Realistic wheel weight

I often see people talk about wheel weight that it should be pretty high & that in a real race car you really need to fight with the wheel. So the natural thought is that i need a DD wheel. An example here
But i'm not totally convinced that is the case.
There are lots of things of course that can affect the weight of the wheel such as the size of the wheels, weights of car, inertia & PAS.
As far as i'm aware even in modern F1 cars i think there is some degree of PAS (i think). And PAS is only relevant to low speeds my understanding is the faster you go the easier it should be to turn the wheel?
So anyone here have maybe some real racing experience or a physics degree explain why it should be on the stronger side?

 

From my interpretation, wheel weight isn't that important on real world racing, because you have many different ways of feeling the car. It is, however, important in sim racing, because for most people the wheel is the only physical feedback you get from the game, so the stronger it is, the larger the amount of detail you'll be able to feel from the car in game. I don't know how important a super strong wheel would be if you had a motion rig.

 

I often read people talking about how high they have their force feedback settings. It leaves me incredibly confused. I am running a fanatec cswV2 and the highest I run is 67 (out of 100). I have 3 presets I use along with 3 wheels, but still 67 is the most I will run in a belief it's the most realistic to my experiences.

My actual car with track rubber (a GTR 285's 20" tire in front) feels much closer to 60, my daily driver (a 2012 suby sti) feels closer to 56. My wifes Abarth is maybe low 50's. I've driven a 996 GT3 Cup car, a formula dodge competitively and even they don't come close to the 100 setting on the fanatec. Of all my track experience the only thing coming close to 100 is a fricken 125cc shifter kart at low speed continuous radial turns and even then it's a maybe.

My point being I have no idea why so much force is thought to be correct. Granted I've never driven a GT2 car but I have a very tough time believing it requires anywhere near that much force, in fact I would think it would be intolerable and silly if it did.

nathan

 

Wheel weight can be adjusted to driver preference in modern GT3 cars (to some extent). Other cars vary greatly, depending on a host of factors. Most modern(ish) cars with power steering won't be very stiff, but open wheelers and classic racecars can require great effort. There's a reason those old cars had huge steering wheels!

 

Simracers tend to obsess over steer torque a lot but generally it's true that real (modern) cars run a low FF force. Back in the day with Honda F1 we were all excited by this big *** motor we got to generate the feedback so we run it at full whack, engineers came and immediately went "nope, that's what a '70 F1 car would feel, it's nothing like that now". So we mounted a torque sensor on the wheel and compared the traces with the ones from the real car and, once we got close to it, the FF level was waaaaaaaay lower than before, sadly I can't remember proper numbers to give you ideas about it. It was then that I also learned about "steer assist" that we found in AC and how it is used to ramp up forces at low speed to give the driver enough feedback but then greatly reduce forces at high speed/downforce in order to make the ride "comfortable" for a 2 hour race and when hitting curbs.

When comparing with real life there is another effect that is interesting tho, once other forces start to act on the body, the wheel looses its importance.. this was clear when I tried the BRD motion sim for the first time, the immediate feeling was "the FF is almost gone".. of course it wasn't, but the overload of feelings from the motion sort of buried the wheel FF.. very interesting and it is something to consider when we try to compare real car to stationary wheel stands: brain does a lot of tricks behind the scene and should not be trusted.. sadly mounting a torque sensor is not something everybody can do

 

There is also the matter of transient and peak forces, and how they are reproduced. We tend to judge the average force as "feel" or "weight". Weneed to remember that transients and peaks can generete forces WAY higher than that, and the wheel needs some headroom to reproduce these transients properly. Even in a lowly, modern car with powersteering you can get some pretty severe bumps, and when the suspension loads up it can get really stiff. So, if your wheel can reproduce 6Nm and the average force is 4Nm it'll feel fine, but you'll get a "limited" experience compared to a wheel that is capable of 20Nm. The average torque and "feel" is the same, but the more powerful wheel won't clip the transients and will have more headroom for those brutal transitions. it will also have the grunt to run a larger, more realistic rim size. It's only with a really powerful wheel you can appreciate the incredible brutality of the Monza banking, for instance. Even my 20Nm wheel will clip there in some cars, while the everage forces are no higher than my T500RS for the rest of the lap. Just to give you a small indication of just how brutal that feels: My 14 year old son drives trial and motocross, does gymnastics and has great arm strength. Driving the Moby Dick at full tilt around there ripped the wheel out of his hands. He literally couldn't hold the wheel, and crashed. But as I said, the average force isnt higher than my T500....

Stefano, it's very interesting what you said about the combined sensory overload that you get in a real car. I very rarely conciously think about "force feedback" when driving a car, but I did or one lap of the Nordschleife in my GT86. It was a "slow" lap in sim terms, and a bit below my capability in real life as well since I realized I wasn't 100% concentrated on the road and driving while focusing on the feedback, but it really is amazing how docile the wheel is most of the time. It loads up heavily (just like in the sim) in some places. Overall the force we feel in the sim is pretty accurate for the GT86 at least.

And, another note. Do you have torque data for all the cars? That would be invaluable data for those of us with capable wheels. I'd love a "direct Drive" mode with no assist and realistic torques!

 

sadly steer torque is not part of the set of data we ask to manufacturers and it's a shame because it would really be nice to have an unadjusted mode tha highlights the different steer weight for each car.

 

With the F3 Sim I built using the SimSteering2 (53) direct drive motor, we typically had it at around 80-90%, with about 85% in game to avoid clipping.
You really do need two hands to turn it (or one strong hand when changing gear).

A Fanatec CSL Elite on maximum (90% in game, 100%/120% on the wheel) is feather light in comparison to a real F3 car.

 

Tristan, most cars in a.c. Will clip quite s bit at 85%. Do you have any data for your F3 car? Would be interesting to see. I've always appreciated your real life open wheel experience since way back in LFS.

Sent fra min SM-N910F via Tapatalk

 

Been using FFBClip set to normal, and it's typically suggesting 80-85% depending on track with RSR's Mod.
Occasionally I try Strong, but the extra clipping bothers me after a few laps, even though it adds a fair bit of weight to the steering.

 

I see. Well, FFBClip in normal mode allow for a bit of clipping, and with a high torque wheel at least I aim for NO clipping unless it's extreme circumstances, like the Monza banking in a classic racecar.

Just for reference, at 85% ingame and 90% wheel gain you're peaking at 18Nm with your wheel. What is the reasoning for that? You will get more peak torque and less hardware clipping with the wheel at 100% and the game at 65-70%, while retaining the same average weight.

 

@Lord Kunos Out of curiosity, have you ever considered trying to create a code to simulate power steering? Might be quite tricky thing to do but would be interesting to feel what can be done.

 

Hi ,
May I ask what the red plate is on your CSW base?

 

Haha yes i think i have been thinking about this for a while especially when trying to decide if i need a DD wheel.
So when F1 drivers talk about needing to be really strong to drive those cars they are talking more about g-forces? When setting the FF in game for the classic lotus should i set higher FF?

 

Up to 30nm for Indycar / 10nm for GT3.

 

It depends of the car. Modern F1's are so heavily power steered that the steering wheel looks almost dead but..



..then there are cars where the steering would be too violent even for the most OSW's.

 

Thanks i think this explains more the point of a DD wheel. But i also wonder again if the amount of feed back is still magnified in comparison to reality? This again i would imagine would vary a great deal from car to car.

 

So this is measured from a real car? Is that the average or peak forces?

 

I'll get the owner of the sim (I delivered it to him in August) to give that a try. Sounds good to me. As long as the loads are about right (and 18Nm peak is about right) then the more detail the better.