Force Feedback Fundamentals

Force feedback creates a force against the direction that you're turning. When you turn right, you feel the force feedback because the wheelbase is creating a force to the left to counteract your force. The stronger the wheelbase, the harder it's going to fight against how much you're trying to turn, because it's simulating resistance by creating a force that's against the direction you're turning.

Think of it this way: you are the green arrow turning to the right, and the opposite arrow is the force feedback itself. This is the hardware force feedback.

Understanding FFB Clipping

When force feedback reaches 100 percent, this is called FFB clipping or force feedback clipping. This means the wheelbase has reached 100 percent force and it's not able to give you any extra force anymore. This is bad because if you reach that clipping point and there's more detail to be felt, you won't feel anything else that happens. The wheelbase is already telling you as much information as possible.

When you clip, different things are happening with the car but you're still feeling the same information. The game is still telling you information, but it cannot be more clear than that maximum signal. You need to feel heavy, less heavy, more heavy, less heavy, more heavy—you need to feel exactly the changes in grip of the tires. But if it's clipping, it's only heavy, and that's a continuous heavy sensation where you don't feel anything else after reaching that point.

If you reach that clipping moment where you're already getting 100 percent of the feedback, whatever you do mid-corner you're not going to feel it. It's just going to feel like a very heavy but numb, lazy steering. If you go from oversteer to understeer or if you start sliding, you won't feel any difference—the steering is always going to give you that same signal.

Why You Should Avoid Clipping

You actually want to avoid force feedback clipping. You want to get very close so you're always using as much force as the wheelbase is able to offer you, but you never want to reach that ceiling and stay there. What gives you the detail are the changes in force, because you feel more grip, less grip, more grip, less grip.

The main problem of clipping is when it clips in the game, because then it reaches that 100 percent and triggers the 100 percent that is set up in the force feedback hardware, and then you get nothing after that. For example, if you have your force feedback set to 50 percent but the game is reaching 100 percent, then it hits at the 50 percent ceiling and you get absolutely no detail after that stage. That's terrible because you literally stop feeling what's happening with the car.

Setting Up Force Feedback Correctly

Let's say you set your wheelbase to 50 percent. If you do that, whenever the game signal reaches its peak, it's only going to output 50 percent of your wheelbase capability. If your wheelbase is 20 newton meters, you'll only reach 10 newton meters. You will never feel more than 10 because it's limited in the base. Even if the game sends a 100 percent signal, that 100 percent will only result in 10 newton meters.

It's a mistake, for example, for people to have the wheelbase set at half and then feel that the game force feedback is too light, so they double the in-game setting. This is a problem because now they're reaching that 100 percent in-game but it's clipping. As soon as it clips in the game, you only reach 10 newton meters on the base.

The solution instead is to not change the game settings if the game is reaching clipping. You can see when the force feedback in the game is clipping because there's a graph inside the game. As soon as it clips in iRacing, for example, that F bar (F stands for force feedback) becomes red. That means it's sending a signal of 100 percent of whatever setting you set in the wheelbase.

When that reaches 100 percent in-game, the wheelbase value is exactly what you're feeling. So if you want to increase how hard the steering is, you have to go to the wheelbase settings outside the game and increase that value.

iRacing Auto Function

In iRacing, there's an auto function. Go on track, drive five laps, and then this auto button is going to show up in the settings. You can click it and it's going to set up the ideal force feedback for you.

What I always recommend in iRacing is to use the auto function and then, depending on how it feels, go outside iRacing to the hardware settings and determine how strong you want the force in newton meters. The hardware intensity settings should always be set to auto in iRacing, and then set up to your own preferences outside iRacing for the amount of force that you want in newton meters.

In other simulators, you have to look for the markers when they tell you that you're clipping. The biggest enemy is clipping. You never want to clip. Maybe you can get a little bit close to clipping or clip a few times when you hit a curb or something, but you don't want to be clipping as soon as you start turning. If you see that the bar is maxed out, that means you're feeling nothing else until the end of the corner.

Force Feedback Linearity

There's one thing in some games where you can set up the linearity of the response of the force feedback. If it's completely linear, which is ideal, when you get 50 percent signal in the game, you also get 50 percent of your wheelbase force feedback. When you get 75 percent in the game, you also get 75 percent at the wheelbase. Twenty-five percent is 25 percent—that's linear.

Non-Linear Settings (Not Recommended for Strong Wheelbases)

If you have a wheelbase that only has, say, 2 newton meters—if you have a G29 or a Thrustmaster or a very entry-level force feedback wheel—linear settings can feel way too light. What people do in the game is they create a non-linear force feedback where when you get just a little bit of force feedback in the game, it already triggers a higher value of response in the force feedback so that you feel it's going to be a little bit heavier.

In this example, with only 25 percent force in the game, you already feel what's more or less 65 percent at the base, so you feel as if the car has better feedback. This is kind of a solution, but the problem is you start feeling that force feedback more on the lower forces but then you lose precision on the higher forces. When the car actually gets into a slide or something, you're always feeling that kind of heavy force feedback and you don't feel too much of the difference. A big difference in the game's force feedback of 50 percent accounts for only around 20 percent difference in the wheel, which means you don't feel much else. Basically it gets heavy initially, but then you don't feel too much difference mid-corner.

