Why Realistic FFB Is Unrealistic

[@deathpallie]

Every time I stumble across one of your videos, I'm always reminded of why your channel has struggled to grow- you're an idiot.

[@SaxmanUSMC]

Care to offer some insight about why you think this? Or are you just a child troll who is projecting?

[@erudzitis84]

GM loved this comment. Its kinda funny, i guess

[@dionp8164]

Taking one look at Deathpallie's channel say it all honestly. Insults usually reflect more about the caster than the target.

[@niolund8673]

He isn't really an idiot, you just don't understand how difficult it is to make many people to understand how ffb is supposed to work and he is absolutely right. The only way is abstract ffb.

[@gefx0164]

True. I bet he smells too! And he puts milk in tea, omg thats just gross therefore everything he said is false!

[@Poodz_]

It doesn't matter how simply you explain it, people will still refuse to understand.

[@P3ktoRis]

they don't need helmets, they have thick skulls

[@StakorTarzan]

True unfortunately

[@kondor99999]

I drove in SCCA D Production in the 80s and had a test with Roush in a Trans Am Capri. I’ve raced in SCCA off and on for the last 35 years. Many of the race cars I’ve driven had the most vague, numb steering you can imagine (something about the wide front tires I was told). You drove these cars using the seat of your pants, not based on what was coming through the wheel. If you made a sim with that kind of “force feedback”, you’d never be able to catch a slide or figure out your braking points. They have to add in extra info to replace what you lose in a real car.

[@AL.farmlife]

agreed but BMW in irl have very good feedback at least when I power slide I can feel it trough the wheel

[@AL.farmlife]

also bumps and abs it's not so pronounced. I guess bmw is best car for drivers who love driving by feel😂

[@Quasmin]

Yeap... Isn't about feet and hands... Is about butts

[@munkytaint666]

i don't want truly realistic FFB in my driving games, i want the FFB to communicate every possible tidbit of information that i'm missing b/c i'm in an overpriced toy, driving pretend race cars, and i want that force to be fully maxed out to compensate for the fact that i'm a pudgy middle aged couch potato who gets no other actual exercise in real life. ;) Also, Twinings Lady Grey and Irish Breakfast teas are the best teas, and if you disagree, you're wrong. lol

[@tan143danh]

So you are saying that sim racing is unrealistic , and the only way to counteract unrealistic realism is to use unrealistic realism to simulate realism unrealistically

[@heinous70]

I'm in my mid 50s. I remember the introduction of proportional steering.. and I remember the introduction of force feedback. It came along just a few years after I started working for Honda. It amazed me back then how well they had been able to simulate the feedback. I could feel my Integra through the early Logitech wheels, and I could feel my s2000. Not exactly the same, but enough to be similar to the real world. It's never been more than that. It just finally gained the strength needed to mimic the real world a lot better. My first two cars were vintage beatles.. the second one a hot rod show car. The Integra has a trophy case from the scca, and at one point in its life could pull just over 1g on 205s. You are so correct it's pitiful.. but you're saying something these young men don't want to hear. You're telling them how unrealistic this really is. While you're at it, explain them a difference in a sustained g, and an initial G😂 You absolutely have the most mature and wise opinion on this subject available on KZbin

[@lumikarhu]

I thought it was common knowledge to everyone who's ever driven a car, then I noticed the comments section

[@starfox_wr-45e93]

"Why unrealistic FFB is.. also the most realistic" - GamerMuscle 2025

[@MrYutoob]

If you want realistic ffb drive a real car. Feel how little actually comes from the wheel.

[@maximravinet9950]

It depends hugely on the car. Sure, new cars with super numb electric power steering don't send any info through the wheel. Go back 15 years and the last hydraulic powersteering racks talk sooo much and give you every detail of the road and tyres. For example, I had a 2021 Mercedes À-class that I had drive with my knee pressed against the doorcart to get some feedback from the road, that steering rack was insanely dead. Now I drive a 2019 1-series and it talks a ton, I know exactly what's going on with the front wheels, it's great. Both of those were company cars and I didn't have a say in the choice so I'm not biased for money reasons or whatever

[@Skumtomten1]

Modern cars don't even need a steering wheel. They could have a Touch screen instead. You are just telling the computer what to do, it's nothing mechanical at all anymore.

[@craigyirush3492]

Not true. Drive a Lotus Elise for example, or any good sports car from the 60s to 80s. They have loads of steering feel. Modern cars with electric power steering don’t.

[@calinpetrescu9128]

For the first time in years I went karting. Ready to show everyone how it's done because I'm a simracist. A combination of pushing the kart to the limit around the corners, hanging on for dear life and being terribly out of shape meant my entire body was in horrible pain after 8 minutes on the track.

[@michahund4879]

Well go karts are not cars

[@calinpetrescu9128]

@@michahund4879 And the two kinds that beat my best lap only did so because they were too tall for the junior sesion and weigh 30kgs. But they won't push those peddals with broken legs anymore, now will they.

[@ScottOmatic]

The biggest issue with the generic rental karts is that they have a one-size-fits-all type of seat, this leads to a lot of fatigue as they do a very poor job of securing you in place.

[@Skumtomten1]

Karts drive really weird though. I found the fastest way around the track was to throw the kart into the corners and the just instantly accelerate out of it like a powerslide. You barely need to brake in those things unless it was a very fast one. Cars don't drive like that really.

[@ne_mz]

@@Skumtomten1 open wheel race cars behave quite similarly.

[@EZCCW]

Contrary to that idiot in the pinned comment, you're 100% on the money. As a very experienced alien-level sim racer who is at the front of the pack in all the leagues I've run in, driving in a sim (ACC) that has had awful (realistic) force feedback is a nightmare that brings me down many levels, and prevents me from being able to push the car to its limit using my previous experience. I'm sure adding IRL g-forces would make up for things, but until we have brain-computer interfaces or something that can make us feel those forces while sitting in our rigs, realistic FFB will never be the answer.

