My Adventures with Direct Steer w/ Torque

[passerBy]

holy canoly...you guys have a lot of time to write..more than I have to read ) 

Because, as you can see, this is something really important to me. If it wasn't for this particular flavor of direct steering, I'd haven given up on virtual riding long ago. Direct steering riding is extremely fun, but it is grossly underrated and unpopular. And what I'm trying to achieve here is to make people realize just how fun it is to actually steer the bike on your own, not offloading that function onto the AI.

[vali_grad]

eh,  I use that too, but some prefer that delayed control  I firmly compare direct control with assetto corsas handling cause recently I play with gpx like in gp bikes .
I have a cheap logitech wheel, but pedals died  , and don't wanna invest in a thrustmaster wheel right now ... summer cycling, parts needed

[passerBy]

eh,  I use that too, but some prefer that delayed control 

Seriously?.. You should have said so sooner I thought almost nobody else used this method and it was doomed.

I firmly compare direct control with assetto corsas handling

Well, I can't say I like the Assetto Corsa's feel... Personally, I'm more into rF2 Also, I find WRS bundled with GPB a good sim as well (not so sure about its rally-cross part yet, though)

cause recently I play with gpx like in gp bikes .

Sorry, couldn't quite understand what you meant.

I have a cheap logitech wheel, but pedals died  , and don't wanna invest in a thrustmaster wheel right now ... summer cycling, parts needed

Maybe that's a sign you should try and make a bike controller out of your wheel? Those pedals are not too great for controlling a bike anyway... What do you think of clamping a set of bars onto the wheel with the proper controls tied to either potentiometers or some MaRS sensors, and an up/down switch for the left foot, while you could still probably use one of the pedals for the rear brake.

[vali_grad]

GPX thrustmaster -xbox licensed controller

eh I like to be fast with controls, and a fullsize steering device wont be suitable for chair gaming .. I'd go further for a bike seat and pegs, just my way of thinking
I liked rfactor but good God those loading times and clunky menus, GTR1 feel, the physics I like somehow ... but AC gives me more feedback visual, audio and control . {playing AC with gpx }
nicest overall package for my eyes, bought every dlc and will continue that {my first paid sim, after 1 year playing torrent version}

[passerBy]

GPX thrustmaster -xbox licensed controller

I see now... A gamepad then.

eh I like to be fast with controls, and a fullsize steering device wont be suitable for chair gaming .. I'd go further for a bike seat and pegs, just my way of thinking

Agreed on the bike seat with pegs Also thought about making something like that... And compared to a typical simpit used for cars, a bike seat could be made more easily and would have been more convenient to move around/store as well.

I liked rfactor but good God those loading times and clunky menus

Yeah, those loading times are atrocious... As for the menus, I can hardly name a sim where I like them anyway

GTR1 feel, the physics I like somehow ... but AC gives me more feedback visual, audio and control . {playing AC with gpx }
nicest overall package for my eyes, bought every dlc and will continue that {my first paid sim, after 1 year playing torrent version}

Considering you have to deal with a gamepad, I guess that is indeed the best choice for now. Hope you'll get your wheel fixed soon.

[h106frp]

The GPX has full travel linear triggers - unlike the XB which is compromised a bit for shooting games

[passerBy]

The GPX has full travel linear triggers - unlike the XB which is compromised a bit for shooting games

Still, that's a gamepad... At the very least I'd use a joystick (have several of those). Of course, for someone not into flight sims that might be not a reasonable purchase, but for those who like to give a helo or a plane a spin, it's a win-win solution.

[passerBy]

Miles to go in terms of getting better, but this wasn't too bad. It's rare for me to climb that hill at the start of a session and make a lap without falling afterwards on the Enduro track.

http://www.youtube.com/v/TqExGqw3tEs

As it can be seen from the video, the framerate is anywhere from the low 20's up to the 80's. Of course I don't ride like that, but for the sake of a replay it was worth turning the full graphics on

[loinen]

it doesnt feel and look the same as IRL, it doesn't bring proper result in proper amount of time with proper effort spent at the end. that's why i cant call it realistic. theoretically it is but practically it isnt.

