iRacing Wheel Configuration Options

Posted on April 11, 2023 by Max

iRacing Force Feedback

The primary notes in this section come from the iRacing Support Website. Most settings are straight forward or applicable to how you deal with the Max Force or Strength vs Wheel Force question.

Enable Force Feedback	Starting with an easy one this should be on!
Auto	This can be used to set the Strength to the maximum value that does not cause clipping. It requires some test laps to be driven. If auto is greyed out then setting is same as the auto calculation. See Below.
Use Linear Mode	iRacing says “Select ‘Use linear mode’ if you are using a lower end gear driven wheel such as the Logitech G27, G29, G920, and G923. Stronger wheels such as direct drive models are recommended to leave this setting off”. Driver61[2] says “Use Linear Mode (for Direct Drive only),” as does SimRacingSetup [7].
Reduce force when Marked	Personal preference but I guess ON is a good option.
Damping	Set ‘Damping’ to 0.
Min Force	Set ‘Min Force’ to 0.

Max Force or Strength vs Wheel Force

Wheel Force

This should be set to the wheel manufacturer’s specifications which for the Simucube 2 Pro is 25nM. To prevent injury, DO NOT set the Wheel force to a value lower than the manufacturer’s specifications [1].

Wheel Base	Wheel Force
Thrustmaster TX, TMX, T248	2 Nm
Logitech G25, G27, G29, G920, G923, DFGT	2.2 Nm
Thrustmaster T300, T500	4.4 Nm
Fanatec Club Sport V1	4.8 Nm
Fanatec CSL Elite	6 Nm
Fanatec Club Sport V2	7 Nm
Moza R9	9 Nm
Logitech G Pro Racing Wheel	11 Nm
Accuforce V1/V2	13 Nm
SimuCube 2 Pro	25 Nm

Max Force / Strength

If you see a “Strength” label instead of a “Max force” label click it and it will change to “Max Force” or vice versa.

Depending on whether you work with Strength or Max Force is probably dependant on personal preference and what wheel base you have. Direct drive bases with higher wheel forces probably benefit more from Max Force settings than those bases with lower spec (? maybe)

Each car on the service produces a Peak Feedback (Nm) during its time on track. Discovering the peak feedback provided by the car is somewhat of a challenge however the iRacing community [5] has collected some data as do VRS [9]. It can be found via the telemetry that iRacing outputs. Having spent sometime exploring this I’ve come to the conclusion that using the auto setup is the way forward.

To do this map the Auto Compute FFB Force to a key/button you can access while driving. Drive a few laps and with the black box FFB option visble press the button. The peak force for the car should adjust accordingly. The table below gives some example FFBs for cars I have driven

CAR	TRACK 1
Skippy	COTA West 73nm (23S4)

Maximising Fidelity through Force Feedback

Balancing what your wheel base is able produce against what the car provides is a balance. Give too much focus to the smaller vibrations and lots of clipping will occur at the higher end. Give space to the higher end and you’ll loose lower end detail. Probably the most useful description can be found in the Granite Device Forum [4] but Sim Racing Cockpit (SRC)[3] also provides an excellent summary with charts. Such as this one below for the MX-5 driven using a SUC2 Pro.

In summary, if your wheel has a 25NM maximum feedback and the car you are driving can provide a 50NM peak feedback then you ideally want to distribute your available 25NM across the 50NM possible. This is a 1:2 ratio – every 1NM of the wheel will represent 2NM of the car.

Lower Strength Wheels

Considering lower strength wheels. If you set the “Max Force” at 20Nm, everything above 20Nm in the in-game FFB that is generated by iRacing will be clipped.

In order to manual determine the Max Force value you need to drive the car. Referring to the table above, start by setting “Max Force:” to something at least a bit higher than your Wheel Force.

Reminder, if you see a “Strength” label instead of a “Max force” label click it and it will change to “Max Force”.

Now get in the car and drive, you are looking for the FFB bar to only peak red in very high torque situations like hitting a sausage kerb. If you’re peaking all the time INCREASE the max force.

Yes, this is very counter intuitive but you are trying to get more of the cars feedback to scale within the wheels available feedback to avoid clipping.

Intensity

This is a new feature and the hover over says “Controls how strong the force feedback feel will be when using the auto button in the F9 black box.” Digging into the forum there is some clarification from iRacing Staff that 50% is the old normal and such the advice is to leave it at 50%.