[@caaarlos]

I think that the self correcting steering alignment sometimes it's unrealistic (on a go kart your wheel won't be rotating freely like on a drift car self correcting) But the yaw feeling on the FFB pulling the hands (since can't pull your body) can be helpful to try to get information that usually you get on the body but this time on the wheel. I've recently went on Karting and noted that while on the sim the kart steering feel is more dampened heavy and realistic, the feeling for grip I've learned it more from other cars with more detailed ffb. Specially to feel that lightness when the rear is starting to go or to feel when the fronts aren't bitting onto the track, etc... This is the reason why GamerMuscle is always right on this topic either people like it or not. And the reason why good old Assetto Corsa is one of the best feeling simulators of all time and everyone still plays it, even top of the world iRacing players post videos now and then on Assetto. It's where you have the best ffb feeling to drive with the same gut feeling you would drive in real life.

[@The_BenboBaggins]

Literally making a cup of tea at the start of this! (Had to pause it because the kettle is really loud)

[@GamerMuscleVideos]

ironically Even many of the Rack force and Rack only solutions that people often consider to be realistic are still very abstract from many real cars steering feel ( which is a good thing)

[@xanderveldmuisje]

I really hope you can get AC Evo to implement the feedback. Like the forces don't need to stop when the suspension is all loaded up. I liked the original AC, you could really feel setup changes even the second you drive from your pitbox. In Competizone you can't really feel the fronts for example (unless you make a really soft front and a stiffer back)

[@AtomicAndi]

The first thing to get right is obviously the force from the suspension and tyres through the steering column. Once that is perfect we can talk about adding extras.

[@speedx357ify]

Do you mean like how ams 1 did ffb?

[@danielwatson9810]

It’s fairly simple really. To know what the simulated car is doing, you need FFB to simulate forces that you’d feel in the car which wouldn’t come through the wheel.

[@felipetartas5434]

No matter how realistic an FFB may be, in my home the sensations of driving a real car will not be replicated and therefore, I will not be learning anything about how to really feel the limits of the car and drive through those sensations. In my home, however, I want to play a racing simulator like I play a good game with quality game design. That is, I want something that tells me more clearly what the right way to play is and provides that information so that I can play instinctively. If that comes through a fake FFB, I don't care that it is fake, but that it makes me play better.

[@midpacksimracer]

You know, real cars give you that incredible, tremendous seat-of-the-pants feeling with real G-forces. In sim racing, it's all about the force feedback through the steering wheel and bass shakers-terrific stuff. And when you use VR, believe me, the force feedback is crucial; it helps you avoid motion sickness and makes the immersion fantastic.

[@qXblackoutXp]

I’ve never been this early and don’t know how I feel about it.

[@michahund4879]

the same thing you said last night to your girl

[@qXblackoutXp]

@@michahund4879 she’s used to it by now. We know exactly how to feel about it lol

[@michahund4879]

@@qXblackoutXp glad to hear

[@tristanheron4144]

It is strange how some FFB just feels more intuitive even though it isn't like real life, like the OG Assetto Corsa. I think that is something for developers to strive for.

[@doozis]

I've played many modern and older racing sims like many others have and only if you've played AC 1 will you understand what GM is talking about all these years. He is spot on , AC 1 is the only sim that gives a funny feel in the FFB when you are breaking traction in a turn. In Iracing ACC and most of the other sims I've played you have to work on memory and stay under the grip limit. On AC 1 you can easily feel the grip limit through the wheel. Poor GM has been trying to convey this for years and I for one salute him !

[@quickc4626]

I enjoy the feeling of my super human extension.

[@LoganLeGrand]

Motion sims are also “unrealistic” the goal is to give the driver in the loop information that allows them to make realistic inputs and reactions. These are often tuned for the driver during their test and differs between them. So naturally you’d need to do the same for FFB. Adding cueing through FFB is not wrong or bad but it can be a preference.

[@GamerMuscleVideos]

Motion sims are a whole different kettle of fish I tried to really avoid in this video. To be honest no motion sim on earth can even approximate G-Force information with resolution and latency better than DD wheel can. Some pressure systems , bladder and paddle systems are interesting but so out there for home systems lol. Motion rigs are amazing for for suspension simulation and at a good price / viable for mass market. At insane prices traction loss and other aspects can be ok ish. But given that you can achieve what you largely need through a DD wheel with AC1 levels of information it's not really necessary from a functional perspective. But yah everything that's an abstraction will ultimately need a degree of customisation from user to user. And That again is separate to the idea of the specific information that can be given to a user.

[@gomezthechimp1116]

Apart from FFB being unrealistic, I've also watched those videos where Nik whatsisname explains that the throttle models in most sims are wrong as well. IIRC, only Studio 397 and Reiza got it right. Then there's the car's behaviour in gravel: irl, once you hit the gravel trap, it's usually race over, or at least takes a long time to get the thing back on track. This isn't the case in any sim as far as I know.

[@charlesgutscher6249]

I agree. Give as much feedback and detail as absolutely possible in raw form, and let us taper it down to our liking. Guys that just want to be fast and want a lot of little detail, can have it. People that are just shooting for realism and immersion, can have that too.

[@wolfie54321]

The sensation of yaw/pitch and yaw rate/pitch rate are a big thing when racing a real car, even more than the G forces.

[@GamerMuscleVideos]

Yaw and rotation are also effectively G-forces / acceleration on the body just in different angles. But sure sometimes people think of G-forces only as getting on gas / braking or corner G. The point of the video was more one of the driver driving from body and information through body rather than the wheel.

