Gamepad Support - Analysis, Suggestions, Wishes

Totally agree especially with the vibration features, gamepad i find is really good for myself, but it does lack the vibration effects.

 

I was curious about this. I have my controller set as a legacy wheel and have toyed with the custom FFB profile. Someone on Steam (I know that isn't reliable) mentioned they'd had success tinkering with it but I've never noticed a difference between files.

 

Honestly I don't expect Reiza to fix controller issues anytime soon (they promised controller support as good as in AMS1 back in early 2020 but have yet to fulfill that promise).
I use DxAce, it improves controller responsiveness a bit (not anywhere near as good as in AMS1), I tried messing with the DxAce config file to get vibration, I can get some vibration going but it's not anything as good as in AMS1.
Basically we're stuck with the current controller issues until Reiza decides to fix them.

 

Well fingers crossed they will update the controller for us folk, and implement better vibration, rumble.
Here's hoping

 

Is it just me, or has the gamepad support gotten worse with the last updates?

 

No, it's me. Many weeks without playing. Gamepad support is actually getting better and better.

 

Imo gamepad support is still the same it has ben since I got the game in 2021, but car physics have got more consistent, so the game feels more enjoyable to play.

 

@Renato Simioni
A bit gutted that the upshift vibration for automatic shift still hasn't been fixed for the controller user, hopefully in the next future update it will be fixed. Please..

 

Cross posted from https://forum.reizastudios.com/threads/automobilista-2-beta-v1-5-5-8-now-up.33124/page-4#post-280778

March 2024 and still the gamepad users get no improvements in the most basic UX of all, the haptic feedback, while other driving sims (not direct competitors, but driving experiences) have "gotten it" and improved their gamepad UX by leaps and bounds.

Does anybody on the Reiza team actually own a gamepad, and use it in other sims?

***snip

AMS2 has been going great, improvements all over the shop.
Thanks to the Reiza team for everything so far. Fantastic work, and great to have watched it evolve!

cue Sad Trombone

Except for gamepad/controllers.

While the overall control feel has improved alongside the general improvements there is still one big issue with controller.

And no, it's not controllability. Personally I have great controllability with linear settings, no issues with latency or anything. Linear settings (ie: 50 for steering etc) were the lightbulb moment for me in control terms, and well worth the effort to get comfortable with - also recommend some Kontrol freeks, a little goes a long way.

The key issue here is the lack of gamepad feedback on circuit surfaces.
Not speaking about the recent offroad circuits, as they have been implemented with this type of vibration feedback. This is about regular asphalt/concrete/bitumen/whatever circuit road surfaces which feel like driving on smooth glass. As in, you feel nothing. Nada. Zero. Zilch. Unless you run off the circuit. Or brake. Or change gears. But it's missing the single biggest element of the whole experience, the feel of the car running over the surface of the trake, tire slips etc.

And before anyone (looking at you wheel drivers especially) want to @ me that "you can't do that with a gamepad duh, use a FFB wheel silly" please hold that thought and keep reading.

Is there ever going to be an improvement to the vibrations, so we can get some actual road feel like AMS1/rFactor2, BeamNG, ACC, and WRC EA all do? They all have excellent controller feedback implementations in settings but most off all great haptic feedback which takes advantage of modern gamepad controller designs with dual rumble motors + haptic triggers. They all have excellent road surface feedback no matter what surface you are driving on.

WRC EA even splits it out into vibration settings for suspension, tire slip, engine, and collisions which all work really well. Very nicely done, and works on both asphalt surfaces as well as offroad. Haptic trigger vibration would also be a bonus, though this sadly is missing from all the above games too, though you can add it in via
GitHub - araghon007/X1nput: Xinput hook for Impulse Trigger emulation .

Fixing this long standing issue would add huge value for gamepad users, not a small market by any means, and improve the controller UX by a large amount. It kills me this isn't recognised as an issue. All you have to do is go play ACC(enhanced settings)/BeamNG, WRC EA or even AMS1 and you will instantly know what is missing in AMS2 for gamepad users.

I really hate to be a broken record on this, but this feature was actually promised way back in the beginning (ie: gamepad experience as good as with goal of better than AMS1/rFactor2 even more than multiplayer) and it would be really nice to get a definitive answer if this is ever going to be addressed...or not.

Thanks.

 

I'm by no means a gamepad user, but couldn't you possibly use a haptic feedback program (like SimHub) to get around this? Given they have all manner of vibration effects available.

Not trying to be condescending, genuinely asking whether there aren't any third party tools to use until Reiza gets around to do this.

 

Yes, you can (and I do already, as do others), but they are nowhere near the level of fidelity that a properly developed haptic gamepad UX would implement such as what ACC, WRC EA, BeamNG and others implemented professionally. You don't need to use hacks with any of them, they just work.

Fwiw I even mentioned one in the post above if you reread it ie: GitHub - araghon007/X1nput: Xinput hook for Impulse Trigger emulation .
Another one is dx ACE
Kudo's to both devs though, both excellent efforts attempting to solve glaring design issues as workarounds.

They can also be non-trivial to get working, and even then results vary but ultimately they are a bit like wearing astronaut spacesuit gloves instead of racing gloves. Marginally better than stock, at best, but still slightly better than nothing.
Additionally, due to the nature of what they are attempting to do, they can also be a bit prone to inducing CTD's, depending on the settings you choose, at least from my testing.

