Send help, I developed a simracing addiction

[Retardo]

In other news, driving for any stretch of time on wheel and pedals is taxing. I'm in an office chair and it's not the most comfortable positioning, but just keeping your foot hovering over the brake all the time and tapping the two pedals 40 times a minute in rally is just so strenuous.

I have no idea how those bastards keep going at full concentration for ~2 hours in F1.

They are doing it since childhood, I guess.
Also, how you prevent yuor chair from rolling backwards when you are pressing the pedals?
I'm strapping it to the wheelstand with cargo belt, but that's too unwieldy.

 

[Curratum]

Also, how you prevent yuor chair from rolling backwards when you are pressing the pedals?
I'm strapping it to the wheelstand with cargo belt, but that's too unwieldy.

I use this ONE SIMPLE TRICK.

(It's an armchair that weighs like 30 kilos)

 

[adddeed]

In other news, driving for any stretch of time on wheel and pedals is taxing. I'm in an office chair and it's not the most comfortable positioning, but just keeping your foot hovering over the brake all the time and tapping the two pedals 40 times a minute in rally is just so strenuous.

I have no idea how those bastards keep going at full concentration for ~2 hours in F1.

You need a comfortbale seating position and leg position. A racing chair setup makes a big difference.

 

[Curratum]

Would love that, but as you can see in the photo, I just don't have the space for that.

The low-tier rigs that just have a comfy seating position and a metal frame to mount stuff so your chair doesn't dance around and you can pound the brakes aren't even that expensive, just don't have the physical space for one.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Great Deceiver Boot up AC, get the Kyalami 1976 track (here - http://www.mediafire.com/file/koudsyzdee6aqpz/Kyalami_Grand_Prix_Circuit_1967_Version_1.0.zip/file ) and then load up the 1967 Lotus of Ferrari F1 cars and let them rip here. You're welcome!

The older tracks without extreme curves and chicanes let the old F1 cars shine as well. Ping me if you want more old versions of tracks to play the old cars on. Wrestling those things is something else! Almost the same power as a modern F1 car, but no downforce and suspension out of hell.

Edit: Actually here's a list of cool old tracks: https://thracing.de/tracks/

You owe it to yourself to try at least Spa 1966 and Rouen les Essarts from that list.

It's funny, one of the main reasons I like driving 1991 era F1 cars is exactly because of their incredible downforce - in many ways it feels a lot easier than driving the GT cars, which feel airy and jumpy in comparison.

Will give this track a try, thanks!

Also, regarding the physical effort of playing with the wheel/pedals - yes! It's really taxing, but it helps keep the session times down, which is a good thing.

In other news, playing a lot of different games really brings into light the inadequacy of Thrustmaster's lack of profiling app. Having to alt tab to set wheel angles for different games is really backwards compared to Logi's solution. For example, I have a 540 angle for Snowrunner, 360 angle for F1 cars (AC's soft lock doesn't work for some custom cars, including some of the best F1 mods), 1080 for trucks... it's a mess. I thought it was a minor issue, but it's not so minor when you're hopping across various games with some regularity. Also, sometimes the driver doesn't save your last setting for some reason (i.e. I set the wheel at x degrees and then it just resets to whatever the previous setting was); this mostly happens with RBR.

 

[Curratum]

Huh, all games I play have a soft-lock option, so the game adjusts the steering lock angle on the fly for you.

I have it set at 400 in WRC, I have set AC to auto-set it per car in CM, and PC2 and AMS also do this for you. RaceRoom has soft-lock too.

I keep the same setting inside the control panel.

AC:

 

[Great Deceiver]

Yep, as I said AC's soft lock doesn't work on some custom cars (try it with AMS' 1991 McLaren for example while having the wheel at 1080 degrees in TM's driver settings). I've been having some better luck with CM's experimental hard lock feature. Also, some games just don't have a soft lock option (like Snowrunner and RBR).

Re: RaceRoom, I tried it for a bit yesterday and though it seemed alright, the load times were atrocious (this on a pretty fast M.2 NVMe). It was enough to sour me on the whole experience.

 

[Curratum]

Yep, as I said AC's soft lock doesn't work on some custom cars (try it with AMS' 1991 MacLaren for example while having the wheel at 1080 degrees in TM's driver settings). I've been having some better luck with CM's experimental hard lock feature. Also, some games just don't have a soft lock option (like Snowrunner and RBR).

Re: RaceRoom, I tried it for a bit yesterday and though it seemed alright, the load times were atrocious (this on a pretty fast M.2 NVMe). It was enough to sour me on the whole experience.

Weird about the AC soft lock. Never had this happen to me, must be a mod thing.

As for RR, yeah the loading times are nasty, I have it on SSD and it's not good, but when I load into a track, I do at least 5 laps in practice or a 5 lap race, so the load time is not that bad against time in session.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Hard lock works fine - I had it disabled for some reason (must be when I was mucking around with wheel profiles). It's billed as an "experimental" feature but it works pretty much perfectly on the T300.