[@wolfie54321]

@@GamerMuscleVideos Yeah, I get what you meant, just being nitpicky as simracers like to be. G-forces are linear, yaw rate is a rotational feeling that is hard to describe but tells whether a car is over/under steering, and the pitch/roll rate comes in to tell you what's happening with weight transfer. It's the subtle rotations that tell what the state of the car is more than the raw g force pushing you against the side of the car.

[@48kgs]

I’m not interested in realistic FFB, I want intuitive FFB. FFB that “feels” like you might expect a real car to feel like.

[@safe6324]

I mean that makes sense, the base and wheel on a sim is just trying to give us as much info as possible without us actually being there, in the car, feeling the G-forces

[@PaulRKeeble]

I wholeheartedly agree. If Kunos want to present literal FFB in Evo it would be nice for them to also have the Assetto Corsa seat of the pants be an option too. Seat of the pants is what made AC so popular and it ought to be in the sucessors and its lack of presence in ACC is the reason I don't play it. Where I disagree slightly is that the 5 dimensions (forward,side,up,car rotation, car lift rotation) of g force have an analogous mapping to the single dimension of movement of the steering wheel. They can't be mapped in a way that they don't interfere with each other and when you crush them down to 1 dimension of a wheel you have to rely on visual clues to understand some of them or make them feel or just give them a canned force which we can learn but which doesn't make to body experience at all well. Having a bump jerk the wheel is not a vertical motion but combined with visuals we can understand it. What we don't get through the wheel is the car lift rotation, we see it but we can't feel it. Generally it doesn't really matter because we rely on certain types of forces at particular moments in a corner anyway and if the signal gets messed up momentarily because there is too much going on the car is driveable enough. Its the closest we can get especially since motion rigs are ludicrously expensive and also just too slow in most cases to portray these forces well and often as Nils has pointed out they go the wrong way!

[@GamerMuscleVideos]

Yah , I was more just trying to describe the aspect of range of load , obviously a wheel will always be limited in what it can do due to it only being able to do ranges of force left and right / vibrate. there are some creative and not obvious things that can be done even within this limitation but thats a whole different video lol. This video trying to explain the reality of ffb in sims vs real cars and why "realistc ffb" is not really that good

[@bigredracingteam9642]

Here's a comment by the creator of your beloved AC, Stefano Casillo, I think you might find interesting. Casillo is responding to a poster who claimed AC adds G-forces to its FFB (it's from Overtake, Jan. 19): "Just to clarify, I wrote the code you are arguing about. What you say is wrong... let's see how and why. You seem to be convinced AC "adds" forces to the FFB to reproduce g effects. This is demonstrably wrong, as long as we are talking about "vanilla" AC.. no idea if some "modder" added these atrocities to the FFB and I hope they did not... and if they did then.. well.. frack you mr modder. UNDERSTEER EFFECT What AC has is the "understeer effect" which is an artificial REDUCTION of FF level when understeer is detected. This was something a guy in a team who is a friend and whom I love wanted to try.. so I added it but it's an abomination that should have never seen the release button and that nobody should use.. infact it's gone in ACC. ADDITIONAL VIBRATIONS AC also has additional VIBRATIONS added to the FFB.. but hopefully you understand the difference between a "force" (should really be called torque but whatever) and a "vibration". These are designed to be a substitute for the high frequency vibrations passing through the steering wheel because of "road texture" and tyre vibrations due to slip. FFB Tyre slip vibrations where then removed in ACC as the tyre model itself improved to include those vibrations. These were added to AC1 mostly as a response to please rfactor players coming to AC finding the FFB "too flat".. rfactor FFB was (is?) very "noisy". And that's it. No additional force has ever been part of FFB in my games since netKar, I've always fought against the entire concept of having external stuff in the FFB my entire career.. my games have always been FRONT TYRES ONLY and ONLY forces coming straight from the physics. Sadly there is a growing number of uninformed individuals going around the internet perpetuating this myth that AC has this and that who even, hilariously, argue this is a good thing.. but it's fake news and it says more about themselves and their level of ignorance than AC... but I see this nonsense so much on here and reddit that I guess it's just a battle that I can't win.. eventually I'll have to give up and accept it."

[@GamerMuscleVideos]

Yes I'm well aware of what he has said and used to have to explain to iracers that AC1 FFB was no more "fake" than iracing but they would never believe me. non of that goes against anything I have said in this video. And I have explained to people multiple times their misconception as to AC1s FFB Also the conversation with marcell offermans is relevant in particular the nature of his current steering rack FFB implementation and why and how that gives quite good detail as to how the car drives. Also I have explained why a rack force type direct FFB is better in AMS2 than a bunch of random effects. This is all separate to the aspect of the fact that if a simulator directly copies or directly has "real world" steering feel for many real.world cars this will literally give a SimRacer little to nothing to drive from in many cases. This video is not an argument for utterly arbitrary mental ffb and not even necessarily an argument for a SOP type simulation or solution. But it is an explanation as to why simracers need details in their wheels more so than in real cars if you want the driving process to actually be realistic. Ironically the less complex tire models , suspension or steering simulation can lend itself to more detailed FFB which is literally.less realistic but the end drive ends up being more realistic.

[@lavir74]

For all the good Stefano has done, he's also a narcissist that can never admit to be wrong. He is infected with the typical syndrome that many academics have: believing that being an expert in something makes you automatically knowledgeable in everything else. He's been proven wrong more times than one can count in his own forum but he stubbornly refuses to admit it to himself, let alone to others (sadly aided by the dozens of the inevitable fanboys that mindlessly agree with everything he says no matter what). It's sincerely pitiful to witness but that's how it goes. Nobody that has argued with him in the past about the difference between AC and ACC concerning FFB and why the former is objectively better has ever suggested that AC FFB simulates g-forces directly, so he's replying to a strawman because that's what condescension does: you feel so highly and mighty that you cannot even address the proper argument instead of belittling it and making a farce of the context.