I already said that such a wheel doesn't represent properly the feel of an RL wheel and it behaves differently, yet you don't mind using it for car sims.

in car sims our wheels are still good enough to learn driving skills, especially with correct code written for FFB. and these wheels with def steering are okay ('okay'!) to use in GPB if you want to learn what will happen to a bike if you do this or that.

Whatever you use for flight sims is even farther from what an actual pilot uses.

for X52pro device or hardcore custom stuff it's not that far, if we talk about e.g. Su-27 and main tools to control speed and direction of a jet like rudders, throttle lever, even pedals can be added. ah, buttons on panels are not authentic, yes. i think it's not so critical.

Not sure what you mean with the "proper result in a proper amount of time".

example. many guys in MX Sim complain that they cant be stable with helpers (in advanced stability) set to 50% even after 2-3 years. i myself spent ~year for mxsim of almost everyday 2-3 hours of intense training with pro setup and i'm still not able to reach pro times (10-15 seconds slower then they are) and i cant even do my best time lap by lap. my friend is one of the fastest, kinda pro rider in MX Sim, participating in championships, it seems he knows or remembers and can easily do fast lap on almost every track released for the game, he spent more than 3 years for wanking out MX Sim. But he cant do race with other pros without falling, nobody can do, pro riders in MX Sim fall a lot. this is improper result with improper amount of time spent to reach this result.

You use the autopilot which needs to be told about the bike lean first before it could start assuming the said angle. You call that a "proper result in a proper amount of time"? Ok, maybe the PID-based DS is a little more latent than the direct torque value input, but it's still miles ahead of the autopilot in terms of sheer immediacy.

autopilot is that kind of hanling when you turn on brake help, steering help, throttle help, rider auto lean. if all this is off it's not an autopilot. i think calling that helper for max angle as 'autopilot' is incorrect. BTW i still can throw bike to the ground in MXB and GPB with def steering mode.

The amount of effort required purely depends on your controller FFB. Don't have a high-end wheel (me neither)? Then don't complain about how bad it is at rendering the forces and at discerning the angles fed into the system. That's the sole reason why "practically, it isn't."

the reason of "practically, it isn't." is that i dont like that method of leaning when e.g. to lean left i should turn my wheel to the right then to the left, the bike immediately starts to fall and i should turn my wheel to the left. who can call this realistic handling system? it's perversion.

I got into simulators before getting my first PC, which was a PC XT (if you know what that means), so I don't see why I should be taking "noobs" coming from anyone (what's with the teenager talk anyway?)
I don't really care about playing competitively. I do like challenge though.

i used 'newbie' as i feel this word not so poisonous as 'noob', actually meant someone who can't perform on the highest level of skills. you do not play competitively. competitive play (with strongest racers, for the win) change your mind, it trains your personality a lot, hardcore racers sees racing very different from a casual rider. no matter virtual or real here. and it also gives your some really deep understanding of how everything works or\and should work.

In a car sim you don't have to drift or race, but you still can have a little fun from the steering process and the FFB themselves. Because you control the car directly. The default steering in GPB (or any other bike game or sim ) robs you even of that... What's the point of riding a bike like that? It could as well be a rally co-driver sim.

'yes' for fun of steering process. the rest - 'no', absolutely 'no'.

But switch the direct steering on, and there you have it -- a good amount of steering fun, which is fun in itself. Plus some FFB that makes sense (at least compared to any other mode).

exactly. fun in itself, nothing more.

no, you don't understand. i'm always okay about learning, i would stick to direct steering if i felt it the same way as i felt it when riding bike IRL

And the default steering feels more the same way you feel in RL?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVSIoYUUyJ8
here is a simple example why i feel it the same or, okay, if not the same, then at least the closest way i feel in RL. this short video is in Russian (i'm from Russia) but you don't need to listen, simply watch it on 2:05 a little bit. it's natural for me to turn (=apply pressure to left bar with left hand) my Logitech G25 simply left to turn the bike left, all the way right - for the right, nothing more, simple as 2+2. someone can say: you don't apply pressure, you push! i think it's not so important. for me DS is something contrary or something as if you are all the forces but not the one who deal with forces, i can't describe this better.

Maybe holding a joypad and twiddling the thumbsticks feels in any way similar to riding a bike?

better than keyboard, not bad for delicate movements and you still can learn a lot about bike behaviour. ofc, if you are able to oversee your actions. btw overseeing may evolve and it does better in hardcore competition, experienced racer sees more.