After binging for two weeks on nothing but racing games, I can confidently say that the most fun I've had was with BeamNG.drive. It's very rough around the edges but the driving model is really one of the best (not to mention the very best collision physics in the whole industry) and it suits my purposes better than any other game - I can just fuck around in mountain tracks if I want, drive around in (pretty realistic) traffic, go for a police chase or two, do deliveries, drive a bus route... the possibilities are really endless. These devs definitely deserve their money.

The only problem I have with it are the fictional car names, but that's understandable, especially considering the rising popularity of this type of game.

Driving/racing games are definitely an underappreciated niche (outside of enthusiasts ofc) and very deep once you get into them. I think most YouTuber/l33t spergs are a disservice to everyone, though. Also most beginner advice I've come across is pretty wrong - Logitech wheels are just not good and most people should skip them and save 50 extra bucks or whatever for a belt-driven TM. This thing about "Logitech wheels are FINE" is just a fucking lie. I might be a little sour because I haven't been able to sell the 2nd hand G29 that I purchased not even a month ago.

 

[Curratum]

Keep at it, a brand new Logi with warranty should sell for no more than like 30 bucks below store price.

As for BeamNG, I do agree it's BRILLIANT, handling, possibilities, content, pure fun, but I have a crappy CPU and can only ever drive solo. The moment I try making a race or driving with even medium traffic density on, everything drops to 30-something FPS, it's very very CPU-hungry.

However, doing the "escape from the police through the harbor and onto the boat" sequence is one of the most memorable things I've done in a driving game. So well put together and so fun to run through it.

I should reinstall it again, see if there's any performance improvement.

Overall, I tend to go on the other, more spergy end of the spectrum - I like learning tracks, doing races, improving lap times. I can definitely get the fun of something like BeamNG, but if I don't have a specific goal or target or a structured race or championship, I tend to lose interest quickly and can't enjoy sandboxes very long in any genre.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Yeah, I can understand that and I'm usually like that in other types of games - I prefer tightly focused, objective-driven gameplay, but with driving games for some reason it's different. Maybe because driving with the wheel is so new. As for BeamNG being a CPU hog, yeah definitely - I have a 2 year old, 8C16T Ryzen 7 3800x and that game brings it to its knees like no other.

In other news, I played Project Cars 2 for the first time today and although it feels significantly more arcade-y than AC I quite liked it, especially with this custom FF profile. AC has the infinite modding angle of course, but the amount of stuff available in PC2 is really great. Definitely one to get in the next big sale. I've heard PC3 is a piece of shit, though.

 

[Curratum]

Have both PC2 and 3. 3 has even more performance issues, and you need to grind "credits" to buy and upgrade your cars...

 

[Curratum]

Great Deceiver Oh, man...

I had an upper pedal range deadzone issue with the T300 RS GT set, thought it was because it was second hand, so I used saturation and sensitivity sliders here and there to get 100% input even when the pedal wasn't outputting 100 in the control panel.

However, I tried playing Richard Burns Rally which doesn't have saturation and gamma and sensitivity, which meant I can only get 80% throttle input in the game...

Went online, searching for a solution. Random reddit post linked me to this:

https://ts.thrustmaster.com/downloa...T_LCM/T-LCM_RJ12-pedal_set_mode_detection.pdf

Basically, it will behave like this because of REASONS. To get your set in pedal calibration mode, press and hold the left gear paddle and the Mode button near it, wait for the indicator to flash. Now all my pedals go to 100% with 100% pedal travel, while before the gas and clutch would only reach 80% in the control panel.

I removed the conical rubber brake mod from the brake pedal too, because with no saturation / sensitivity in Richard Burns, you can only brake to about 30% and that just doesn't work. I need to figure out some other solution because I really liked the stiff, pressure-based modulation with the mod on.

There's this, which I will probably soon buy - a much softer rubber mod that allows you to punch the pedal much further in: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/192668921409?hash=item2cdbf66e41:g:2WIAAOSw6HJcbAos

 

[Great Deceiver]

Yeah, I was aware of the pedal mode thing, but for me it wasn't an issue because I bought my set new, so it came configured correctly in the proper mode. Glad you got your issue solved!

I haven't tried the rubber cone mod yet because I like the brake as is, even if it's a little soft - maybe traumatized due to Logi's awful, impossible to depress solution.

 

[Curratum]

Yeah, I was aware of the pedal mode thing, but for me it wasn't an issue because I bought my set new, so it came configured correctly in the proper mode. Glad you got your issue solved!

I haven't tried the rubber cone mod yet because I like the brake as is, even if it's a little soft - maybe traumatized due to Logi's awful, impossible to depress solution.

With the brake mod on, the T300 is also impossible to press down to full throw.

The purpose of this type of setup is to have 30-40% movement, then hit that thick, barely flexing rubber back there and modulate and set up ingame sensitivity, gamma, saturation etc, so that just 10-15% percent travel of the pedal to a max of, let's say 55% pedal throw, gives you 100% on the ingame output, so you can modulate your braking with pressure and feed the game the upper 50% of braking input by pressing and modulating your foot pressute into the rubber, moving the pedal physically just 10-15%.