[@GamerMuscleVideos]

That's a bit harsh I spent 2 hours chatting with him at simracing expo , he has always been super friendly to me really down to earth and would reply back to my steam DM's back in the net kar days. He is really helpful and responsive to coding questions on his live streams just direct and too the point. This quote in particular is more in response to the fact that for years a bunch of people just created a narrative about what is "artificial" or what is physics driven and what is "canned" or not and then people got confused over that. The problem is with FFB there are a huge number of people that de-rail meaningful conversation really fast , same happens with physics. Funny how all my comments on ACC have been straw manned to the point that when I talked to aris or others about it they think I'm talking about something else lol. I think you with your comment was kind of getting at this ( ironically I think we end up with a sort of straw man caption which is kinda what happened with Stefano's response 🤣) Unfortunately a person needs a degree of conversational skill and critical thinking for those sorts of conversation and a sizable % of people don't + are motivated by happening to be passionate about one video game or another more than an interest in the underlying tech or art. Anyway Stefano as I say has always been super friendly to me I think he is just direct when he has done mgs' on forums, id not take it personally. He is literally a "genius artist" like a bunch of these sim developers. I mean if I was a physics programmer I'd have a keyboard imbedded in my forehead 😂 Not to say he is always right or could maybe be a bit more diplomatic and I'm sure he is " stubborn" I think again you really need to be to be that sort of a programmer. Most of the really good coders I know tend to be stubborn / can be hard to convince of something they didn't work out themselves , it can take quite a while to get them to understand more abstract less directly logical aspects of things. The same goes the other way , I'm very bad at programming and find it very hard to understand lots of the general systems and logics used in programming I just can't visualize it or conceptualize the processes or math in my head to the degree good programmers can. interesting aspect of game development regardless. It doesn't mean they are narcissists or bad people 😄 in the end nothing is worse than an influencer.

[@zagg5154]

@@GamerMuscleVideos i was apart of that disscusion that led up to that response. youre correct it had nothing to do with ac1 having added effects. it was more along the lines of your vid "why would it be wrong to have added effects in ffb if it technically makes it more realistic in a sim context?" then stefano jumped in trying to air everyone out with that response to the guy. then everyone tried to point out that we werent talking about ac1 having added effects. i also gave him the benefit of the doubt because he wrote prob the vast majority of ac1 code which makes him a lunatic. but i still think he should work on his presentation because bashing people over the head even if youre correct is a terrible way to make an impression for 80% of people

[@virtualrealitymotorsports9158]

James you have nailed it perfectly mate, best video you have ever produced. Well done

[@leenk4590]

You are absolutely right and few if any can put down a real simulator at home with G-forces. Pedals needing 140 kilograms of pressure, in a real car you have the G-forces helping you, pushing 140 kilograms at home without g-forces doesn't seem healthy to me. Occasionally quite nice to watch a video where the illsuie is broken, thanks mate

[@ElShogoso]

FFB for me just gets in the way. I mostly do rallying, drifting and touge, so if I don't turn FFB way down, it not only doesn't help but just makes the steering heavy and ends up being too tiring. First thing I did in EA WRC was to turn pretty much all of the effects off and try to get it to be similar to RBR. What I like about RBR is that it's what I want straight out of the box and I didn't have to mess with all those options - Forza Motorsport went the complete opposite way and was overwhelming

[@GamerMuscleVideos]

Yep RBR is super natural to drive , not perfect lol and a bit harsh but funnily enough it was the first real sim i ever played "that just made sense"

[@xkall5391]

Serious guy here. I dont know why anyone would be angry about what you say in this video, i think that everyone knew that, i thought everyone knew that the ffb was there not to replicate the steering forces but the forces the vehicle goes on, but it seems like i was the one that didn't knew that ppl thought otherwise.

[@G-KART]

I love it when some informed Sim racer trieds to argue with me telling me that original AC has the worst FFB and now ACC is far superior. I only race karts professionally, what would I know 😂😂😂

[@GamerMuscleVideos]

I had years of ACC fans that were mostly people that just learned to memory drive a single type of car on 12 tracks basically constantly berate me into how ACC FFB is totally fine and it totally has all the details you need , they generally got away with it due to it being the new thing and lots of them having never really played AC1 or AMS1 or drive lots of other sims with more detail , or even having that exspectation of detail + GT3 cars are fundimentally very bland on the grand scheme of things. The thing is you can of course drive very fast with no FFB set world record times be a total alien - all through rote memorisation , this is then good enough for lots of people to say "ffb is fine" Also fact is ACC is very easy to drive same as ACE and AC and any more realistic sim , this again makes people just be happy with a lack of detail as they are just glad they are not spinning. You can also learn to specifically drive into understeer / in specific ways where you really don't use ffb particularly as a reference and this is a driving style lots of people naturally have or the only way of driving they are aware of , this makes them totally unaware of lacking details lol Lots of sim-racers also don't seem to understand that you can remove overactive FFB or remove detail with wheel settings on most wheels on the market , but you can't Add detail that's not there.

[@TurnDevil1]

I was thinking about this today driving my fly by wire car and wondered how that creates the feedback compared to my sim base. In reality G force gives you more feedback than a car wheel does (even a race car), and you ain’t getting that from a sim base, so it’s a lost cause.

[@PN_109]

Great video and points! Having driven cars on real track i totally agree.

[@awracing17]

Bum feel is my favourite kind of feel

[@Anonnymouse53]

Sim isn't realistic and never can be. It's all about giving the user feedback and information of what the sim is doing. In reality your tyres don't vibrate at increasing volume as they begin to lose traction - but it's a very useful cue to have this happening with haptics so you can understand what is happening. In sim all feedback output can be filtered, manipulated and tuned to give the most amount of useful feedback to the user, your brain fills in the rest to make the experience internally consistent. It doesn't matter if the actual forces at the wheel are "realistic" in one car or another. It matters that the driving characteristics of those cars are distinct from each other and authentic.