What about cars? Why not drive them using the joypad too then? Just crank up all the steering helpers and race around. Who cares about immersion when you can win in a competitive match, right?

cars can be controlled with joypads, just requires a lot of training to be smooth. btw helpers won't let you win actually.

i'm all for the most realistic handling, physics and so on. there is nothing about worrying for lap times compared to others, it's not my psychology. as i said before: i can accept handling system if it brings the same realistic result (lap time) after same realistic effort put into it (training intensity) and it feels natural for my mind since first start. DS fails here. i tried it several times hoping for best and i quit.

And what is a realistic effort? Consider you are learning to ride a bike from the start.

i see the effort as process of learning very very detailed list of rules/knowledge taking from practice in many situations (corners, speeds). someone could say 'rules are quite simple and basic, there is a lot of feelings which cant be described'. i think feelings in racing are the result of learning detailed rules and everything can be described in every detail, feeling grows up after full understanding a rule. sorry for demagogy - just wanna to avoid misunderstanding. if you want to hear some time frames, i think i could give some theoretical values\approximations just to compare and imagine something close to reality. i will tell about the case when some smart guy finally understand how to be fast on every track (once he got it known) and do close fights against others without crash during a race of 20 laps on 1000cc sportbike even in rainy weather. bold for some words - to show that these conditions are very important. IRL it may take ~8-10 years with 2-3 training sessions per week with someone who can deliver some quality theory (ignore physical condition, assume it's perfect). in a proper simulation the same level of skill can be reached in ~2-3 years (3 days per week with 2-3 hours of practice) because you are allowed to fall and fly and push like crazy mofo repeating everything 10000 times without dying or even being tired after 1 hour, so you learn bike behavior much much faster. with DS i doubt much that you will ever be able to do victoria 20 laps hardcore race with 1:30 time every lap on 990 (record is a bit less than 1:27 afaik in the sim for def steering). note: this beed said not for the sake of showing who is da God ov fast lapz, this is for some serious skill and experience with strong passion for riding and racing.

I don't have a real bike experience, partially because of my own set of health considerations, partially due to the financial side of things and due to the logistics involved. Basically, I had to start learning to ride a bike.

okay, got it.

Consistency and "stable laps" are not about me at all Even in the car sims I could be hardly bothered to go for consistency...
...And yes, I'm perfectly aware that it should be more like 1:30, but let's say I don't care about the lap times a lot My priority is rather feeling the bike and having fun rather than reaching certain lap times. Otherwise that will turn it into a job, and I don't want that.

riding really fast is a big fun as well but it's a hard job even on def steering

The best bikes for DS so far, in my opinion, are the KTM, the "Murasama", the 600 cc "Blade" and the classic Augusta. The Yamaha from the same set as the RC8 is good too. The MotoGP 2015 bikes are probably the best, but they feel a bit too precise for my taste... From the WSBK 2017 set the Aprilia is very stable (but the Ducati is more fun).
For MXB that "OEM" 2003 Suzuki is very nice. The 2016 Yamahas are not bad either.

and seems that you miss many others just because they do not work good with DS. sad!

we don't know actual reason why he did that. at least he got license so he should know what to do.

Not everyone having the license knows what to do... Well, judging by the video that rider also tried to act intuitively, which brought him straight into the truck. I think it's one of the most important things to learn what exactly happens when you try to steer the bike. Also I think that riding games could potentially kill riders in those situations. He got that urge to turn right from somewhere, after all.

i think his case is not a good example for our discussion, not because of ethics, just because we can't know for sure what and why he did.

The problem is, I couldn't feel the bike at all in anything but GPB/MXB with DS2 with force-feedback. Not having a real life reference probably influenced that greatly.

pushbike too?

Then again, imagine you never been on a bike before (and probably never will). Would you go for the default steering or for the DS?

really hard to tell then. DS is fun just because it's hard, i like hard games but def steering is simpler for sure and may seem more logical.

[passerBy]

it doesnt feel and look the same as IRL, it doesn't bring proper result in proper amount of time with proper effort spent at the end. that's why i cant call it realistic. theoretically it is but practically it isnt.

