Last month, Berney Villers, Jr of SimXperience gave us a very informative blog post, discussing common misconceptions about how Force Feedback works. Now, he has decided to give us another look into the way our wheels communicate with sims. This time, Berney takes us into the workings of the three common types of Force Feedback systems: gear drive, belt drive, and direct drive. You can read his in-depth post here.
Berney takes us through the pros and cons of both belt drive and direct drive units in the blog post. He decided to not go in depth on “servo and gear drive” units, because of them being all but nonexistent (he states that the Logitech G27 could be classified as a “servo/gear drive, depending on your definition of “servo”). Some very interesting points are made, and could change the way you look at Force Feedback.
One fact I really found interesting is that Force Feedback on a belt driven wheel can not match the response of a direct drive wheel. A belt driven wheel’s Force Feedback operates at a 20:1 pulley gear ratio, which, if I’m understanding Berney’s post correctly, would feature an initial force 1/20th of the speed of a direct drive unit. It takes time for a belt driven wheel to match the direct drive system, but with the speed of FFB signals greatly increasing in this next generation of racing simulators, forces may be lost in translation.
There is plenty more to be read in his post, so check out the link above, and also check out the rest of SimXperience’s posts in their official developer blog. Another great post Berney discusses is “Getting the Most Out of a Force Feeback Wheel”. It has a lot of geek speak, but if you can understand it, it is a valuable piece for any sim racer!
What are your thoughts on the different kinds of Force Feedback? Let us know in the comments!
Thank you William for posting this and to Berney for writing the article. 🙂
For myself, I’ve never sat in a REAL race car let alone drive one so I don’t know what I’m missing when I use my belt driven T500 wheel. I’ve had other wheels but my T500 feels best for ME. I can understand the need for these super precise and expensive wheels (direct drive) for professional drivers to make it as authentic for them as possible. But for myself, I’m happy with what I have. The new SimExperience wheel looks sexy as hell. But for a guy like me that wouldn’t know or realize how good the feel is or know what to look for in the feel that sets it apart, it might be a waste?
Take care
Regards: >>>> Jack <<<<
In watching numerous videos on sim racing, it amazes me how much latency/lag there is between wheel motion and the wheel image on the screen.
In my other hobby, virtual pipe organs, such latency would/could never be tolerated. Over 1ms is unacceptable.
Given the simulated speed these cars are traveling, such a delay between physical wheel movement and simulated steering would seem to be problematic. USB should be able to handle this data traffic without perceptible latency so I suspect the actual programs are lacking in multitasking capabilities.