If you have a 2 newton meter base, that might be okay—it's going to feel a little bit better. I recommend though that you try to always keep it linear, because then you're going to feel every stage of the corner. You're going to feel the same amount of detail, which is going to allow you to have more precise driving.

If you have a direct drive wheel, it has to be linear always. Everything has to be linear.

Field of View (FOV) Setup

Triple Screen Setup

If you're using triple screens, of course you want to have the highest FOV possible. This is only possible if you have the center screen pretty close to you—as close as possible to the wheelbase, as close as possible to your eyes. That way you're able to, with the second and third screens, create and close that field of view for you so you can have a higher field of view in the game.

The closer the center screen is to you, the more angle you're going to have between the center screen and the side screens. The center of each screen has to be pointing exactly to your eyes. It has to angle this way, so the perpendicular line that comes out of the center of the screen is always directed to your eyes.

For me, the ideal setup is when you have the center screen very close to you and the edges of the side screens in a line that crosses your eyes to create a 180 degree FOV. The angle between each screen will be 60 degrees, so 60 plus 60 plus 60 will create that 180 degrees, which is pretty much ideal.

Single Screen Setup

If you have a single screen, it generally feels a little bit too slow because if you do the proper calculation of the FOV, the speed sensation is definitely going to be a little bit off-putting and unsatisfying. Here's what you can do:

• First, keep the center screen as close as possible to you

• After you calculate the FOV, feel free to increase it by no more than 10 percent

• This will increase a little bit more your sense of speed, give you a little bit more side views, and make it more fun without hurting your precision

Frame Rate and Monitor Settings

Please make sure that you're running the simulator at least at 100 FPS. Turn the graphics down if you're not, because you really want that smoothness. Your eyes are going to be fixating on moving targets, so if that moving image is a little bit blurry, it really hurts your driving precision and makes it less fun.

Ideally you want it to be at least 144 Hertz or something like that, with a good monitor with no input lag. You also don't want any input lag, please. But making sure that you have at least 100 FPS is crucial.

Load Cell Pedal Configuration

Linearity Is Essential

If you have a load cell pedal, your pedal has to be linear everywhere. You have to have the linear option checked in iRacing. In case you're using a different simulator, make sure your gamma is completely linear in the pedal software. I also recommend keeping that completely linear.

I know that they have some options of creating S-curves or inverted S-curves or various curve types. All these will hurt your precision in the long term. If you're taking this course and want to improve your driving, make sure your pedal is linear.

Dead Zones

You can have dead zones, so you can add a little bit of 5 percent or 10 percent dead zone if it's too easy to reach that 1 percent. This makes sure that you press a little bit harder before you reach 1 percent. But make sure it's completely linear after that.

Understanding Linear Response

For example, if you're braking at 50 percent, you should be pressing 50 percent on the pedal, it should show 50 percent in your pedal's software, and also 50 percent in the game. If you go to 75 percent, it should be 75 percent everywhere.

If you keep pressing exactly 50 percent but then move the force vector setting, you'll see what happens. You're literally pressing 50 percent, but the force vector distorts the reading. A lot of the travel gets compressed or expanded depending on the setting.

Force Vector Effects (Avoid for Load Cell Pedals)

When you go between 0 percent and 50 percent with the force vector at zero, you'll see one range of motion. But if you then go between 100 percent and 90 percent—the same 10 percent range—it will feel the same. If you increase the force vector and continue pressing the same amount, it can read such a huge drop because it's distorting the signal.

If you have a potentiometer pedal that does not have a lot of resistance, you can play a little bit with the force vector to gain a little bit of precision, but be careful because it's going to heavily affect the precision that you have depending on the travel.

If you have zero force vector, you're going to have the same reading difference in pressure depending on the travel. If you increase the force vector, you're going to have more precision on the lower end because a bigger amount of the travel is going to account for a smaller reading in the pressure. But then you're going to lose a lot of precision on the higher end because a tiny bit of the remaining travel is going to account for 80 percent of the rest of the pressure. This is an extreme example. You can bring this down to 1 or 1.5 and so on.

Again, if you have a load cell pedal, bring the force vector down to 0 and then check the linear box so it's going to be perfectly linear.

Proper Range Configuration

Your pedal has to be set in a way that you're able to press 1 percent and feel that 1 percent, and then you're going to go all the way up to 99 percent and feel that. By the time you reach 100 percent, it should be easy to go down to 99 percent. You want to be very close to 99 percent because if it's very easy to brake over too much, your pedal is not properly set.

If you're actually braking at 300 percent pressure but it's reading only 100 percent because that's the ceiling, you have to set up your range to make sure you're always using the workable range of pressure in your pedal.

It's very important that you have this workable range—that you're able to press 1 percent, you're able to press 99 percent, and you're able to linearly move between all these ranges. We're going to need this because there are going to be a lot of lessons about how to increase your precision in braking, and your pedal software and hardware have to be well set up.