I got a Thrustmaster wheel for Christmas and just having a few issues with tuning for it if someone could point me in the right direction as its blown my mind.
The many problem I am having is grip and getting the car to be stable. The main tune I am having issues with does have drag tires but I wondered if anyone else if having or come across any of these issues when they started using a wheel.
I am ok with tuning for the controller but using a wheel is completely different.
I feel your pain. When I first got my wheel I couldn’t control the car. Tuning the car becomes very important. Now that I’ve figure some of it out I love the wheel.
Here are my tips.
Start with a simple car on a simple course.
Tune the car to behave on that track.
Go to a harder course.
Repeat the above steps a few times.
Next pick a more powerful car and simple course.
Repeat all the above a few times.
After you get the simple car to behave you will learn what needs to be done to the more powerful cars quickly.
I started with the stock 1994 Mazda Miata on the Indy Oval. The rear end kept wanting to slide out on the corners. Someone told me the differential needed to be adjusted because the differential was locking to quickly when accelerating out of the corner. I installed the 2-way antilock differential and the car got worse. If you look at the car’s tuning settings before adding the differential it appears to be set at around 45 front and 10 rear. After installing the differential the settings change to 75/75. That is a horrible setting. I moved the settings to 45/10 and the car behaved like it did without the differential added. From there I adjusted the front down to 42 and rear up to 12. The car goes around the oval beautifully using the wheel. The only other adjustment I made to the car was I reduced the tire pressures to 28.5/28.5.
After the Indy oval, I think I went to the Catalunya training course, the Catalunya national course, and then the Alpine Festival Stadplatz course. The car behaved well on all of them with minor adjustments.
I then moved on to other cars. I have found the differential setting is very important when using the wheel on all cars. However, as the car power increases other issues start to appear. Balancing the down force on the car becomes very important when using the wheel. Hit the brakes a little too hard coming into a corner and watch the rear end come flying around if you turn the wheel too much. I am still having problems with some cars but in general I am figuring them out.
I have found the tuning adjusts have a much larger effect on the car when using the steering wheel. However, the rewards are great. I have seen my lap times on some tracks improve dramatically.
Another thing I learned is try to take the turn as smoothly as possible. It improves your lap times a lot.
I have built the Celica GT 75 (I think thats the year) and that handles fine and like you I have improved on a time at Silverstone even though this car isn’t the quickest. I will check out the tips you have mentioned and see what I can come up with.
The car I am struggling with is the Ferrari GTO in S class for a racing league I am in and I am just struggling to get it where I want it. With a controller I could throw a raceable tune down with in 30 min with some fine tuning required with the wheel its completely different and I am having to spend hours tuning just to get the car to drive nice.
I’ll check out the Ferrari GTO. I know I had a hard time trying to get a Mercedes to behave. I think is was the AMG Black. I forget how many parts I threw at it before I finally got it to behave.
The nice thing about the wheel is you will learn what every adjustment does in the tuning menu. Their effects become much more noticeable.
FAA MAD JAMMER is right about the sensitivity. I am glad he mentioned it and I’m glad you already knew about. Otherwise, you would still be struggling.
I just got the wheel as well and struggling with similar issues, thus, I have been focused on testing out the various settings. For now, I had kept the sensitivity the same/default. What are you using? What would you recommend? Thanks!
The rest of my settings are:
Steering: 0 / 100
Accel: 0 / 100
Decel: 0 / 100
Clutch: 0 / 66
HB: 10 / 100
Vibration: 50
Force Feedback: 65
DOR: 900 (have tried various settings)
I assume you got the TX racing model since you list vibration and force feedback. I have the Ferrari Spider wheel that doesn’t have force feedback.
I know my wheel has 4 sensitivity settings. I started on the fourth one and recently move up to the third one. I accidentally set it to the first one recently. I was wondering what was wrong. It was way too sensitive. Fortunately I remembered about the sensitivity setting.
Those look like my settings other than the DOR. I use 270. I got those settings from another thread. I think they were in the thread about the challenge at Bathurst. I know when I loaded those settings, the wheel seemed easier to use.
