Force Feedback clipping is when the forces being sent to the wheel are so high that the wheel can't take anymore. It's basically like eating until you can't eat anymore. If you haven't already got it, there is a test program made by iracing to determine your wheel's optimal minimum force. Click auto to set your force feedback for this car. To save your force feedback for this car, you need to click Options. In the lower left corner of the Options screen, click Use custom controls for this car, as shown below. By using custom controls for each car, you can set different force feedback levels for each car that you drive.
- Force Feedback Yoke
- Iracing Force Feedback Utility
- Force Feedback Joystick
- Iracing Test Drive
- Iracing Force Feedback Test Program
- Iracing Force Feedback Greyed Out
Update 2015-02-26: I’ve been changing up my FFB settings in iRacing lately after realizing that linear ffb resulted in such low force strengths (to avoid clipping) that I wasn’t really feeling the road anymore. The ffb changes were just too subtle. So, because I have a low-end wheel, a G27, I’m now using non-linear ffb and doing the usual binary-search to find the optimal force strength to avoid clipping. I’m doing this only because of my relatively low-end, entry-level G27. I expect the recommended usage for higher strength wheels (T500s/T300s, Fanatec ClubSports, Accuforce Pro, etc.) should still use linear ffb.
Update 2015-02-26 – 2: For the record, a binary search is one where you take your current value, determine whether it’s too little or too much, and then double it (when too little) or halve it (when too much), and repeat that process at each new level to dial in on your optimal value. For example, for iRacing force strengths I might start out at 32, decide that’s too much and go to 16 (half of 32), decide that’s too little and go to 24 (16 + 8 which is half of 16), decide that’s too much and go to 20 (24 – 4 which is half of 8), decide that’s too little and go to 22 (20 + 2 which is half of 4), decide that’s too little and go to 23 (22 + 1 which is half of 2), decide that’s too much and go to 22.5 (22 – 0.5 which is half of 1). This is a real example I just did in iRacing a few minutes ago on the Mazda MX-5.
Update 2015-02-26 – 3: Nvidia users should check out these threads: iRacing graphic optimizations for NVIDIA users, Guide: nVidia iRacing Antialiasing (AA) Settings, NVIDIA SLI Compatibility results. The second guide about AA gives some good settings for Nvidia Inspector (I use in-game 4x AA with Nvidia Inspector AA – Mode “Enhance” and AA – Setting “8xS [Combined: 1×2 SS + 4 MS]”. Read the thread for what they mean). The third thread is about SLI and getting rid of microstuttering (I use Nvidia Inspector “SLI Compatibility Bits” = “0x00402015” per the thread). It’s not perfect but it’s better than in-game AA and should give higher performance.
I’m a big fan of iRacing sim racing and I frequent their forums quite a bit. I’ve seen a number of posts, over time, on the iRacing forums about people asking for the right force feedback settings for their wheels. As it turns out, this info in its complete form is harder to come by then you might think so I’ve decided to post everything I know and have implemented for my Logitech G27 for force feedback in iRacing…
David Tucker, staff at iRacing.com, worked on the Logitech G27 force feedback and he indicates they put a lot of effort into making the G27 “optimal” out of the box:
I recommend the defaults in the driver (100% for everything) and 900 deg of rotation. It use to be the case that you needed to mess with the driver but a long time ago I made sure that the defaults in the driver would be optimal.
In addition to everything default in the profiler, in-game I use linear force feedback, which is supposedly technically more accurate feedback, a Min Force of 16.6% (this number is very close to every other G27’s calculated Min Force so it should work for you), Strength 32 (for a Mazda MX-5 Cup but it depends on the car, my Lotus 79 and Ruf use 20), and Damping 0% (because I want my feedback sharp not dulled).
We’re almost done but there’s one more tiny thing we need to do that made a world of difference for my force feedback:
“I hate the chatter but I really wanted to feel the road and straights are the best indicator around the center to tell if you’re actually feeling everything.” -Matt
In your case you may want to go back to the old min force method….You can go back to the old method by setting app.ini [Force Feedback] FFBUseSimpleMinForce=1 -David Tucker
You should be able to find the app.ini file in your Documents folder under the iRacing folder. For example, my app.ini is here: C:UsersMattDocumentsiRacingapp.ini
Copy and paste that file to make a backup copy in case you want to go back. Then open it in notepad and find the line that starts with “FFBUseSimpleMinForce=0” and change it to: FFBUseSimpleMinForce=1
A note on fine tuning strength in-game: Hit the F key while driving to get the force meter up. It’s the green/orange/red meter that’s always going up and down according to your wheel’s current strength output. To get optimal strength and detail out of your wheel start with a low strength and keep increasing it. You will notice your force meter hitting red more and more often as you drive – red means maximum output and it means the game wants to output more but your wheel can’t handle it (you’re losing feedback detail at this point which is not good, it’s called “clipping”). Keep increasing your force strength until the force meter only flashes red (clipping) for split seconds in your sharpest cornering. This will be your optimal force strength for your wheel.
Enjoy!
PS. You might find my post on force feedback settings for Sector 3 Studio’s RaceRoom Racing Experience informative as well!
PPS. This thread over at the iRacing forums provides a good, detailed introduction to force feedback in iRacing.
iRacing has a great range of apps and addons that have been created by the community in order to increase the experience that iRacing offers.