I already said that such a wheel doesn't represent properly the feel of an RL wheel and it behaves differently, yet you don't mind using it for car sims.

in car sims our wheels are still good enough to learn driving skills, especially with correct code written for FFB. and these wheels with def steering are okay ('okay'!) to use in GPB if you want to learn what will happen to a bike if you do this or that.

If they were good enough, we would have it much easier when it comes to correcting the skids or learning to drift. Normally, in a car with a big enough castor angle you'd barely have to touch the wheel at all after initiating a drift (as can be seen on some YouTube videos). In a typical car sim using at least the G27, I have to do a lot of work myself to keep the front wheels where they need to be. Even though I almost don't realize it now, after all the learning I've done before, but when I tried to teach the aforementioned young guy to drift, he was unable to grasp how it's done (yet he does very well in MXB, so you can't just write him off easily).
There is a possibility that G25s are better for drifting than G27s, as I once heard, but I highly doubt that. And if they are, they will most likely be better for DS too.

Using a wheel with default steering in GPB makes absolutely no sense to me. The biggest asset of a force feedback wheel controller is, well, the force feedback itself. With the default steering FFB makes no sense whatsoever: you'll be getting something completely unrelated to your input. Same thing with DS1, by the way, as the input and output will be provided "in different formats". Only in DS2 you get what you would expect for the current wheel angle and the rider torque applied.

Whatever you use for flight sims is even farther from what an actual pilot uses.

for X52pro device or hardcore custom stuff it's not that far, if we talk about e.g. Su-27 and main tools to control speed and direction of a jet like rudders, throttle lever, even pedals can be added. ah, buttons on panels are not authentic, yes. i think it's not so critical.

X52 Pro is a complete and utter toy compared even to a serious enthusiast grade controller (which in itself is about as far from the real deal as the X52 is far from the said controller). Come on, it's just a cheap plasticky thingie with one of the worst mechanisms to make it come to the center. It's light, it's short... It's based on pots, after all. And it provides no FFB. I'm, for one, is against adding FFB to the current low-end flight controllers, but for the proper experience you need to have it all: proper FFB, hydraulic dampening, magnetic lock force trimming (this one for helicopters).
X52 is just a glorified gamepad. It won't tell you a single thing about how the actual controls feel and behave. A Logitech wheel in the DS2 mode, however, will give you quite a good idea of what to expect of the bars, if you know how to treat the info it provides.

Not sure what you mean with the "proper result in a proper amount of time".

example. many guys in MX Sim complain that they cant be stable with helpers (in advanced stability) set to 50% even after 2-3 years. i myself spent ~year for mxsim of almost everyday 2-3 hours of intense training with pro setup and i'm still not able to reach pro times (10-15 seconds slower then they are) and i cant even do my best time lap by lap. my friend is one of the fastest, kinda pro rider in MX Sim, participating in championships, it seems he knows or remembers and can easily do fast lap on almost every track released for the game, he spent more than 3 years for wanking out MX Sim. But he cant do race with other pros without falling, nobody can do, pro riders in MX Sim fall a lot. this is improper result with improper amount of time spent to reach this result.

Well, I totally agree with you. I didn't need a whole year to understand that MXS' steering is useless. I regret buying that thing. Although, it gave me the idea that something similar could prove useful for GPB when done right, so you could kind of say the investment paid off.
Again, MXS has a steering similar to directsteer=1. Not the second mode. That's two completely different things. Yes, if there was a controller Max described, that would provide an amount of resistance to turning on par with the real handlebars, also FFB and would take the torque as an input, that would be the best possible way to control a bike sim. Nobody made such a controller yet. Therefore, the DS mode 2 is the way to go. If you'd invested just a couple of days or maybe a week into DS2 specifically, setting your wheel angle to 50 while keeping max_angle at 25, you'd see for yourself. At some point you stop dropping the bike "for a reason unknown". You proceed to improve your lap times or whatever it is you want to improve.

You use the autopilot which needs to be told about the bike lean first before it could start assuming the said angle. You call that a "proper result in a proper amount of time"? Ok, maybe the PID-based DS is a little more latent than the direct torque value input, but it's still miles ahead of the autopilot in terms of sheer immediacy.

autopilot is that kind of hanling when you turn on brake help, steering help, throttle help, rider auto lean. if all this is off it's not an autopilot. i think calling that helper for max angle as 'autopilot' is incorrect. BTW i still can throw bike to the ground in MXB and GPB with def steering mode.

