which is generally between 10 and 12Nm, which is more than and enough and generally avoids clipping in most sims in most cases bar a few edge exceptions. I know this is not the correct way to do it, but been there done that.

Then from that baseline I ask what is happening. If its ACC the signal is so generally dampened, I do nothing else. Just add wee tiny little bit of effects in the game and call it a day. You do you.

For every other game its just bit more complicated. I start with everything that is a effect at zero, both in game and software. I

So, I look at what the wheel does. If it gets too bouncy side to side or cant stabilise in astraight line, I add a bit of dampner effect to stabilise it. Dampner has the side effect to add a constant force that counteracts movement, so too much will definitely stabilise the wheel, but also create too much inertia to movement slowing it down. Not ideal, but sometimes necessary. 

Check the forcefeedback clipping. If its red all the time reduce the gain or increase the power in the wheel. Sometimes both have to happen. I change these to the point where if it ever it clips its only when hitting kerbing.

If the vibrations of the effects are too strong, theres a few things I try to to take in mind. Or in hand. Whats the “type of strength”. Strength doesnt mean really much, theres a lot more to it. Is it amplitude, or force per peak, or frequency. You can imagine a ffb signal like an audio one, if its sharp and peaky, we need to smoothen that peak it will feel sharp and peaky. If the effect numbs the hand and has a reverbing sound almost like metal was rubbing, it means the peaks are too sharp, and we need to smooth the peaks. Each brand will have their type of filter. Fanatec calls it interpolation, simagic filter level, conspit filter sharpness  for example and it serves not only for that effect but also reduce the rough feeling of low frequency forcefeedback signals in certain cases. Generally, I dont add a lot of filtering because that can have the unintended effect to muddle some effects on top of the others. I go High enough just to remove nasty peaks and physical noises, and low enough that they are still crisp. 

Once the effects are smoothen to my taste, I can reduce the force of the effects if they are too present, with too much amplitude. Normally this is not necessary, but I found that in simagic for Le Mans Ultimate it was, a few months back. 

If you have the ability to change slew rate, which is how responsive the wheelbase is, I like to start with max values. Generally I never have the need to lower it, but in the case it may be too nervous at center or with a peak effect, lowering it may help.

This is what I do for racing, but sometimes where I break this formula is for immersion sake. Or simply because it doesnt really work for certain cars. The previous examples were with race cars in mind, GT3, Hypercars. But with road cars or drift cars, I have to change these settings to represent better road going cars, or to stabilise the wheel shaft movements to better mimic them.

If you ever driven a road car, and I have a few, youll know that the steering wheel feedback  compared to what the wheelbase is able to do actually… sucks? It is incredibly dampened, theres really not much information coming through, less so with electric power steering. It is even the case with non assisted or even hydraulic power steering which supposedly bring more of them feels. I dont want my ffb to feel like exactly that, but theres a natural damping that personally I want somewhat replicated for immersion sakes, and to be fair at least for me in theses cases kind of feels better. 

So for those cases, I add a healthy amount of dampning so that feeling is preserved. That also helps with drifting. With drifting you do want the wheel to have the ability to turn by itself but at the same time it cant be on auto mode to the point it bangs every time it turn. I want the wheel movement to be methodical and deliberate, strong but stable. 

So for these cases, I add some damping. Somewhere in the 5 to 20% range, depending on wheelbase and even car. This will make the wheelbase feel more akin to a road car and make it less nervous. It will impact some the effect quality and detail but not enough to make me curse at it like I do to my own car.

These are a couple of my strategies to bring the effects I want in the way I want it. Let me know in the comments how wrong am I.