The big idea is to sumulate load cell pedals that change input based on pressure, not potentiometer travel. The reason why those are so popular is because it's supposed to be easier to develop the muscle memory for consistent braking, rather than learning how far to press down on a floaty brake and always hovering somewhere around where you want it, and because race cars IRL are supposed to have super-hard brakes.

I wish the rubber was a bit softer and stiffened a bit more gradually, letting you get another 10% travel and more progression, but it's fine as it was. Had to remove it for Richard Burns and it's the best simulation of rally I've tried, counting WRC 8-10, both Dirt Rally games and Seb Loeb Rally Evo, so it's worth it. I hope I can get used to the floatier, rubberless pedal for track racing in AC and RRoom too.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Yep, RBR is really miles beyond all the other rally games, which really boggles the mind. There's also so much fucking content, it's unbelievable. Modding spergs win again!

I understand the theory behind the last bit of throw on the brake being very hard, but I just don't like it and I don't think the response to it in games is realistic, even for standard weak road cars. I realise that potentiometer pedals aren't the most realistic, but this new one feels good.

 

[Curratum]

Yep, RBR is really miles beyond all the other rally games, which really boggles the mind. There's also so much fucking content, it's unbelievable. Modding spergs win again!

I understand the theory behind the last bit of throw on the brake being very hard, but I just don't like it and I don't think the response to it in games is realistic, even for standard weak road cars. I realise that potentiometer pedals aren't the most realistic, but this new one feels good.

Yeah, it's sort of stiff. People say don't put in the rubber mod, just stick a squash ball under the pedal arm and use that for SOME extra stiffness towards the end. Might try that instead.

 

[visions]

Also, how you prevent yuor chair from rolling backwards when you are pressing the pedals?
I'm strapping it to the wheelstand with cargo belt, but that's too unwieldy.

I just used an uncomfortable kitchen chair with no wheels instead of my normal computer chair when I had my wheel set up. But I mostly ended up playing Euro Truck Sim 2 and more casual racing games with it, only briefly tried some older sim racers with it (GT Legends, GTR 2) and most of the time my wheel has been in storage. Using it was fun but settin it up each time I wanted to use it was kinda annoying. Perhaps I should dig it up and see if it still works.

 

[Curratum]

Spent 3-4 days playing only rally, now my ability to drive on track has been completely ruined. I'm 2+ seconds behind the pace I was on before the rally stint.

 

[Curratum]

Dirt Rally 1 is exceptionally good, the FFB is amazing. Pikes Peak, ripping up the wet tarmac and gravel on the mixed road version in a 500HP specialized hillclimb car is INSANE.

I can't understand how they fucked up DR2 so much, when they had the FFB so good in the first one.

 

[Curratum]

Deleted Dirt Rally 1 too. Fuck me, how can you have FFB so good and then make the pacenotes so retarded?

On the fifth time when a "4 right over crest" sent me flying into the forest in a straight line, because it should have been "double caution 4 right over crest jump", you just lose the desire to bother with it anymore. You need to just memorize stages, which defeats the whole purpose of rally.

Back to WRC 10, then...

 

[Curratum]

Get Richard Burns Rally. That is all. If you have a decent force feedback wheel, just get and play Richard Burns Rally from this place, it's 100% free:

https://www.rallysimfans.hu/rbr/download.php?download=rsfrbr

This 18-year-old game, with the fan physics mods and updates, is better than ANY other rally game out there. Screw Codies and Dirt Rally. Screw the "official" WRC game and its shitty, weak, muddy and uninformative FFB.

The installer from the link is idiot-proof, just click next, select content and play.

Just get Richard Burns Rally. That is all.

 

[KazikluBey]

This 18-year-old game, with the fan physics mods and updates, is better than ANY other rally game out there. Screw Codies and Dirt Rally. Screw the "official" WRC game and its shitty, weak, muddy and uninformative FFB.

Previously in the WRC 10 thread...

Also, have you tried Richard Burns Rally with NGP6? Probably the closest to full-sim mode rally (or maybe BeamNG, haven't tried it). The RallySimFans version sets you up with the base game, NGP6, tons of cars, tons of stages, online leaderboards, and championships.

RBR is pure unfiltered autism. It runs on an ancient engine with underlying code that is lightyears away from current-day simulations, both in terms of tire interaction and road surface detail, so I really don't think you should be using it as a point of reference.

Oh how the turntables. (anyway, glad you liked it)

 

[Curratum]

The caveat is, I would never have bothered with it if I had to install all the mods and assorted autism manually. But in the end I thought what the fuck, why not.

And I still stand by my original statement - the original 2004 RBR I played back then had unrealistic physics. The cars were slidy tanks.

Now that they have it all pre-packaged in a one-click installer, with all the physics updates, it's the closest thing I've seen to WRC onboards.

 

[Sukhāvatī]