[@JallyTee]

Just give us the ability to add these forces into the wheel! power steering is implemented to artificially lower the forces at low speeds but the bi product is numb steering feel. Thats fine for the avage driver but why on earth would you want to simulate only this in a sim game.

[@DrPepp]

I advice everybody to make this experiment. Concentrate on what you actually feel through the steering wheel. You can only feel a bit the roughness of the road and a constant boring force you feel on a turn

[@nitromcclean]

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I was thinking of writing something about my thoughts on FFB in a simulator and posting it somewhere. But now I don't have to. Because that's exactly what you did. Did I say thank you? Well here you go. Realize that there are people, not the least, who can accuse you of spreading fake news. At least that's what happened to me. Stefano Casillo himself found it necessary to accuse me of this on Overtake. But thanks again!

[@stuartgibson9755]

Thanks for the Physics lesson Mr West. It's been a while.

[@iulian2548]

Good force feedback is not real to life. I've driven actual cars with weak steering feedback that were otherwise nice to drive because of the good dynamics (light weight, balance, responsiveness). All these traits can't be conveyed by a regular gaming chair, you need force feedback to immerse you.

[@robertbrown1778]

I've heard a racing instructor who's sim raced at a high level say that from a training tool perspective, it's better to leave an effect out of the sim than do it unrealistically. So whilst I take your point, there's the counter argument that you don't want to teach a rl driver to expect wheel information that won't be there.

[@GamerMuscleVideos]

Yes that's called negative training - Its not a valid blanket counter argument as we have established the FFB in just about all sims is already abstract in the first place , it would also depend on the degree to the abstraction of the FFB as to how relevant it was You also have to consider that almost nobody playing racing sims will be driving the car they are simulating and finally any FFB is going to be optional. You would also have to hear the specific example they are talking about to be able to discus it and then finally it would be ironic to be overly concerned about negative training with some aspects of FFB and then not seemingly care about stupendously unrealistic tire model behaviours found in some popular sims lol.

[@robertbrown1778]

@@GamerMuscleVideos It's worth pointing out though that this is not just about differences between sim and rl. When a behaviour, or as in this case some information proves beneficial in the training environment, then reliance tends to become ingrained. I know this from other activities. I don't think anyone benefits from iRacing's on/off grip tyre physics. I'm just arguing for the sake of it at this point btw...

[@GamerMuscleVideos]

@@robertbrown1778 Yah I agree with what you are saying , but I can't think of a single simulator that gives more information than what a real car gives , even the best FFB in AC1 still feels like nothing compared to the amount of feel and resolution of feel you get in your body with a real car. If it did exist or it was an assist then it would just be something you could turn off I mean we have outright asists for a ton of stuff and don't worry about that giving negative treaning or becoming some cruch that wrecks a person doing real world thing. The only time I think one needs to be super cerfull with negative training is when you are talking about specifc flight simulators or very specifc procedure simulators with activities that have near binary and very dangerouse fail conditions. Even then though a person would re-contextulize very fast , but its one reason you should not play a racing video game and then drive a real car or play a random flight sim and then do real flying right away after , or even do air soft then go to real shooting range or do go karting and jump right into a real car as its advisable to allow the brain some gap to consider the different context.

[@bassxchill]

Always insightful. Cheers!

[@Fummi]

Please developers, just fire up AMS1 and try to copy that beautiful feeling on the wheel, nothing else, thks

[@nope3152]

Hope you’re feeling better✌️

[@andrewtsousis3130]

Agree 100% in a real car you feel oversteer first in your bum then, the wheel. But in sim racing the only real way to feel it is in the wheel. Modern FFB does a good job of this, but technically it’s not realistic.

[@kentonian]

I have to disagree and say visuals are more important than ffb. Without visuals how would you know if half of your biscuit had fallen in your tea. You could choke to death.

[@fingers68]

Some sort of development of those pulse electro massagers on each arse cheek.

[@vinnyromano88]

Love this, great explanation! Understeer and loss of front grip will can be felt through a real wheel and FFB wheel. G forces, body roll transitions, loading and unloading suspension at each corner, that is the stuff FFB needs to deliver through the wheel since it isn’t being by felt through bum feel. So many people confused torque and a heavy wheel with “good FFB” but they are actually just covering up all the detail and replacing it with resistance which is all primitive FFB wheels could offer.

[@ronan0maly]

Spot on. This should've been said 10 years ago and been common sense by now.

[@uttistein1939]

I currently have a V 2.5 Wheel from Fanatec. This feels all the tasks that the Sims give me. When I recently unsuccessfully chased a best time in a Reiza W12 (AMS1) that I had set years ago with a G27, it was clear to me that I couldn't be faster with a DD. Maybe it will make me happier if I get one.

[@brtcobra]

even the Rack feeling of ACE isnt correct. that sim just feels bad to me. i dont think ill bother with any more kunos games in the future.

[@dionp8164]

So you've tested an early access alpha version of the game and written off the entire company because of it? I think the "correct" future action might be to not test early access/alpha releases for your own sanity.

[@simongymer199]

There’s two things I strongly disagree with in this video…1) drinking lots of tea is important, 2) large numbers of sim racers don’t realise that real world cars have little feeling in the wheel itself. I think the vast majority of sim racers don’t voice their opinions so I think this is an unrealistic statistic made from your realistic experiences of a vocal minority of attention seeking know it alls.