I think you have an improper understanding of what an autopilot is. For example, mentioned by you earlier Ka-50 and Su-27 both employ autopilots by default. In fact, you'd have a hard time flying the latter with the autopilot off, because the Flanker would tend to do the "Cobras" every time you'd get silly with the pitch control. And it considers everything but very small inputs as "silly", thanks to its peculiar airframe. Even the Hip is meant to fly with the autopilot on. As is the Gazelle. Only the Huey doesn't have that thing installed (talking about helos only). And to be honest, doesn't need it. That's why I can't recommend it more.
When it comes to modern helicopters, it's usually called SAS, or Stability Augmentation System. And basically anything that gets between you and at least one of the controlling channels to modify your input to make the controlling easier is an autopilot. And the AI between you and the bars in the default steering mode in GPB is much more than just that. It doesn't just augment your input, it actually translates it from one format to another. From "I want the bike to be leant over at this angle" to a series of torque changes over time. That's a very big deal. Something similar for a helicopter would take the cyclic inputs and treat the angle as the amount of horizontal speed in the appropriate direction you want to make. Hence, to hover in place you'd simply let go of the cyclic (a certain way to kill yourself in an actual helo), whereas with no autopilot to save the say, the amount of work needed to make the damn thing stay in the same spot is so big, you'll hardly have time to remember about breathing when you just started to learn hovering a helicopter.

You really need to try that at some point. Get yourself either the DCS UH-1, or the Mi-8 (don't forget to turn off the autopilot or simply don't turn it on), or the Gazelle (same thing with the SAS), and try hovering it. Then tell me it's much easier to do than DS'ing it out in GPB. But hey, nobody in DCS is complaining about that (at least those who came for a sim). Because that's how you fly helos. Might as well try reading "Chickenhawk". When I started learning to hover the Huey, I had almost absolutely the same experience as described by the author (of course he started in a lighter trainer 'copter, but at least he had g-forces and real life controls at his disposal).

The amount of effort required purely depends on your controller FFB. Don't have a high-end wheel (me neither)? Then don't complain about how bad it is at rendering the forces and at discerning the angles fed into the system. That's the sole reason why "practically, it isn't."

the reason of "practically, it isn't." is that i dont like that method of leaning when e.g. to lean left i should turn my wheel to the right then to the left, the bike immediately starts to fall and i should turn my wheel to the left. who can call this realistic handling system? it's perversion.

Let's start with that at least the first part of that is similar to the reality. Isn't it? You turn (or at least attempt to) the bars to the right in RL too. Then the bike leans left and that makes the bars to turn left as well a certain amount. A G27 (and I assume G25 too) has very crappy FFB abilities, but even more so in the center. So, given that you don't want to pay for a better wheel, you have to do a part of the job yourself (remember what I was saying about drifting on a Logitech wheel?). Also, you are most likely not being smooth enough on the controls while doing all that. The real bike's bars are much harder to turn (especially at speed), so you can be pretty generous with the forces applied by your arms. In the sim you can easily snap the wheel to a lock at speed, and the PID will try to follow the suit. You wouldn't want to attempt to replicate that in RL, because you'd also "suddenly fall".

My technique to the turns (at the moment) is as follows.
- locate the entry point at the opposite side of the track
- initiate braking while sitting upright (don't slam on the brakes)
- at a certain point hang off to the inside while still braking
- the braking will try to bring the bike back up, your hanging off will do the opposite, overpowering the previous force
- listen to the force feedback: it will tell you the limits of what you are doing
- once the needed lean angle is achieved make a smooth transition from the brake to the throttle (it's ok for them to overlap a bit)
- start rolling on the throttle as steep as possible (especially on dry tarmac on soft tyres)
- turn the wheel inside the bend to straighten the bike up, and only when the lean angle is small enough get your rider back in the seat

At least this is how it works for me. I hardly do any steering at all while going through the bend if everything was done properly, and I don't have to care about sudden drops of the bike. Well, at least if the suspension setup makes sense and the track is not a bumpy mess.

