Automobilista 2 Custom Force Feedback - Overview & Recommendations

Hey all,

it took a while, many changes, here is

"rFuktor ? experimental 1":

Additions:
* Improved loss of grip feel
* Pneumatic/mech trail
* Many minor things
* Damping slider is now damping slider again
* Auto adjust strength, based on projected downforce and downforce scale

 

My understanding is, that the kerbs_surface_scale is just that. The feeling of the surface of the kerbs, the serrations etc, whereas the kerbs_bump_scale would be the initial bump when you first hit the kerb.

 

That's what I was thinking but wasn't sure, thanks

 

As I have a simagic alpha Evo 12NM I have tried DanielKarts custom file first as he has this wheel. I still found it to be too light on initial turn and then very heavy on high force corners ie it was not linear enough. Adjusting friction and damping didnt help a lot. There is this high frequency slight buzz as well which was common with all custom files I tried and the defaults
I then tried Karstens custom file and this high force issue was improved somewhat but the curbs etc effects were too much and still the low force was not satisfactory
I found 34's file to be the best of the three but it seems to me the evo wheels arent working that well with AMS2. There is this slight buzz which is not road texture and there is little feel at low force. For example on the starting grid there is zero friction in the wheel when you turn it
In comparison LMU just using the default profile in Simpro Manager has good low force feel and more linear force as force increases. I can even run it at 20 FFB detail in simpro manager with no smoothing in game settings
I actually prefer AMS2 though as a game especially using older cars without aero andTC etc esp on historic tracks. 34's custom file makes a great job with these types of cars and tracks ie ability to control loss of traction on the edge...
Interested to know if others with simagic evo wheels have the same experience. I get the impression DanielKart feels good with his settings not sure why my experience differs.
PS Just noticed Karsten has released another version....have not tried that yet

 

My experience with the Simagic Evo and LMU is almost completely different from yours. LMU is currently unplayable for me and not an option. But no problem, just find something that suits your taste. Or try Reiza's defaults

 

"rFuktor ? experimental 2":

Several sigificant bugs that made the prior version almost junk fixed + some things added, some adjusted.

* Improved loss of grip feel
* "et2" timer fixed
* Startup initialization of pneumatic and mechanical trails fixed
* More real features of pneumatic trail added
* Downforce on bumps improved
* Auto adjust "downforce_scale" depending on the car's downforce capacity

Let me know if you think the losing of grip feel is too much for non high downforce vehicles. I'm considering making it slightly less so for those.

 

Hating too much rear bump, so it's scaled down here, so you don't have to.
No other changes.

rFuktor ? experimental 2.1

 

I was aware some evo owners are having issues with LMU Race Beyond Matter being one but not sure if it is affecting everyone - my impression is certainly not unplayable. Strange
AMS2 bugs me though as to why I am not getting the same experience as you with your settings. Anyway it is by no means bad with what I am using at the moment
Could you do me a favoour I think I accidentally overwrote the default Simprom Manager ams2 profile for the evo 12 nm. Can you tell me what they are.

 

I feel the same way about LMU on the Logitech DD pro. I really want to like that sim and get into it but i just can't

 

The hype at LMU was perhaps far too big. Unfortunately, the problem lies with the "big influencers" who can completely hype a game or disparage it. These people now dictate what people should play, a sad development

 

Yup, imagine where AMS2 would have been if it wasn't roasted by some who expected another AC/ACC feeling...

 

Here I am guys asking for help again after a few very busy months.
Maybe I should ask directly to devs if there is such info:
I'll try my best to make it short:

I struggle to feel the rear end of the car loose grip, specially in medium to high speed corners, on LMDh cars like the Cadillac at Le Mans. I just came back after a few months and I used to do competitive laptimes with other cars. I don't remember sucking this bad at LMDh.

For some reason, Default Default+ have tons of nice things going on but if I needed to drift and do controlled drifts on any car, I cannot even feel the start of the slide, when I barely feel the slide on the wheel it's already past the recovery point 80% of the times it happens.

I've tried "rack force" and it was better in that regard while calming down quite a bit on everything else.

I've noticed that on Default+, having a higher value for FX gives me more "SoP" feel and helps me feel the rear a bit more, but then kerbs become insanely powerful and the wheel becomes shaky and very violent to drive, then damping should fix that but damping will also mute the "SoP" feel, so it doesn't really fix things the way I want.
I'm on a DD1, usually run 50 gain in game. I've tried LFB but it makes so many small forces stronger to the point I think I feel less the rear of the car.

I'm basically looking for an ideal drift FFB setting, because usually I'm very much inspired by those.
In a sim where I can't drift or control drifts on cars based on ffb, it tells me the sim is 100% worthless and unrealistic. (since there are way too many examples of IRL drivers controlling cars in such manner, some of them doing that level of control on small levels of slip angle consistently on every corner of every lap)

Other than rack force, I've tried custom ffb files like:
V6000 Extreme2 (dd bases)
FullFFB by JP v21
rFuktor by Karsten with Shadak & Panos - ATMOS BASE EVO V.1.6.0 + Partial Reiza NDef_imm - MOD by Stakanov (and some rFuktor variations)
rFuktor 5.0.1 - By Karsten with Shadak & Panos

and some others I can't even remember. After a certain point custom ffb file testing became a hassle because I have to relaunch and many files seem to have some sort of "smoothing".