[@imDanoush]

I appreciate your video I tried to understand your point since the live stream for the AC Evo you did, I checked your old videos, but nothing "concrete" was found. In your latest two videos about the "Last Garage", I found informative insights, but this one really cleared it up. I have written Pacejka v6.2 and invested in a DD wheelbase to try to work on my own hobby project called ATG Simulator, it is going to be a free project and your input will hopefully make it in the right path to feel high-quality simcade product eventually. I appreciate the time you put into this video explaining stuff, and surely not even sim racers but some software engineers in their cave also leverage this informative video! :))

[@6strawb]

Much as it hurts to admit it GM is mostly correct. Most modern cars have little to no ffb, whilst power steering doesn't help it's not solely to blame. The quest for refinement has destroyed the feel through both steering and brakes compared to yesteryear's drivers cars.

[@Bluth53]

I feel you're using a quite convoluted way to express that developers of Sims should give the user choice, if a FFB setting is either optimized for an authentic immersive feeling (which can be quite muted compared to the other option) or to give as much insight and details through the steering wheel to an otherwise quiet, sensory lacking simulation experience (contrary to the real deal as described by you). Personally, I'm a huge fan of immersion and realism, and therefore, I would prefer former to engage tinkerer, creator and product designer to come up with new ingenious solutions to add Realistic forces, as experienced in the real thing, to the simulation at home.

[@cahiry127]

Good thing about most DD wheels now is the player can decide what they want to feel through the wheel and what they don't. No more leaving it up to the sim to decide.

[@ralliman320]

Wheels are still limited to the information provided by the simulator; if the sim software doesn't send any of the "bum feel" type data to the wheel, there isn't much the wheel software can do to self-generate additional feedback.

[@ScottOmatic]

Just get an ECCI for the most realistic experience, with all it's hydraulic dampening glory!

[@ThatSkaterGuyy]

The timely cut at 2:01 because you were probably laughing too hard at the bum feel joke. 🤣

[@steelin666]

Well, it's called "force feedback" not "force replication", so it should provide useful feedback by the definition of its name. That said, even if developers believe in the 1:1 replication of steering rack approach, I wish they would simply give players the choice to enable those extra forces on the wheel on their own. They are usually present in the sim anyway, but only sent to auxiliary devices like motion rigs, and sometimes community provides an additional application to enable them, like ACCFFB for ACC.

[@Rollingzoku89]

So as some who drifts their car quite frequently, I get "similar" feelings from Assetto Corsa and AMS2. The wheel shouldn't be hard or feel heavy to turn as in some sims unless the car doesn't have power steering. When your balancing a car on the edge of grip, depending on the car and tires, you'll get some varying "FFB" in real life.. My E36 and E46 feel similar but one has a heavier steering feeling than the other. Depends on what tires I'm using too.

[@Liquorpuss]

This guy probably drives vehicles which utilize a f1 wheel and never lets the wheel slide in his hand for a second. Seems like that crowd prefers to have 25nm of ffb and a wheel stiffer than their arse. He has some points though

[@GamerMuscleVideos]

@@Liquorpuss I actually drive with quite light FFB as we do 10+ hour live streams , personally speaking I'd like as much detail with as little force required as possible the point of this video though is not "ffb strength" its about why "realistic" FFB could often mean not getting any usable feel information from a sim.

[@Liquorpuss]

@ That is the route I have gone done in Dirt rally2 after getting a simagic alpha. Going from a fanatec v.2.5 I get the "detail" argument now. It was difficult to imagine at the time because the v 2.5 wheel was fantastic for belt drive. I spent 6 hours driving yesterday for the first time in a year.

[@itshammertimeF1]

I'd replace "unrealistic" with raw

[@effinjamieTT]

Watched another ytber who has bought a rally car and is seeing if sim racing skills translate. His initial observation of driving a real rally car was the force coming through the wheel was about the equivalent of a Logitech belt driven wheel.

[@GamerMuscleVideos]

If you were designing a general FFB strength in a real car you would probably aim for around 9-13Nm as this is a good range of force for detail without introducing fatigue and also would make it easier to be precise /have enough resistance and force to make smooth precise input easier.

[@damgam98]

Simracing spoiled me so much for feeling the car through wheel, I struggle to drive new road cars IRL because their wheels are so light and sensitive. Or at least it is the case with cars i've tried to drive. My own, old, car gives me much more feeling and weight through the wheel and i like driving it so much more just because of that.

[@rynosraceroom66]

Thx Mr. Muscle ! You learn something every day🤘🏻🏁

[@Glenn_Sweden]

As per the usual with the content in this channel, I knew way more about this subject BEFORE I watched this video... Now I'm just generally confused about everything in life after seeing this!

[@ShaneMcGillian]

The guy that said you're an idiot clearly doesn't appreciate the irony and idiocy of ad hominem attacks. I think your points were valid. I know iRacing gets a serious bashing here, but this is why a lot of iRacers also turn up the tyre sounds to help compensate for the missing G-Force sensations replacing one of the senses for another. The environment is virtual but the racing is real. Ultimately it doesn't matter how realistic something is, if you put two F1 drivers in the local supermarket they would be racing the shopping trolleys up and down the aisles.

[@Poncheezy]

How far into the video did you make it before he started to sound like the teacher from Charlie brown?

[@dathyr1]

I am not expecting to have SIM racing games feel like the real thing. I did race real go karts several years competitively in the Junior Classes around the midwest area. I know what a Go Kart feels like and I do not feel the same thing by sitting in a chair and holding onto a FFB wheel controller. SIM racing games are just games to me for entertainment and do not expect them to come close to real life racing. It is nice to have a FFB wheel controller where I feel some bumps and resistance when I turn the wheel. But in a real Go Kart I felt and used my whole body when going fast through the turns on the various tracks. Plus I can't afford buying an expensive Racing Rig with motion devices just to get more into the game.

[@caaarlos]

I think that the self correcting steering alignment sometimes it's unrealistic (on a go kart your wheel won't be rotating freely like on a drift car self correcting) But the yaw feeling on the FFB pulling the hands (since can't pull your body) can be helpful to try to get information that usually you get on the body but this time on the wheel. I've recently went on Karting and noted that while on the sim the kart steering feel is more dampened heavy and realistic, the feeling for grip I've learned it more from other cars with more detailed ffb. Specially to feel that lightness when the rear is starting to go or to feel when the fronts aren't bitting onto the track, etc...