Simhub, however, is generally focused on cockpit type users/builders with lots of haptic feedback devices, which is an entirely different user base than gamepad users (generally), the same as it is in Flight simming. That doesn't make gamepad users any less, however, it's just a different experience for entirely different use cases and user context. If it wasn't valid then top line simulators like the ones mentioned wouldn't put so much effort into creating stellar haptic gamepad experiences (also enabled by advances in gamepad haptic feedback technology).

The whole point is to make the sim as good as it can possibly be, is it not?

It's not like this is a new issue.
We've been asking for some improvement since the initial beta, and it was specifically highlighted that gamepad support would be better than AMS1, which was quite good for what it was.

ie:
AM2 Early Backing - Tech Questions [Asked about this very issue before I even bought into the beta on Paul Cohen,Feb 4, 2020]
https://forum.reizastudios.com/threads/gamepad-settings.8837/#post-53536
https://forum.reizastudios.com/threads/ams2-beta-physics-ai-feedback-reports.8699/page-2#post-50461 [Reply from RS]
https://forum.reizastudios.com/threads/gamepad-settings.8837/page-4#post-111134 [Another reply from RS]
AM2 Early Backing - Tech Questions [reply from HC]
and many more from multiple users.

Heitor Facuri Cicoti,Feb 25, 2020

Not to mention the original promise of AMS2:
"Does AMS2 work well with a gamepad or keyboard?
While our core focus is on simulation and these usually demand a higher range of analogue control, we intend to make AMS2 accessible and enjoyable to all racing game fans.We believe AMS1 has great gamepad support and we intend to match that with AMS2."
Automobilista 2 FAQ

I really wasn't intending to ever poke this bear again, but I've been having a lot of fun recently in WRC EA which has an excellent gamepad implementation, and ACC's would be the equivalent for circuit racing, but it's all tintops (loving the new GT2 Masarati though).

Seriously, if AMS2 fixed this *longstanding* issue it would be gamepad sim nirvana.

 

I play 50:50 between Steam Deck and PC with the gear in my sig. I'd be happy to join a focused gamepad testing group as I'm sure a few others around here would be. At the moment we give feedback but it doesn't feel like gamepad is actively being developed at this time.
When Reiza are ready we'll be here.

 

Totally agree with all the above, would hopefully see the Devs, spending a bit of time on the Gamepad, i am sure there are lots of people out there who play this game without using a wheel.
Love this game, its my go to racing sim.

 

Same here.

I’m use a pad exclusively (8BitDo Ultimate) and would be happy to put updates through the ringer. Even small things — such as explaining what settings do — would be helpful.

 

Recently got dxace to work with the steam gyro, this is like driving a completely different game , no input lag , absolute linear input

But I only got it to work under linux of all places.
Somehow the steam xbox controller emulation under windows is different and dx aces dlls are
not working there as intended

Is it so hard to wire the "custom wheel" setting to bypass everything coded for the detected gamepad and treat it as a wheel?.

Thats a main issue for someone know to play ams2 this way.

Also understand that most of the road surface effects are not routed to the rumble motors at all , which is a bummer

When having the telemetry on for any given real wheel, any road and couple of other effects are modulated on the steering forces, depending on implementation it can be quite complicated to translate these to the rumble motors if the engine is not designed to do this at all.

I think this is just all due to lack of development resources and therefore maybe has just no priority at all, at least some eons ago there where some minor changes to the input handling , but any further plans where never mentioned again.

I only have AC as benchmark , this had great road noise, curb effects etc., really immersive experience there.

For AMS2 I just turned it completely off as it is really lacking , did not try how it compares to AMS1, have to check that.

 

I think throughout development of the Madness engine there have always been far more wheel users than pad users, so it was a less developed aspect back in WMD time too. I don't think pad handling is too bad to be honest currently, but AMS1 and the likes of Gran Turismo are better imo. If we could get somewhere close to that and also unlock some of the settings a bit I think many people would be happy. PC1 had many mysterious parameters open that could be tweaked, and my memory is that it was better on a pad than PC2, problem was nobody could figure out what it all meant. Best of the three ironically was PC3. Judging by what AMS2 has become, once Reiza get round to it, AMS2 will be best of the bunch.

 

As a fellow gamepad racer, I echo all your comments.. especially because AMS1 had great support. Back then, we had access to raw inputs for steering and throttle/brake sensitivity for digital inputs.
Since this hasn't been addressed yet, I assume it's intimately linked with Madness and requires big dev work. I can only speculate

 

Pc2 had two default set up options, loose and stable with the stable option often being favoured by non wheel users. Having said that the defaults in ams2 already feel less loose than the loose pc2 default so a more stable option may not be needed.

 

If only dev would communicate about that that would not give the feeling they just don't care about gamepad support. Maybe they don't care, maybe they have issues with madness engine , maybe.... today I am just updating the game each time to check but have moved to some others sim that provide better gamepad feedback. I have supported the game since the begining and don't regret it but the communication could be better...

 

It would be nice to have a bit of feedback from the devs, regarding gamepad support, so we actually know if anything is being worked on. If they are not, then at least we know.
@Renato Simioni