I hated the wheel when I first got it, thinking it was the worst thing I ever bought. I was glad I only spent $99 on it. Now that I’ve learned to use it, I wish I had bought the $300 and got the force feedback version. It took me about a month before I finally started to get a feel for the wheel. It was another month before I became a fan of it.
Thanks Jim! Yeah, it’s only been a couple of days for me (frustrated!)…yet, I need to keep at it and find the right set of settings and as I learn I will adjust based on my comfort level at the time. I’ll check out messing with the sensitivity to see how it feels. I also saw the 270 recommendation on another thread (I think on FOOT’s open source) and will give that a try.
I use the TX wheel and have no problems setting up my cars when it comes to stability and handling. Actually I usually have too much handling and not enough speed. But I’d suggest to try some of my tunes…
I just tested the Ferrari GTO with the default settings. It wasn’t that unstable. The default settings for the differential appear to be about 50/25. I added the 2-way adjustable differential and changed it to 50/35. That seems to work well.
I do have a problem with the rear end coming out if I’m going through the corner too fast. Ideally you would want the car to drift sideways as a whole instead of the front or rear leading the way. There are two ways to address this. One is with the anti-sway bars. The other is by adding down force on the rear of the car. I would recommend starting with the anti-sway bars. There other adjustments that can affect this too such as springs. That might be another good place to start. I would use down force last.
I am doing this with the stock car. You may have added components that change how the car reacts. Adding more power to the car often requires having the differential lock later.
I may have gotten better driving with the wheel too and not realize I’ve learned to control the cars better. It is a learning experience.
Cheers for that one buddy, I am going to do some testing tonight. There are some upgrades on it from stock one been drag tires so I get tire wear. The car is ok but I get under steer at high speed corners which could be too much front downforce. I will check the diff settings too.
I like you have the Spider and wondering if I should have got the TX however the price difference is crazy but really happy with what I have
I am happy with mine too. I really wonder if the force feedback is worth the extra money. I’m not going to spend the money to find out. I have better uses for the money.
If I have time tonight I might try adjusting the springs/shocks and anti-sway bars on the GTO to see which does better at stabilizing it. I tend to avoid adding the adjustable rear wing and front bumper on modern cars. I’ve found the manufacturers have done a good job with the down force.
The GTO was one of cars I used to drive a lot but I haven’t driven it after I got the wheel until last night. It seems like there are too many cars and not enough time.
Force feedback provides just that, (haptic) feedback. The behaviour of the car is communicated directly through steering effects - both resistance and affirmation, and through rumble effects which attempt to reproduce shocks and vibrations. It is a night and day difference from a non-feedback control system. The quality of the experience is however dictated by the game being played and how well it marries with the wheel firmware and capablities. Unfortunately with the TX, FM5 is only slightly better than mediocre in that department. Is it worth the extra money? If you have used one then you would probably say yes, but not everyone’s budget stretches that far.
I did some more adjusting on the GTO last night. I added the anti-sway bars and did some minor adjusting. I think the adjustments starting at 30.31 and 24.51, front/rear. I adjusted the rear to 24.01. The car now only has a slight tendency to kick the rear end out in the middle of turn if I’m going to fast. That is the way I like the car. Adjusting the read down to 23.91 would probably make the car slide out evenly.
I did some more adjusting to the differential. This is because I went to the Silverstone international course. I changed the settings to 45/20 front/rear. I am having an issue with transitional oversteer both entering and exiting the corners. I think they have different causes. I think entering the corner is a suspension issue and exiting the corner is a grip issue.
I try to have all my braking done before entering the corner. Sometimes I am slightly on the brakes when I begin steering the car and the rear comes flying around. I have adjusted the suspension in other cars to cure this.
The oversteer exiting the corner occurs after exiting a sharp corner and I stomp on the accelerator. I think the car has too much power and not enough grip to prevent the wheels from losing grip. I think better tires and/or wider tires may alleviate this problem. This would also help when entering the corners.
Corn Wolf, thanks for starting this thread. It is giving me the chance to document my methods. It is also a good high power car to learn on.
Cheers for the thought, it was mental before i turned it down