Have done the firmware update so will be having a play this evening and likely tweaking the settings a bit starting from the recommended baseline.
Having put a few hours in, as much as I like the strength of the recommended settings, I felt like there was more feedback in the weird ones I ended up with (fortunately saved as a different profile!) and the transition between grip and slip and back again felt less snappy.
I'll likely start with the recommended ones this evening and see what difference the game level settings make first and work from there.
Turns out I forgot to post that, so here are some initial findings...
I was just lapping a stock GT86 around a dry Tsukuba on comfort hards as I thought this would be quite a communicative car and there's an array of corner speeds.
Vibration level seems to dictate whether the surface / engine 'noise' is present vibrating the wheel, and whether the rumble strip rumble is present. TF Audio setting then further tweaks this. I ended up with TF Audio up at 100 and the vibration level at 20. From tinkering I'd imagine this would give largely the same feel as rumble at 30 and TF audio at 60 or so. I went with the lower vibration level to reduce the engine rumble through the wheel but keep the rumble strip vibration, as that felt weirdly missing once it was tuned out.
I had the strength up at full (11Nm and FFB strength in game) purely to try and amplify the impact of the other settings I was tweaking. I tended to try the extremes of the range to try and maximise the difference so I could try to quantify in my mind what the settings changed and what they felt like.
FFB Filter was an interesting one. Set very low, there was a lot more movement / feel in the wheel, but set very low down it was also very mechanical feeling, it almost percussively moved, if you imagine someone doing the robot vs moving smoothly, it felt like that! It was distracting really, I didn't feel like I was getting any more information, just that the movements were very staccato and synthetic.
Part of my tweaking was to try and work out what this 'tyre shake' type feeling was when understeering or in a four wheel slide. It felt very much like a fake back and forth vibration to communicate that you're understeering. Which is helpful and all, and makes sense vibrating a controller as a tactile clue, but in my experience when you understeer a car, the wheel goes lighter and if anything the feel smooths out.
None of the vibration settings impacted it, TF Audio wasn't changing it. I was beginning to think this was just a hard coded 'feature' of the game to communicate understeer to players. Playing with the FFB Filter setting finally changed how this was presenting itself, and to my surprise, FFB Filter at 15 (full) stopped it. I was a little reluctant to run the filter so high as I felt I'd be smothering out other feedback, so set about lapping for a bit and playing with FFB Filter.
Setting FFB Filter to Auto made the understeer vibration feedback basically buzz the whole frame, having it around 6 - 8 it would angrily wobble the wheel back and forth (remember I have all my FFB settings cranked to the max to exagerrate what happens).
Having done a few laps at 15, I tried it at 14 and even if it was giving more feedback somewhere, I then just found myself too distracted by the understeer vibration. So for the moment it seems I'll be running that setting at 15!
Dampener is a really interesting setting. Too low and the wheel can turn so quickly it's too synthetic. If you go into a corner, boot the throttle and let the wheel go, the car barely rotates about 20 degrees before the wheel has shot around and corrected it and speared you off the other way. Front wheels do self correct, but I think they'd need some remarkable caster settings and lightweight steering components to spin that freely. Set dampener too high and it feels like someone has filled your wheel with treacle. Perform the same "look ma, no hands" trick as above, and the car spins around whilst the wheel helplessly rotates around at roughly the same speed as a G25.
There is a middle ground that to me feels realistic, but the value changes depending on the FFB strength. With everything on full I was ending up with the dampener set around 40. I suspect it could have gone higher. Dropping the FFB strength in game to 1 (you could likely drop the wheel torque to ~4Nm for a similar effect) you got that disconnected treacle feeling and dampener felt better down around 20. I'm sure it's quite a personal thing, and perhaps it just reflects the slightly older / less sophisticated cars I'm used to driving in real life..!
I ended up lowering the FFB Torque to 8Nm (and dampener around 30 ish), but it was hard to settle here, and I feel like I'll have some different profiles set-up for different cars (or rather, different tyres, comfort / sports / slicks) as the higher torque settings feel more appropriate for something on slicks with unassisted steering and downforce, but then feel wildly excessive for a 70s coupé on comfort hards... It feels like the game isn't giving a broad enough spectrum of force, which I can understand as a 3Nm wheel doesn't have the range available for example, so some simple profiles may be the most sensible compromise. It feels like an appropriate range is ~5Nm ish for comfort tyres, ~7Nm for sports and then go nuts for the slicks.
One thing with the wheel, you can instantly 'feel' changes in tyres and suspension just with the way the car turns in. It's remarkable the jump in precision going to a sports tyre over the (far more road car feeling) comforts.
@LOGI_Rich whilst playing about with everything at high settings, I've encountered what seems like a bit of a bug. As above all the FFB strength / sensitivity settings are maxed in game and FFB Strength is at 11Nm. Vibation feedback is at 20 but I don't think plays a part in the bug. TF Audio at 100. Dampener at 40 as above but again, changes to it made no difference.
Anyway, I thought this was related to constantly tweaking settings up and down, but once I'd settled, restarted the wheel and drove for a bit, it manifests again.
So with the above (high!) settings, drive for 10 - 15 minutes or so, I think it escalates with time but 10 minutes was enough to cause it. I've found that with FFB Filter set to 10 or higher (it scales with the setting, and again, may scale with length of drive), you get a twitching in the wheel even on straights. I thought this was odd and didn't understand how more filter introduced noise, until I paused the game. The wheel was still twitching. Exited the track session entirely back to the main menu, still twitching away. Turned filter below 10 or to auto, twitching stopped. Put it back up to 15 (still in the menu, not on track at all) and the twitching continued as before.
Only fix is to turn the wheel off and back on again, which completely clears the twitches.
Happy to do some more investigation if it'd help. It feels like there's perhaps some deliberate historesis as part of the FFB Filter which ends up in a bit of a feedback loop or something along those lines.
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