Another important point. Once I started the entry and am braking into the corner, I find the apex and vary the braking pressure such as to pass the apex as close as possible.
So, thanks to this direct steering mode I learned trail-braking and how to control my trajectory through the bend. With the default steering it was always a mystery to me, I would hardly be able to approach the inner kerb at all without crossing it. Granted, I'm still far from doing that perfectly, but I'm still learning... and I realize this wheel is not particularly precise.

i used 'newbie' as i feel this word not so poisonous as 'noob'

That doesn't really make a lot of difference.

actually meant someone who can't perform on the highest level of skills. you do not play competitively. competitive play (with strongest racers, for the win) change your mind, it trains your personality a lot, hardcore racers sees racing very different from a casual rider. no matter virtual or real here. and it also gives your some really deep understanding of how everything works or\and should work.

When you can't focus on the riding itself, it can hardly help you to understand it at all. You need to be thinking to understand, not competing. Watching your own mistakes from a side, analyzing them. Trying to make it to the podium would help to do anything but that. Sure, you have a prior RL riding experience, and that is what really helps. A friend of mine who is also an RL rider tried GPB with DS2 (albeit with a better wheel) at my recommendation. I was shocked how good he was after what I suppose was just hours of riding in it. And it was beta 5 or close to that... He would still fall sometimes, but it was an earlier beta. Maybe with those up and downslope problems still in place. Too bad he quit this in the same fashion I did in 2013 and Klax did after me, but I'm sure if he tried this beta with my settings, it would bring him back into the sim. 

But switch the direct steering on, and there you have it -- a good amount of steering fun, which is fun in itself. Plus some FFB that makes sense (at least compared to any other mode).

exactly. fun in itself, nothing more.

What do you want then? Podiums? Prizes? That stuff is only good for boosting one's ego. Having fun is much more important. And challenging fun is the proper kind of fun. It also helps you to become a better person, whereas beating others works the other way around.

Ok, looks like I hit the limit and need to split the message...

[passerBy]

The continuation...

And the default steering feels more the same way you feel in RL?

here is a simple example why i feel it the same or, okay, if not the same, then at least the closest way i feel in RL. this short video is in Russian (i'm from Russia) but you don't need to listen, simply watch it on 2:05 a little bit. it's natural for me to turn (=apply pressure to left bar with left hand) my Logitech G25 simply left to turn the bike left, all the way right - for the right, nothing more, simple as 2+2. someone can say: you don't apply pressure, you push! i think it's not so important. for me DS is something contrary or something as if you are all the forces but not the one who deal with forces, i can't describe this better.

When you turn your G25 left, you actually pull on its left side, not push it. That's the opposite thing to what you do in RL. Imagine the same wheel installed on your bike instead of the bars. You'd want to turn it right, not left in this situation. If you'd somehow manage to turn your RL bike's bars all the way to the right at speed, I suppose you know what would follow...

With DS2 I push on my G27's left to go left. Almost exactly like the guy in the video shows. Of course, handlebars are inclined much more horizontally than the wheel, but my arms are also at an angle, so in the end I still push on the left to go left (even if this push is directed upwards). I could think something up to attach the wheel to the table more vertically and maybe clamp some kind of a stick on across the wheel, but I don't care all that much about the wheel not being handlebars and not sticking out of the table vertically. I just switch my imagination on and envision the wheel being the bars and that instead of pushing the pedals with my feet I operate the levers with my hands

Maybe holding a joypad and twiddling the thumbsticks feels in any way similar to riding a bike?

better than keyboard, not bad for delicate movements and you still can learn a lot about bike behaviour. ofc, if you are able to oversee your actions. btw overseeing may evolve and it does better in hardcore competition, experienced racer sees more.

Better than a keyboard, no doubt. But we weren't discussing keyboards. Furthermore, I'd say that a gamepad is still better than the wheel, but only with either the default steering or with the directsteer=1. A joystick can be even better.

What about cars? Why not drive them using the joypad too then? Just crank up all the steering helpers and race around. Who cares about immersion when you can win in a competitive match, right?

cars can be controlled with joypads, just requires a lot of training to be smooth. btw helpers won't let you win actually.

To be honest, helpers kill me (at least using the wheel)... There were two times already when in the ISI-based sims I'd accidentally press F1 while hitting Escape, then couldn't figure out how come I'm suddenly that bad at driving And it only took the Steering Help to be switched from None to Low. After that I always remove the functional keys assignments for good...

