Russtic @ FM.net brought up an interesting observation that there's a built in steering assist in FM3 regardless of the cars:
Turn10 seems to take pride in building a great physics engine all while allowing you to add layers of driving aids to help you learn to drive, thats great, but why O why are there still driving aids that you cannot turn off? I have tried everything I can think off and there is no option to get rid of FM3's Active Steering aid. They have this great tire physics model yet they insist on completely nurfing the driving simulation by having the game steer for you. If you get at all side ways the game takes over and starts countersteering for you. This is a perfectly understandable aid for people who use the standard controller but there should be an option in the advanced wheel settings that allows us to adjust linearity to the point where we can have complete linear control over the steering.
I was hoping the active steering would go away with the Fanatec 900 degree wheel but that seems to be not the case as its still very prevalent. We have had console sims with a fixed steering ratio with a 900 degree wheel since 2004. Even other racing games on the 360, that are not trying as hard to be a sim, offer a linearity slider option. I know for a fact Dirt 2 and Test Drive Unlimited have a linearity slider. It should not be You->Steering wheel->Active Steering aid ->Tires->Road. That active steering aid is like a chastity belt on Megan Fox, its a 7foot 400lbs man sitting in front of you in a theater playing Lord of The Rings, its a U-haul truck blocking you from going more than 20mph on the Nurburgring. Get out of the WAY!
There seems to be some other steering shenannigans making the steering feel off, I am suspect the active steering changes the ratio based on your speed as well. I also suspect there is, not quite a center deadzone, but a center softzone where it seems to greatly reduce your steering input near the center. FM3 seems to have a steelier physics model, I just wish they would allow us to fully experience it. May we please have a fixed steering ratio option?
C/N: Active Steering aid needs an off switch
Here's a few videos using MS wheel showing that the assist is on both racing and road cars even though the driving aids are off (compare the wheel on the telemetry to the one on the car):
Mainly regarding the section I've bolded above,
I think there is some real confusion going on here, which is really indicative of the problems we face between us (the customer) and giving good feedback to T10 to improve things..
I've watched a couple of the vids, then got my MS Wheel out and done a quick investigation myself.
Mine behaves (obviously) inline with the above vids, however, their is no 'active steering' in the sense the console somehow takes over and does anything.
The only thing going on when using a wheel is that it's steering range is reduced (in some simple linear equation) the faster you go.
Any slight shaking of the wheel is just that, it's either the noisy signal from the wheel (mine does it too, mainly just off centre driving normally), and when the FFB kicks in near full lock it can do it a little as the FFB is jostling the potentiometer.. It may be road texture related, it's hard to tell, but it certainly isn't not 'assistance'..
That is it really, yes, it could do with being removed, call it 'speed sensitive steering' of sorts, NFS Shift has lots of speed related adjustment to stop the car feeling too twitchy at speed etc..
The insinuation that the game is nerfed and it's some kind of namby pamby automatic steering is not what I'm seeing at all..
The tests, and proof:
1. Evidence of steering range being reduced as a factor of speed only
- Find a space big enough to play around in..
- Put it on full lock, and slowly set off, keeping it on full lock for the entire duration of the test.
- Notice that as speed increases, the steering angle slowly reduces totally analogous to speed, and not any other factor.
- To back it up, at speed, turn on full lock until you hit something, ideally so you pretty much stop dead, notice that when you suddenly decelerate your steering lock suddenly increase back to maximum. However as long as your forward velocity stays reasonable constant until the sudden deceleration, the car can be quite sideways and no change to steering is observed.
2. Evidence of no automated countersteering.
- You will need something stupidly powerful and RWD, the recent VIP gifted race cars will do..
- Do some donuts (not at speed, just on the spot (as such)) on full lock, once donutting nicely, change lock quickly to the opposite extreme, your car's rotational velocity will slow down and you'll start rotating in the opposite direction (eventually), now all this time your steering has been hard against the end stop, not once has the game applied opposite counter-steering, even with you holding lock whilst the car steers into and out of the direction of rotation.
I may be missing something here, but really it's a little saddening (not aimed at you) that people come up with these 'observations' with weird conclusions about these things, with what appear to me to be half-assed wild theories that can be easily quantifiable with some common sense..
Now, take a controller, and you can see that heavy filtering is applied (it's non-linear and has special conditions), but it's effectively heavily damped, this certainly dumbs things down a bit and could do with being an option to switch off, as it very much makes it a different driving experience to using a wheel, which in contrast is very direct.
I'm getting quite disillusioned with forums lately.. sure the game could do with one or two improvements to the handling model, but the amount of very poorly thought out observations isn't helping at all, clearly you are now reporting it on this forum, and it wouldn't take long before people will take this as a valid issue, despite being fairly normal and quite a minor feature.
I still rate the Burnout/low speed physics in FM2 as better than any in GT though !