[@dathyr1]

@@caaarlos thanks for your input on karting. It has been many years since I did real Karting races along with my Dad. I raced with the Juniors and my Dad raced in Adult classes. It was allot of fun and a great experience in Racing. Met allot of good Junior drivers. Yes, I felt the same thing when racing on certain tracks with the grip of the tires felt slippery in certain corners especially on real hot weekends.

[@caaarlos]

​@ Great to hear, I just did rental karting here and there. Recently I've been to Portimão's racetrack a lot since I live 20m away and I hear the events at my home. Other than this track I've been to one in Almancil and also in Huelva in Spain. (and some other I don't remember when I was little) It's interesting that in the Kart you feel a lot the front tyre grip on turn in, it's very mechanical and "literal". Many sims will try to replicate this, and Karting can be heavy on the arms because you have a very strong feel on the front tire. But having that sort of FFB, is very dampened, just insane weight but not really much feeling for the rear end - which is the reality on the car and kart, you don't feel much of the rear end on the wheel when holding the wheel. but the feelings on the body are the most important to drive, and those are the most important to put into some ffb system. I saw some guy on a video that instead of hidraulic, he created a pulley system with a belt on him or his head and the system would pull his body sideways like the Gforces on a car would.

[@rickthomas9894]

Dude! Nicely done. Maybe, part of our problem as a gaggle of sim-racers, is that we don't yet have a common group understanding of which forces are being represented by which sensations, nor do we have common (shared) set of words we all understand to express our experience of those sensations and forces. With little commonality in gameplay or language,we all rely on our individual subjective experience to describe sensations to each other. So, in general, we end up talking at each instead of with each other about what we feel in game. What a mess. Subjectively 😅 Anyway, thanks for trying to give us the foundation of a way to have meaningful conversations about our passion. Glad you seem to be feeling better. Kettle's on (a nice green/black blend in the pot) Cheers!

[@edteach3r]

Realistic or not, everyone just needs to go with what feels good to them. That’s what real drivers do. I used to club race a 1968 Alfa Romeo Giulia Sprint “stepnose” at the old Kyalami and I can tell you, at the end of an almost-2km straight, hitting the brakes hard for Crowthorne bend, the car squirmed under protest. This is mimicked beautifully by RF2, R3E, AMS2, LMU and ACEvo. Accelerating into the corner, with rear end staring to approach its maximum level of grip, is not delivered accurately by any sim, for obvious reasons as James has clearly indicated. Now, that was a classic rear-driven, road-going Alfa with tweaked suspension and wider tyres, and would feel differently to any other car, and even to another driver in my car. The point is that one should go with what feels good to you, not necessarily what anyone else says is the way it is supposed to feel. Of course, advice to improve lap times is always valuable, but that falls more into the realm of ‘setup’.

[@bual9632]

I want the wheel to rumble when I look up, like on a gamepad. That's awesome feedback.

[@Marcandre11]

GamerMuscle: Guys, I drove a real car... I think the FFB is unrealistic and here's why.

[@Hustler9g]

You completely missed the point if that's what you think he's saying. He's saying sims are trying to be realistic but realistic steering forces are not enough information in a sim because you can't feel the rest of the car. He's arguing against "realistic" wheel force. Moron.

[@torchbearer3784]

Absolut truth! I get my Moza r5 tomorrow and if the ffb feels just like what I feel from my real world car wheel then whats the point? My old g920 can do that but it is just force with no feedback. Anyway I hope I get blown away when I start up AC with the new dd wheel tomorrow.

[@evilwilk]

It's a language.

[@michahund4879]

That title doesn't make much sense if you take it literally. (No Battle)

[@GamerMuscleVideos]

Its somewhat of a Pun - NO BATTLE

[@herlegz6969]

Welcome to 1990s haptics 101

[@Quasmin]

My biggest problem is corner approach and exit. No amount of visual quality or force feedback can give me the point of where and how to brake / accelerate and turn ... Memorizing distance signs isn't the same at all

[@happydappyman]

Amen brother. This is one of the reasons Assetto Corsa is so fun to drive. It's just too bad the kerbs are made from cottage cheese in that game haha. Automobilista 2 has improved a ton since it was first released as well. They have a setting called "default plus" or something like that. The "plus" is added fall-off for understeer and added feeling of weight transfer. I think it feels pretty good. I remember not being impressed with it when the game was first released. It would be one thing making everything as realistic as possible if everyone had a motion rig, but that's not the case for 99% of simmers. Having options like AMS2 where people can choose to suite their taste seems like a good way of doing it. Don't get me wrong, if i ever got some decent money together and my girlfriend let me convert a room in the house... Yeah I'd like to try a motion rig with the "realistic" setting, just to see how it felt. Otherwise, nah.

[@chuckystang]

I think most people get it, but in a SIM, the wheelbase needs to replace g-forces (seat of the pants) and suspension movement to be able to drive in a realistic way

[@Rice_Cake_]

What does that mean, exactly? Do you understand how impossible that is? If these forces are not felt through a wheel in real life, then what do you actually expect? If I demand to feel the warmth of a painted fire, and then complain that you painted it wrong because I feel no warmth, that would be similarly impossible to reconcile.

[@chuckystang]

@@Rice_Cake_did you not watch the video, he explains it perfectly.