And what is a realistic effort? Consider you are learning to ride a bike from the start.

i see the effort as process of learning very very detailed list of rules/knowledge taking from practice in many situations (corners, speeds). someone could say 'rules are quite simple and basic, there is a lot of feelings which cant be described'. i think feelings in racing are the result of learning detailed rules and everything can be described in every detail, feeling grows up after full understanding a rule. sorry for demagogy - just wanna to avoid misunderstanding. if you want to hear some time frames, i think i could give some theoretical values\approximations just to compare and imagine something close to reality. i will tell about the case when some smart guy finally understand how to be fast on every track (once he got it known) and do close fights against others without crash during a race of 20 laps on 1000cc sportbike even in rainy weather. bold for some words - to show that these conditions are very important. IRL it may take ~8-10 years with 2-3 training sessions per week with someone who can deliver some quality theory (ignore physical condition, assume it's perfect). in a proper simulation the same level of skill can be reached in ~2-3 years (3 days per week with 2-3 hours of practice) because you are allowed to fall and fly and push like crazy mofo repeating everything 10000 times without dying or even being tired after 1 hour, so you learn bike behavior much much faster. with DS i doubt much that you will ever be able to do victoria 20 laps hardcore race with 1:30 time every lap on 990 (record is a bit less than 1:27 afaik in the sim for def steering). note: this beed said not for the sake of showing who is da God ov fast lapz, this is for some serious skill and experience with strong passion for riding and racing.

As I said, a proper sim is more difficult than reality. Imagine a robot put on a bike, and you have to use its camera and actuate the bars and levers remotely with a separate set of those. A closest to reality sim is the same thing, but everything you control is modeled mathematically. Hence, it would be not 2 to 3 years, but rather something around 20 maybe... But that only if you actually care for racing, doing the same laps people do in RL, taking podiums.
Alternatively, if you still want to compete, you could settle for worse lap times. Forget RL, virtuality has its own rules. Otherwise, forget virtuality. It's either dumbing it down to make it more suitable for RL operators, or getting to know it better and being content with what you can achieve with what you have.

Basically, a simulator is like being disabled. You don't expect to outrun a healthy person if you are on crutches, right? Especially if that person is a world champion in running... Same here. You simply cannot expect to do better laps in a sim than a real racer does in RL. Of course, you have the safety net of not dying after hitting a wall at speed, for example, but even if the aforementioned runner on crutches will be caught every time he falls down, it would be a miracle for him to get up to speed at least with amateur runners.

riding really fast is a big fun as well but it's a hard job even on def steering

Totally agree it's a hard job. As I already mentioned, default steering never gave me any proper idea on how to ride a bike in ANY sim or game. It always felt weird. I felt probably more disconnected from the bike than during watching MotoGP onboards. So, it's a wrong kind of hard. Like that steering helper that kicked in and made me think I forgot how to drive simulated cars at all.

The best bikes for DS so far, in my opinion, are the KTM, the "Murasama", the 600 cc "Blade" and the classic Augusta. The Yamaha from the same set as the RC8 is good too. The MotoGP 2015 bikes are probably the best, but they feel a bit too precise for my taste... From the WSBK 2017 set the Aprilia is very stable (but the Ducati is more fun).
For MXB that "OEM" 2003 Suzuki is very nice. The 2016 Yamahas are not bad either.

and seems that you miss many others just because they do not work good with DS. sad!

Actually, not. I don't say the rest are impossible to ride. I even tried some experimenting today and took the "bad behavers" to the track to see if anything changed. The videos follow in the next post

we don't know actual reason why he did that. at least he got license so he should know what to do.

Not everyone having the license knows what to do... Well, judging by the video that rider also tried to act intuitively, which brought him straight into the truck. I think it's one of the most important things to learn what exactly happens when you try to steer the bike. Also I think that riding games could potentially kill riders in those situations. He got that urge to turn right from somewhere, after all.

i think his case is not a good example for our discussion, not because of ethics, just because we can't know for sure what and why he did.

Unless he tried to kill himself on purpose, I'd say it was pretty clear that his non-countersteering thinking kicked in at a very wrong time.

The problem is, I couldn't feel the bike at all in anything but GPB/MXB with DS2 with force-feedback. Not having a real life reference probably influenced that greatly.

pushbike too?

