I drove some very first trial laps on a new circuit and managed a 1:32 My Load Cell was wrongly setup after a firmware update of it. Next day I reduced the saturation range of the Load Cell and drove again and only managed a 1:34 as best. I wondered. I didn't do particularly well at my very first try: I was already 0.7 seconds faster than my best when I made a mistake and didn't complete the lap. With the reduced Load Cell saturation I was going ~ 300 metres longer at 325 kph and cornered better than when braking at 600 metres before corner entry only barely making it. I guessed - knowing brake points and the track better now - and having driven better by feeling -- while I didn't expect to be at best based on previous 1:32 - 0.7 - advantage by longer more speed = ~ 1:30 -- to be (instantly) quicker with potential to be even quicker. 1:34 defies all words. This was 2 and 3 days ago. Now I did an explicit back to back test and recorded video. Result: less saturation, full brake power: 1:33.8, 1:33.2, 1:32.4 (still worse than on very first test) high saturation threshold, 50% brake power: 1:33.1, 1:33.8, 1:33.7, 1:33.7., 1:33.0, 1:33.6 Looks better for full brake power, but only with 1 time and I "didn't come close" to my initial test run with 50% brake power on same setup. Perhaps nervousness due to recording. I estimated the time gain which should be expectable instantly without driving effort: this estimation misses some few short braking zone corners and doesn't take into account corner entry speed is higher for full brake power, it estimates time gain between start of braking at 50% brake power and start of braking at full brake power. Image: Fastest times above appear in line but this is arguing on a 0.001 % demographic. Load Cell small saturation range makes times higher, (above misses corners, corner entry not accounted as stated above), no potential in lap times. Video: http://uani.de/ams/time.mp4 0:11 - 0:20 Fanatec driver Load Cell saturation low: "full brake power" 1:30 - 6:57 1. attempt until game crash, not careful accelerations, spins and bad times 8:55 - 24:06 average driving, one lap above the rest 24:21 - 24:39 Fanatec driver Load Cell saturation high: "50% brake power" 26:04 - 43:23 average driving, more constant lap times 43:27 - 43:48 lap times study 44:16 - 44:17 my personal best from very first tries some days ago with "50% brake power" Note: best times by drivers able to manage official TT Top 5 times on any circuit in any car (but they don't do TT) are 1:27. In base game tracks and cars I was 6 seconds slower with Fanatec after switching from Logitech G27 and there I had put training in before and was only 2 seconds off the fastest times with Logitech G27. But then I didn't have a Load Cell and Fanatecs non Load Cell pedals encoder puts non configurable 25% dead zone on either end (ie. no reaction when pressing, then somewhere suddenly reaction and then sudden stop while I can press 25% further on the high angle range pedals), this made AMS absolutely undrivable and is abysmal of Fanatec who got at least 700 € for devices. Deadzones are gone with Load Cell but times still aren't as good as before. Known? Solutions? Workarounds? If not, I would guess you cannot have and test all hardware, and I don't expect, take care
All I can say is that it is my personal opinion that load-cells are not the way to go for simracing. I think the argument of your body remembering force better than distance is either irrelevant for simracing or just not true. I can brake even better with Logitech G25 pedals, Thrustmaster T500RS (T3PA, T3PA Pro) pedals, and T500RSs w/ Basher Brake mod than I can with Fanatec Clubsport V2 pedals w/ and w/out Mugen RC shock & spring mod, Fanatec Clubsport V3s w/ and w/out Brake Performance Kit & w/ and w/out Clubsport Damper, and the Fanatec CSL Elites. I've been paying attention to this for the last 2 years or so and I truly believe pressure/force-based braking for simracing is not superior to distance-based. I do believe, however, that force/pressure-based braking may, and probably is, superior in real-life where we can feel how hard we're braking thanks to longitudinal g-forces. That has been my experience and is my opinion, which I bet 99% of simracers will disagree with, based on 15 years of simracing with many load-cells, non-load-cells, and real-life forms of racing (F1600, F2000, karts, and more).