A new “Intensity” slider has been added to the Driving Controls options screen. This slider replaces the “autoForceFactor” setting value, previously found in the “app.ini” file.

This controls how the Force Feedback auto button (found on the F9 black box) behaves. With the slider set to 50% it behaves as it did last season, giving you the maximum force that your wheel can produce. With the intensity slider set to 0% it will attempt to both lower the forces as well as give you some variation from car to car so cars with higher Force Feedback will feel heavier.

True Drive Software

This section is focused on the the Simucube software and the notes come from the SUC2 Pro User Manual and assume that you are in the advanced mode. I have canvased minimal opinons with those from GD and Revan (RN) coming from gPerformance[8]

	SRS [7]	GD [8]	RN [8]	DR	DG	ME	Explained
Overall Strength		60%	100%	71%	60%	100%	For maximum “fidelity”, set your force feedback percentage in Truedrive / Fanatec’s properties manager or Fanalabs to 100% [3]
Steering Range						900	Probably 900
Bump Stop Feel and Range (Offset)	Med 900		940	Soft 900	Hard 900	Med 900 (0)	This is how the wheel resists being turned past its maximum steering angle. Its possible to change the strength of the stop, the angle and the ramp. (further information below)
Reconstruction Filter	2	1	5	6	5	2	This predictive filter smooths the low update rate torque signal. Low filter values are reactive when the torque or direction changes quickly. Higher values are smoother but the torque peaks might overshoot. Filter can make the wheel feel more rubbery towards the higher values.
Torque bandwidth limit	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	1000	Unlimited	This is a low-pass filter that takes away some of the high frequency vibrations in the FFB signal. By setting lower values the signal will feel smoother but some detail will be lost.
Damping	10%	Off	20%	11%	3%	12%	This dampens any fast torque effects coming from the simulator. The faster any change the more torque is generated in response. As simulators don’t always model tire deformation and rubber damping characteristics of car suspension accurately adding damping and friction is a good way to give realistic weight to the wheel and can reduce wheel oscillation and wobble.
Friction	10%	Off	10%	8%	0%	10%	This is a constant torque that adds resistance to the wheel making it more difficult to turn. Alongside Damping it is appropriate to some sim/car combos. It can reduce wheel oscillation and wobble.
Inertia	15%	Off	15%	13%	Off	15%	This gives the wheel more weight. The effect will resist any attempt to change the current rotation of the wheel.
Static Force Reduction	Off	Off	Off	Off	Off	5%	In long corners this will reduce the the force while allowing other details to come through.
Slew Rate Limit	Off	0.95	Off	2.22	1.02	0.96	This changes how quickly the wheel will respond. Off (the default) allows the wheel to perform at its maximum. Increasing the slew rate might make it feel less active.
Ultra Low Latency Mode	7%	5%	13%	15%	20%	10%	This filter works on the connection between the PC and Wheel. Setting a higher value can prevent wheel oscillations when its not being held by the driver. It might also be possible to use this filter (reducing damping/friction) to get a stable non oscillating wheel.
Centre Frequency	Disabled	6 Hz -2.0dB 0.5	Disabled -25.5dB 0.1	Disabled -0.1db 0.1	0 -25.5db 0	0 -25.5db 0	…

Bump Stop Feel and Range

This is how the wheel resists being turned past its maximum steering angle. Its possible to change the strength of the stop, the angle and the ramp.

Its possible to set the angle larger than the steering angle so in-game calibration can occur without hitting bump stops. Alternatively, setting a bump stop inside the angle can avoid less pleasant bump stops generated in game e.g. iRacing and its wildly oscillating bump stop force)

Direct Input Fine Tuning

Allows you to fine tune settings that games can utilise although Granite suggest not many titles (if any) do!

Source	Damping	Friction	Spring	Sine Wave	Square Wave	Saw Tooth	Triangle
Sim Racing Setup [7]	0%	0%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%
GheeD @ gPerformance [8]	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%	?
Revan @ gPerformance [8]	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%
DR	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%
DG	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%

Using Atlas to measure Max Force

Quick Start Guide – https://ir-core-sites.iracing.com/members/atlas/atlas_quickstart.pdf

Software – https://ir-core-sites.iracing.com/dev/atlas/ATLAS.msi

Plugin – https://ir-core-sites.iracing.com/dev/atlas/iRacing_ATLAS_plugin.zip

References

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