While many people want a "rubbery feel". I'm used to a very sharp and pointy feel very acute like old AC and ACC (and in most other sims I try to replicate it) where I can make the rear end step out with my own FFB feel and inputs I know "where" to "break the limit" and I also know how hard and far I can push to make it slide without completely spinning and losing control. Where I can make it slide a bit and recover it even if it's slower in laptime and pace it gives me a certain confidence and a level of control that I am completely lacking here, and now I'm mostly "underdriving" by memory and afraid of pushing too hard without feeling it and going suddenly over the limit into a sudden unrecoverable situation.

Does anyone else experience the same? Has anyone gone through this and found any solution?

If you read all this, thank you for your time and attention.


PS edit - after some more driving testing:
right now, if I have 50, 0 , 0 , 0 ... in Default+ I still get some extra vibrations.... I switch to Default thinking it will be "cleaner" and somehow in Default 50 0 0 0 the kerbs are way more pronounced and almost kill me and make way bigger jolts on the wheel. Very inconsistent and makes no sense to me. Cadillac LMDh at Le Mans, kerbs on the last chicane before start finish line.

 

I may suggest you to try FullFFB v22 because... Madness Engine is buggy as hell.
On v22 you'll see line 122 commented ("#(adhesion_rear (- 1 (power (- 1 adhesion_rear) adhesion_gamma)))") because it was just not working. Not a problem with the formula, just a bug on language compiler/interperter.
I've seen (too many times!) random lines not working at all and just adding some code or even comment lines before made them work again... . It's a real pain in the a**.

You can also try to follow post #9301 (increasing the effect of rear adhesion further).

I'll be posting v23 soon which is much sharper than v22 in some respects. I'll see if adhesion_gamma is working as it should because that's what you want to change (you want it to manifest sooner, sharper).

See these two graphs where:

• x= real adhesion from physics engine (1= total adhesion, 0=total slip)
• y= adhesion feeling (transfer function)

This is with adhesion_gamma=2


This is with adhesion_gamma=0.7


With adhesion_gamma < 1 you'll get sharper/faster adhesion feeling.

 

Wow! Thanks for the detailed response. I've used the file in the past but I had no idea there were so many configurations inside. Only now looking deeper into ffb, used to have success with D or D+ depending on car/track combo and ofc unique settings every time.

Funny that in PC2 last time I used the Ferrari GTE, with "standard" profiles. 100, 50, 80, 0.
And it was noticeable easier to feel the rear end sliding for the most part, I could catch slides before the rear end fully steps out in fast corners at Portimão. (specially before main straight)

I got that "momentum change feel" and I can manage how hard I want to push "inside that moment".

Adhesion_gamma is 100% working for sure for me, because I changed it to your minimum value of 0.3 and the difference was quite extreme. While now I feel the rear end really really well just like I wanted, it seems that other things have been "washed away" by it. Maybe I've overdone it.

I haven't even changed rear adhesion any further. I would think that would make the feel "stronger" instead of "faster".

With your recommended settings I noticed some small clipping, 65 0 20 10.
I used to have also higher gain ingame and lower game in my base, but awhile back I decided to try 100% gain in base and lowering gain in game. IDK if it's placebo but for a while it felt different.

OFC with 100% base, sudden ffb spikes can be very violent. Usually I avoid any filters (damping, inertia, etc) (just interpolation/reconstruction/smoothing at lowest value of 1)

Since you're so knowledgeable about AMS2 FFB you might have an opinion on what is better for the fastest most consistent laptimes.

With increased adhesion I noticed the problem you spoke about where the feel of the rear becomes more prominent than the feel of the fronts to know when there is front grip or not.

But the most incredible thing with your profile after these modifications:
While I'm still not faster maybe I'm not used to it:

Some places like the Porsche Curves and Maison Blanche, I was able to enter slides and recover from them or prevent the car from spinning. I found "that level" of control, but in the end I sacrificed other things to get it.

Now I'm curious about the V23 version.
When AMS2 updates, do custom ffb files become "outdated"? I think over the years I used many FFB files that over time I stopped liking them, maybe it was from ffb updates or physics updates?

Thats what kept me going back to D+ profile, something standard that always worked regardless of update version. Keep up the good work and good luck with V23 and overcoming madness bugs.

 

It was not working correct only with the rears, the fronts formula (the same!!) was working fine.
On the rears formula, the value was always at "1" (no grip loss feeling) even when on previous step it was changing correctly. So, on v22, I simply commented those two lines which means no gamma applied to adhesion curve (linear setting, like adhesion_gamma=1).
Changing gamma to 0.3 affects both axles and that's a huge lost of FFB force for a such a small grip loss.

Don't forget to use vehicle-specific gain to make those small adjusts from car-2-car and track-2-track. Assign it to keyboard or, like me, to a dial on the wheel to make changes easy and on-the-fly.

Just like any real world physics learning process, you need to sleep and return the next day to get improvements. It has no real advantage to do 10 consecutive hours of training, you'll need 5x spaced 2h stints to get better! Sleep or do other things in-between. Sleep is better because that's when the brain integrates all the information and passes it to the subconscious processes. We can learn to drive a real car in twenty-four 1hour lessons, but not on a single 24h day.

It's possible, but unlikely, to break between updates. When we use lateral G-force acceleration in formulas it will remain the same the next update - it would require Reiza to drop that variable or change it's representation/dimension to have a real effect on custom FFB file.
That said, for instance, the longitudinal acceleration is broken in AMS2 (it does not represent interactions between car and other objects correctly). If it was correct before and we used it on our custom FFB and then it brokes on an update, it would have a negative impact, for sure.