Well then, as the title says: When I'm on a straight and I let go of the wheel, it starts to move slightly from side to side, then it adds up and really rattles.
I tested it with NFSU2 and Race Driver 2 (yeah, sorry... damn these games feel ugly after having played only LFS for a while) and I didn't have problems there.
Have you followed the wheel setup guide in the LFS Manual? I find that helps alot to reduce such - the other thing that helps is: don't let go of your wheel. Oh yeah, another thing is adding a bit of analog smoothing, but not too much.
hmmm... checked it out. couldn't find anything that helps.
... UF1, XFG and XRT do it even with the most "civil" settings.
of course I usually don't let go of the wheel... but it appears to be an error, not a feature. I mean, it's not that it shakes less when going at 40 kph than at 150 kph.
i find myself with no hands left sometimes too. like when i have a beer in one hand and i'm on the rev limiter and need to shift with the other. i have gotten pretty good at keeping my shifting hand on the wheel while moving the stick with two fingers, though.
Oh, it's not a feature for sure - just that LFS doesn't try to compensate for controller lag and thus you'll get that oscillation - wheel jerks to the left and sends "I'm left" to LFS so the force feedback returns "well then this is the force that would be applied to you since you are left" and sends the wheel to the right, only a little too much. And the story keeps on going - left, right, left, right, etc
It's sort of like a parliamentary system with a USB connection.
I have been searching some time how to reduce this on various games.
In fact it comes from the difference between a real wheel and a force feedback wheel.
Real wheel is linked to the tyres through direction column. It means the wheel is always exactly where it has to be. If tyres turn a bit, wheel too, at the same time. No delay. Compared to the tyre forces, wheel and direction column have almost no inertia. Tyres lead the dance.
Force feedback wheel is not physically linked to anything, so it has inertia and continue moving alone unlike a real wheel. Wheel speed is different from in-game wheel speed. Force feedback wheel leads the dance. (in case of oscillations, in-game wheel speed is very close from zero when it reaches straight position, but at the same time, force feedback wheel still has some speed because of inertia, and will continue turning. The lag in USB control loop makes it worse.).
There are two ways to improve this:
- Improve the way the force feedback wheel simulates a real wheel. Simulate friction and damper in the wheel force feedback until wheel and in-game wheel have the same speed (in fact reduce wheel inertia. When you keep your hands on the wheel you introduce friction and damper and solve the oscillation problem). It works very well with ISI games...strong damper kills inertia when wheel is moving alone, and negative friction coefficient ensures that when you act on the wheel, damper disappears.
This could be done with a utility software comparing these speeds.
- Improve the way the games manage force feedback wheels....currently it is position-driven. Calculated forces depend frome wheel position and are applied to the wheel...it should be speed driven too.
Wheel should push more and more when it's speed is different from in-game wheel speed....more difficult.
so that's basically "keep your hands on the controller and live with it", right?