Gamepad Support - Analysis, Suggestions, Wishes

Thanks for that advice, that worked a treat and made the game far more drivable! No idea why they named the thing that changes steering speed "analog sector value", I would never have guessed that it was because of this. Pretty weird choice of naming.

Be that as it may, I still don't really enjoy the very undynamic driving feel of that sim. The cars feel a little like bricks on wheels.

 

Yeah, every game has different names.

R3E is rather hard so depends on you experience. I can enjoy R3E now and love it but year ago it was too hard.

I work hard on ACC and it feels very similar. My skill is not enough for this game yet. You need to be extremely precise (without any electronic aids). AMS2 and rF2 are very forgiving, great games for start.

 

Yeah R3E feels a little unpredictable at times, and it only allows very limited corrections. Can't speak for ACC, that game doesn't allow me my way of steering.

I personally don't so much enjoy games that immediately punish you with a spin when driving over the limit, which both R3E and ACC like to do. It's just a little bothersome to get a feel for these, so I stick with AMS2.

 

Yes, that makes sense. AMS2 is rather forgiving.

If you like AMS2, rF2 could be great for you as well. It is very deep but very easy at start. I still have the biggest enjoyment in rF2. It's like playing a dream.

 

Could be, but I'm a bit wary of the supposedly not so friendly user interface and the massive amounts of DLC.

 

RF2 is pretty cheap at the moment. And if you like loose driving more than the tight R3E stuff, than RF2 is for gamepad user the holy gral.

 

UI is fixed but the whole game is rather for very technical people. It's very unfriendly to normal players.

+1

 

I tried a few cars the day the free trial started but stuck with the McLaren DTM 2021 for now and have been posting videos of races against AI. I like the handling of that car except that sometimes it can snap on me on high speed corners, once it starts sliding I can't catch it, one of my upcoming videos shows me losing a race after one of those uncatchable slides.

Out of the newer racing games ACC is my favorite even though I'm more of a open-wheel guy. ACC on controller works way better than AMS2 imo, both in terms on allowing more precise control of the cars & controller vibration. In R3E I get unpredictable slides sometimes but in ACC 99% of the time something goes wrong I know exactly what caused it. The thing about ACC on controller is figuring out the proper setting for steering speed & steering gamma that I talked about in a previous post.

rF2's UI has improved, it looks like a normal game now. If you have to download it and configure it from scratch it might be a little time consuming and take some patience to figure out the proper settings and unsubscribe from workshop content you don't want. DLCs can be an issue if you're like me and live in a country with bad economy since there's no regional pricing for DLCs (only DLC I have is the Reiza pack that I got for free for owning AMS1 + all DLCs). I played rF2 the other day after the latest update, driving rF2 on controller feels fine but AI does some weird stuff, other people have been complaining about rF2's AI for a while.

Back on the topic of AMS2 gamepad support, I hope developers take a look at this thread, @Renato Simioni @CrimsonEminence maybe some of the posts in this thread about controller settings can be useful for developers to improve controller support in AMS2 in future updates.

 

Sadly RF2 has many issues , despite this great controller support. But at least they began this year to rework step by step the AIW files for different tracks like Silverstone and Lime Rock for example.
Meanwhile I lose the hope that Reiza will ever fix that gamepad issue.

 

OMG, I finally found it! It was steer filter. I used 0 for years. It was rather weird. Today I tried 20 just for test and it's much more stable. I don't think I can set this value in rF2. It somehow smooths the input so if your thumb is shaky a bit it fixes it. Very good. 0 is great for training but very hard if you don't have enough precision yet.

edit:
I will start with 10 as a compromise but my lap times are immediately much better. It's a game changer! Reiza has a template!

 

Today I tried PC version and with 0 steer filter it's fine. At least I need to invest much more time in this game. Good thing is GT7 is after last update dead to me. They didn't add anything usable. That's the reason I think Reiza is fine. They are small and they do rather great job. PD are huge company with money and they can't even release any game. Since GT5 the series is rather bad. Small doesn't mean bad and Reiza do good job.

 

I reinstalled AMS2 the 125th time couple of days ago , just to look how it works now with controller.
The driving is not the pinnacle of controller racing. But I really can have fun though. It has some advantages. On my mediocre machine it runs very well even in night races, which I really like.

 

With that I started with AMS2. I came from consoles after PC1 and PC2. When I found there is something like improved PC2 I had to buy some slow PC to test it. And I was very happy. The game is great even it has so many weird unpolished bugs. Overall very good. But then I found on PC other games and that was end of AMS2 to me. And AMS1 was great stuff, still underrated to me, so many cool content with very good physics and graphics.

So yeah, AMS2 is great on a gamepad if you don't know other games.

 

2. If you start the Steam in Big Picture mode, you should be able to easily switch to controller config and back to the game by Guide/Xbox button on a controller.

3. You can disable Steam Input in Steam settings and turn it on only for specific game/games.
When you right click on a game in library, it should open up this menu, where you can choose to "Enable Steam Input"

 

A little late to the party, but just in case...
Are you sure about those deadzone settings? I don't see why you would have cross shaped deadzone setup for AMS2, especially with Output Axis set to Horizontal Only. That could definitely cause some issues imo.

 

There is an option to set steering wheel range with gamepad, but only if you set the Input type device to Custom Wheel. Then you have the option "Calibrate Wheel" enabled and it sets steering wheel range in the last step, based on how much you turn.

 

Finally a man of culture I use Xim Nexus currently (have experience with Steam Controller, DS4 and DS5 controllers as well)

Have you seen this thread?
Unremovable 50% outer sensitivity-deadzone on gamepad, steering bug.
I noticed same issues as you with deadzone and steering curve, but while trying to map gyro steering to right thumbstick after reading this, I switched it back to left thumbstick and it fixed itself and started feel much better, without noticeable deadzone and pretty linear.

That steering speed (controller damping in menu) limitation is still there, though. I didn't find how to increase it further yet.

Also when I tried switch to "Custom Wheel" type of input device, the trick above didn't work.

I only tried demo so far, which is based on 2020 version of the game(V1.0.0.3), so could be different in current version though.

 

I had already created custom wheel settings with custom steering wheel range for my Xbox 360 controller, but it doesn't get rid of the controller filters unfortunately.

 

True, honestly I think that this is another part of Madness Engine, that Reiza inherited with it and doesn't really know how to work with it (yet, if ever). Hopefuly thats something they can look more into when they start to work on that SP Career mode, where gamepad controls will be more prevalent in interested playerbase, imo.

 

There is a motion compensation in place so you can "hit" all corners with thumbsticks than can only do circular motion , this is also active for controllers that can hit the x/y "corners".

That could be because the other thumbstick is "stuck" on some level in game engine , try mapping vertical stick movement to the thumbstick you currently have mapped and see your sensitivity of the gyro go all over the place if you input vertical stick movement (the same is true for REAL gamepads).

Basically the sensitivity of the steering changes if the stick is pushed forward/backward (if you use a gamepad, maybe also use steam to unmap vertical movement on the stick), when I "push" it forward with a gyro , then switch the gyro to only use horizontal movement , then the whole sensitivity curve and everything I set up is completely wrong and its hyper sensitive.... so much issues