SimRacing School

[Blunder]

Thanks all, loads of great advise here 

This will help me a lot!
Just a shame we are not continuing with the Radical now... oh how fickle I am!

Going back to basics then as a starting point, how do you suggest I set up my Wheel/pedals for best effect!?
I tend to set 500degrees in control panel and have a different rotation per car.
As for pedals, not sure what you meant by short cal Gary!?
I have a loadcell brake pedal and have never really found a 'sweet' set up!
I'm caling it at about 450 'pressure' ! and then normally setting 4.0 on the adjustment by default rather than any science.

On the basis that this post was generally well received then I think I'll start one for the Watkins Endurance and see how that goes!
I think I have a reasonable Stang set up, as I got it from one of the good guys on a public practice at Daytona but it is nice round Watkins!
Thanks again, Please keep the advise coming! 


 

[Paul Thurston]

Just a shame we are not continuing with the Radical now... oh how fickle I am!

Who says we're not?  I for one don't want to change significantly for Tuesdays.

Going back to basics then as a starting point, how do you suggest I set up my Wheel/pedals for best effect!?
I tend to set 500degrees in control panel and have a different rotation per car.
As for pedals, not sure what you meant by short cal Gary!?
I have a loadcell brake pedal and have never really found a 'sweet' set up!
I'm caling it at about 450 'pressure' ! and then normally setting 4.0 on the adjustment by default rather than any science.

What are you setting to 4, the brake force curve factor?  If you have a load cell brake you should be setting that to 0.  4 would make braking a nightmare as you'll never know how much pressure you're applying.

I've personally never seen any compelling evidence that setting the rotation to anything other than 900 is worthwhile.  iRacing works it all out for you anyway and you're only adding extra variability.  KISS rule, always.  Keep It Simple Stupid.

Thanks again, Please keep the advise coming! 

I'm busy writing down my setup philosophy but it's rather becoming a bit of a novel.  When I've finished I'll post it for what it's worth.

Paul

[Fred Basset]

Going back to basics then as a starting point, how do you suggest I set up my Wheel/pedals for best effect!?
I tend to set 500degrees in control panel and have a different rotation per car.
As for pedals, not sure what you meant by short cal Gary!?
I have a loadcell brake pedal and have never really found a 'sweet' set up!
I'm caling it at about 450 'pressure' ! and then normally setting 4.0 on the adjustment by default rather than any science.

I tend to agree with Paul about the 900 degrees, I know some others have different views.

What sort of loadcell is it Martin, I know the AP loadcell is different to the ones Paul and I have but 4 does seem way too high, it should not be much above zero.

To put some science into the calibration download Patrick Moore's Mu tool and open it before you run a session, drive and brake sometimes hard sometimes more softly. Then open the log file it produces in Motec i2Pro and check out your brake pedal position and check that you do at some points reach 100% if you don't you have used too much pressure when calibrating the brake in iRacing, if you're always hitting 100% then you've got them calibrated too short. I would set the brake curve to zero before doing this.

After doing this I know that I need to calibrate my brake to 1550 in iRacing.

Regards
Gary

[spanner]

I'm used to not having to turn the wheel much, like single seaters so some of the cars that have a larger lock-to-lock have felt strange as i end up not turning the wheel enough. Turning much more than 90deg for a medium speed corner felt strange and diffiult to feel. However i've never run the wheel at 900deg though thought that as iR adjusts it all you turn the wheel the same anyway.

Didnt realise there were other load cell mods out there other than the AP  one

[Paul Thurston]

I'm used to not having to turn the wheel much, like single seaters so some of the cars that have a larger lock-to-lock have felt strange as i end up not turning the wheel enough. Turning much more than 90deg for a medium speed corner felt strange and diffiult to feel. However i've never run the wheel at 900deg though thought that as iR adjusts it all you turn the wheel the same anyway.

Didnt realise there were other load cell mods out there other than the AP  one

Yes, but iRacing match the effective wheel rotation to the car, that's what the turn it 90 degrees left in the calibration is all about.  Use smaller lock than the real car has and iRacing will make the steering non linear to compensate.

Remember to set the force in control panel to 102% to remove the deadzone if it's a G25/G27.

Paul

[spanner]

The FFB is far too strong with the G27, i run it at 75% in windows for everything. Never been happy with it in iR, very light but will go into overdrive over curbs making it undriveable.

[Fred Basset]

What do you have ffb set to in game Mark?