[@TheMash84]

Next video: "Why unrealistic FFB is realistic"

[@PanacheConnection]

Mostly correct but when your car starts to give out contrary to what you say, the G-force you feel actually increases and does not decrease. Also by the time you your body is able to register that there is an increase in G-force you are beyond that window of recovering the vehicle. It's more of the sensation you feel from the seat, not the actual g-force due to centrifugal action when turning the car that gives you a good indication of whether the car is starting to give out during a turn. Personally I Prefer to dial in my settings to reflect as accurately as possible how my car feels in real life. But then again I am more of a track day person than a sim racer and find dialing in settings to give the most amount of information can be detrimental during track day when the car feels completely different to how it feels in simulators.

[@27Nets]

I just hit the like button and it so happened mine was like number 222. I feel like this key information given the state of the conversation on this channel, so that everybody can drink their tea peacefully. It also gives you the chamce of having one more comment to dislike.

[@stenovitz]

Just excellent one of the main sim channels finally stresses whst I've been trying to tell for more decades, having been behind the wheel of quite some cars through time, both track prepared cars, race cars, single searers and even a 60ies N 4:48 SU Prinz TT rally car. obly reason why I nlw and then consider 20Nm torque DD2 is due to I like demanding challenges, ot with respect to geg closer to 'natural responses'.

[@GTsimms]

I personally want a road car level of feeling with a max of around 4 nm. I'm not trying out for a muscle competition at my age.

[@Hustler9g]

Been waiting for this one. The one guy who gets it

[@hackmac2599]

Nice explanation. Regarding the hottest topic in sim racing since tea brewed fresh fish skins: How to make the FFB more better in AC Evo: Despite the lack tool tips and in my view misleading naming of the FFB options I think I found something to even better feel the entire masterpiece of the tire-suspension-whatnot-model. This helped me really feeling everything the car does. Try it. I know the settings look weird and counterintuitive. I can now not only feel the weight of the car and how much it’s loaded up on grip but also progressively when it is getting loose. In particular the transition from edge of grip to having a loos rear was hard to feel before. I now feel oversteer in time and can react on feel alone without relying on visual or audio cues. Settings: FFB: 50 to 80 depending on the car. Dynamic Dampening: 50 or more (car dependent) Speed Sensitivity: 100 (only that gives me the full weight depending on speed) Steering Assist Weight: 50 to 100 (try and feel, that one should be called “sensitivity to feel the loss of grip, higher value feel more loose and less resistance when less grip) Rest on 0

[@weswheel4834]

Safest approach is to turn the FFB gain down to 0. Then it will be exactly the same as your car's wheel would feel if you turned that down to 0. Probably.

[@jeronifajardo3182]

I totally agree👌🏻👌🏻

[@jacohop]

Oh my god your frustration, it's so palpable. The subtext of every sentence is dripping with "maybe THIS will get through, finally"😂😂😂 I do agree btw... it would be nice if developers would give us the option maybe? Also, what do you think about the declaration "AC, ACC and AC Evo all have the same ffb, but what's different is the tire model" ... I can't remember which dev said that, it was in the flurry videos in Evo's first few days... but, do you think it's true?

[@GamerMuscleVideos]

They might use the same FFB code , but game engine , tire physics , suspension physics and a whole host of other things could end up changing the detail that you get in the final output , in the end it does not matter what the method is , what matters is if the driver gets a range of forces to drive from that describe the grip at the limit.

[@jacohop]

@@GamerMuscleVideos That’s a good point. You think they put in the same data, but since engines and code are different, we get different results. Basically, they ignore or pretend not to hear the problem, saying “La La La math = accuracy" (This sounds a lot harsher than I intend. I actually really love Kunos’ work and all of their games. Especially on console where I am currently stuck, they are the best. So this is not shade, it is curiosity)

[@jacohop]

​@@GamerMuscleVideos PS - I'd love to try a rig that you have dialed in someday.... I don't know if this could be a thing, but you could be like a piano tuner, going from house to house, "tuning" in rigs for us woefully ignorant folk. You could make 10s... maybe hundreds of moneys, ney even be a thousandaire!

[@Sassannid]

I like bum feel. I'm staying subscribed

[@Toptechitsimracing9601]

what i will add is until the day you manage to save not only your and your partner life but others from a skill from sim racing , then try and explain this again, yes in a real car you feel what the chasis is doing, suspension, brake and forces, but you can feel limit of traction through the wheel too! I have done high intense response on street when needed, and in a way if you undersstand how Fwd , RWD cars drive and physics , well then there are good simulairities to simracing

How to unsubscribe? Maybe a short tutorial in the future? I am also tealess, meaning I don't drink the tea. How do you even start while beer is around? OK, back to the video now..

[@DiariesOfABadDriver]

No, no. You don't understand, GM! If it isn't massively more difficult and less intuitive than the real thing, it's an unrealistic babby arcade game.

[@LeeSurber]

This is exactly why I use transducers on my rig..!! They make a huge difference for me..!! In the real car I use engine rpm, steering, and G's. I know I have the right amount of force feedback in the sim if I can drive comfortably with one hand..!! This is very similar to the real race car..!!

[@GamerMuscleVideos]

Transducers are great but its not analogous to a sustained force that you can then balance , the resolution of transducers is also far far lower than the resolution afforded by a range of load from a DD wheel base. Transducers effectively offer a cheaper version of what a motion rig can offer and are good for actual literal vibrational forces ABS / Understeer vibrations / Rear wheel traction loss vibration.

[@BurkyHC]

So, in principle, the stronger force through our wheel compensates for the force in real life?

[@mlondipraiseworth3223]

the intention of ffb/simulator is to trigger the mind that you are driving some sort of a vehicle and if my setup makes me/my brain thinks m in a car the goal is achieved. Yes some cars some car blow my mind away and feel exactly like a car and it does not need an understanding or a definition. this thing called sim racing is like hypnosis, some go to sleep faster than others because of how easy it is to trigger their brains. sim racing is not a black and white subject

[@jenscee7679]

At the end of the day, we are all driving pretend cars on pretend tracks, with toy wheels and pedals. Still bloody brilliant!