In my opinion the best iRacing apps are:
- VRS Telemetry
- CrewChief
- Trading Paints
- SIMRacingApps
- SoundShift
Force Feedback Yoke
VRS Telemetry
Virtual Racing School Telemetry is something that I always have on when I run iRacing. It is an invaluable tool that allows me to take a deep dive into my lap times and figure out why I’m so slow compared to everyone else…
You can see from the screenshot above (I’m the blue, the Virtual Racing School pro is the red) that I’m able to identify subtle differences in things that I do that the pros either don’t or that they do differently.
Whether it be the line I take through a corner or the amount of braking that I do, these little differences all add up to a large amount of time difference at the end of a lap. Being able to see exactly where this time is going in a post-race or practice analysis is one of the keys to getting faster.
I use this a lot if I’m struggling for pace. It’s a fantastic tool to be able to zoom out on things and look at exactly what is going wrong, and where I can improve. I will hardly ever have a session of iRacing going without VRS Telemetry turned on.
CrewChief
CrewChief is awesome. CrewChief is an all-in-one race management tool which allows you to set up tactics, get race information, lap times, and a bunch of other things over the radio, even allowing you to communicate back. It also doubles as a greatly improved spotter when compared to the default iRacing one.
One of the greatest features that CrewChief has is the ability to handle the logistics of a pit-stop for you. There’s nothing worse than fighting for position halfway through a race and having to try and manually calculate how much fuel you’ll need to take to make it to the end of the race. CrewChief automates all of this, which means all you have to do is pull into the pits and you will get the amount of fuel that the program thinks that you need to make it to the end (you can set a + lap threshold in case you don’t trust it 100%).
As I mentioned before, CrewChief also has a built-in spotter which (in my opinion) is far superior to the iRacing default spotter. It gives more information, lap times, general race updates, specifics on crashes in upcoming corners… the list goes on.
One of the coolest things is that the radio comms refer to you by a name, and if you’re lucky, you can set that name to be your real-life name! It’s just a nerdy perk that I really enjoy and increases the immersion just that little bit more.
CrewChief isn’t only iRacing specific either. It will run on a large list of popular sims which I’ve outlined in the following table.
I run CrewChief with every sim that I play that is compatible. A minority of games are only compatible with the spotter features and not the crew chief features but it is still great. It’s currently my favourite sim racing app and I will very rarely fire up a sim without it.
Trading Paint
If you have seen YouTube videos or Twitch streams of people with some crazy custom paint jobs on their cars and wondering how they get them, then the answer is Trading Paints.
Trading Paints is a tool that allows users to upload custom liveries which can be used by the community. You’ll find replicas of real-life racing teams across all sorts of motorsport disciplines as well as original creations.
In order for people to see your livery and you to be able to see theirs, both drivers must have Trading Paints installed and running. Fortunately, though, a majority of the iRacing community uses Trading Paints so you will almost always be able to experience a full race of customer liveries.
There are hundreds of custom liveries available on Trading Paints. What I usually end up doing is sorting by popular and scrolling down until I find something that I like. I change them out pretty regularly but that’s half the fun.
SIMRacingApps
SIMRacingApps is a fantastic app for allowing you to build fully customizable dashes, timing boards, overlays, admin panels, and really just about anything else that you want for iRacing.
Iracing Force Feedback Utility
The best thing about SIMRacingApps is that it is a web server that is run from your computer which means you are able to connect other devices to it and have various displays and dashes on your phone, tablet, external monitors, or just about any other device with a screen that can connect to your PC through a browser.
Having the dashboards displayed on an external source means that you’ll be able to mount a phone or tablet to your rig or desk and have a nice external display with extra information that is completely separate to iRacing and not cluttering your screen.
Not only can you set up things like dashes and live timing boards, but you can even set up full spotter dashboards where you can control the pit stops for your driver, traffic, flag callouts, wrecks, etc. It is super powerful once you start to play around with it a bit.
I will admit though, it’s not the best looking piece of software in the world, but it does a fantastic job and the developers of it have done a great job of putting this together.
SIMRacingApps has a bunch of uses and once you figure out what you need, whether that be extra overlays during a race or an external monitoring system of some kind, then you can probably do it in SIMRacingApps
SoundShift
http://nspace.hu/soundshift/ + updated vehicle list
SoundShift is an app that people seem to love or hate.
It gets a bit of hate because it makes a beeping noise indicating to you that you need to shift gears and there are drivers in the community that argue that you should use the noise of the engine or the shift lights to give you that information.
Force Feedback Joystick
I use it as a way to optimise my shifting and therefore speed, and according toSebastian Vettel, Formula 1 drivers have the same thing in their cars.
Because of this, I choose to run it and I find it helps a lot. It’s just one less thing to worry about when I’m going 3-wide down a straight at 200 mph.
Iracing Test Drive
There’s really not much more to it than that. You can set a target RPM for each gear and there will be an audible beep when you hit that RPM. Simple, effective, and works great.
If you’re unsure about whether you need SoundShift or not then I encourage you to give it a go, spend a few minutes looking up the optimal shift points for the car that you’re using, plug the numbers in and go hot lap for 30 minutes. You’ll know by then if its something that you’ll want to keep in your app toolbox or not.
Iracing Force Feedback Test Program
Wrap Up
Well, there you have it. A handful of apps and addons that I use every time that I race on iRacing.
There is no particular order to the list, and each app serves its own purpose.
Again, the apps that I use are:
- VRS Telemetry
- CrewChief
- Trading Paints
- SIMRacingApps
- SoundShift
Iracing Force Feedback Greyed Out
Try them out and you might wonder how you ever raced without them.