Setting your steering that way will be far too sensitive in my opinion.

To be honest the AP mod is a very late addition to the range of loadcells and having tried one its ok but nothing like the loadcells that Niels H pioneered at RSC a few years back. I had one of those original batch which Paul now uses.

Regards
Gary

[Ken Murray]

To be honest the AP mod is a very late addition to the range of loadcells and having tried one its ok but nothing like the loadcells that Niels H pioneered at RSC a few years back. I had one of those original batch which Paul now uses.

But are there any commercially available now? The Fanatec pedals look decent value with a load cell brake, but their quality control seems a bit dodgy by what you read out on the forums.

[Ken Murray]

I'm one of those who tends to 'beg, steal and borrow' when it comes to setups, and only make minor adjustments to suit my style.  Building a setup from the ground up proves too time consuming and I get lost very easily.  Simple adjustments such as roll bars and tyre pressures can make a significant difference to how the car behaves.

For me, the best way to get quick (relatively speaking) is practice, practice and more practice.  Only then will you begin to understand the nuances of a track and how to adjust your setup/style to suit.  My best performances have come when I've put in a lot of track time in the preceding days, and so when I hop on the server on race day, I'm already within my best times straight away.  The PBs then usually come in qualifying as the adrenaline kicks in.  Take this season in the Mazda for example, at Barber I was very close to Brian because I'd done a lot of practice ie > 150 laps.  At Road Atlanta (a similarly undulating circuit) I was miles off the pace because I only starting preparing the previous day.

For me, practicing on race fuel allows me to find my race pace and then dropping the fuel down brings the confidence to push the car and the satisfaction of seeing your sector times drop.  On that subject, I've found that if I run the splits on 'optimal sector' rather than 'optimal lap', I can better judge where time is lost or gained.

As I said earlier, I won't pretend to be some sort of set-up guru, I'm more of a get-in-and-drive type of guy, but you can get a much clearer picture of what works for you by putting in the laps, and lots of them.

I could easily have written that myself. Pretty much sums up my approach. Along with Dave's comment about doing 1/2 hour max practice sessions.

[Fred Basset]

To be honest the AP mod is a very late addition to the range of loadcells and having tried one its ok but nothing like the loadcells that Niels H pioneered at RSC a few years back. I had one of those original batch which Paul now uses.

But are there any commercially available now? The Fanatec pedals look decent value with a load cell brake, but their quality control seems a bit dodgy by what you read out on the forums.

Not sure which you are talking about Ken, I believe the AP mod can be ordered again. The other type you can get from ebay or from Todd Cannon.

Regards
Gary

[Blunder]

Ok... found a stupid mistake of mine... masked by my brake curve, when I got my new PC....

I forgot to download and use the AP calibration utiliuty!  :'(

Setting my brake curve at 4 masked the issue but when setting it back as suggested ( to 0 ) I got about 5% of brake pedal when I used 100 % throttle! 

Needless to say it's fixed now!

Gone back to 900deg steering which seems fine and 0 brake curve.

Am now 3 seconds slower! but I think this is because the braking is way more effective and it's gonna take a while to re-adjust!
A nice problem to have! Thanks guys 

[Blunder]

Found another half a second! Woohoo!

[Paul Thurston]

The FFB is far too strong with the G27, i run it at 75% in windows for everything. Never been happy with it in iR, very light but will go into overdrive over curbs making it undriveable.

If you want the FFB to be lighter do it in Racing, not Control Panel.  Anything less that 100% in control panel will put a deadzone around centre.  You should really set ti to 102% to get rid of that and use something between 3 and 9 in game.  Anything higher in game will clip.

Paul

[Ken Murray]

To be honest the AP mod is a very late addition to the range of loadcells and having tried one its ok but nothing like the loadcells that Niels H pioneered at RSC a few years back. I had one of those original batch which Paul now uses.

But are there any commercially available now? The Fanatec pedals look decent value with a load cell brake, but their quality control seems a bit dodgy by what you read out on the forums.

Not sure which you are talking about Ken, I believe the AP mod can be ordered again. The other type you can get from ebay or from Todd Cannon.

Regards
Gary

Ah right, yes I see now the AP is available again. Certainly there is no doubting the CST quality, but they are way out of my budget. Do you think my G25 pedals with a AP kit would be an improvement on my BRD Speed 7's? I have already got a Bodnar cable for them.

[Paul968]

I didn't know you could use a bodnar cable with speed 7s?