As a kid I clocked in enough hours on bicycles. Actually, that's what saves me in MXB and in low speed situations in GPB: when I start falling to a side, I turn the wheel (and bars) to that side pretty much like I did on the bicycles. Another reason I consider DS2 to be very natural in execution.

Then again, imagine you never been on a bike before (and probably never will). Would you go for the default steering or for the DS?

really hard to tell then. DS is fun just because it's hard, i like hard games but def steering is simpler for sure and may seem more logical.

I still wonder if you'd be able to understand bikes as good if you only used the default steering in that situation.

[passerBy]

Ok then. So, after reading the post I wanted to see what it would be like if I tried to take the bikes I had the most problems with to the track right away and see what happens.

For the "Varese" I swapped the tyres for the softs and made the suspension a bit softer as well. The other two go in the default setups.

http://www.youtube.com/v/j4gXCTaaBm4
1:50

http://www.youtube.com/v/Al_4oTa2Gz4
1:57
That going out of pits... Well, still not used to light bikes.

http://www.youtube.com/v/0tRMhm2QzMM
1:56
Yes, this Kawa gave me surprisingly more headache than I expected. But as you can even see from the video, the default suspension setup is not what I'd call a smooth ride... The bike itself is pretty much an alpha. And I haven't had much time with these three bikes in a while.

I think this supplements my hypothesis that new bikes should be tested in DS first and foremost quite strongly.

[loinen]

If they were good enough, we would have it much easier when it comes to correcting the skids or learning to drift. Normally, in a car with a big enough castor angle you'd barely have to touch the wheel at all after initiating a drift (as can be seen on some YouTube videos). In a typical car sim using at least the G27, I have to do a lot of work myself to keep the front wheels where they need to be. Even though I almost don't realize it now, after all the learning I've done before, but when I tried to teach the aforementioned young guy to drift, he was unable to grasp how it's done (yet he does very well in MXB, so you can't just write him off easily).
There is a possibility that G25s are better for drifting than G27s, as I once heard, but I highly doubt that. And if they are, they will most likely be better for DS too.

car behaviour while drifting depends on which suspension setup is applied to the car, castor angle is not so important. ARBs and springs do a lot of work, tyres too. I had RL racing experience and at the moment of it i was pretty strong virtual racer with good physical condition (trained a lot in a gym) with no real car driving exp at all. At first start real car seemed totally different to me but that was due to new feelings coming to my body, they confused me as i never felt them before, once they were filtered, after few laps, i noticed that car handling IRL is not that different from virtual in terms of technique (braking, throttling, wheel control, even FFB was pretty close, not in strength but in the informational part), and my virtual skills helped me a lot - at the end of first session i was second, even faster than all those guys who already raced the track before, they drove everyday cars from home to their workplace and back. we all were not many years professional racers IRL (and i was the only virtual racer there) but results told me that my practice with logitech g25 was not waste of time, it actually gave me a lot.

Using a wheel with default steering in GPB makes absolutely no sense to me. The biggest asset of a force feedback wheel controller is, well, the force feedback itself. With the default steering FFB makes no sense whatsoever: you'll be getting something completely unrelated to your input.

at least after getting used to it i easily undestand what happens to my bike, especially to the rear end.

X52 Pro is a complete and utter toy compared even to a serious enthusiast grade controller (which in itself is about as far from the real deal as the X52 is far from the said controller). Come on, it's just a cheap plasticky thingie with one of the worst mechanisms to make it come to the center. It's light, it's short... It's based on pots, after all. And it provides no FFB. I'm, for one, is against adding FFB to the current low-end flight controllers, but for the proper experience you need to have it all: proper FFB, hydraulic dampening, magnetic lock force trimming (this one for helicopters).
X52 is just a glorified gamepad. It won't tell you a single thing about how the actual controls feel and behave.

seems that we are talking about different things all the time. all my words are coming from the thoughts about learning handling technique, vehicle behavior with control methods which are easy to get accustomed and do not fall in total contradiction with my perception. X52 for Su-27, G25 for car, DD's bars for bike (and even pad or car wheel) are enough to learn and absolutely enough for hardcore competition despite the fact they do not bring 100% identical feel or immersion or whatever. your thougths seem something totally different and probably that's why we still talk so much about DS and what is realistic however i already said so much about why DS in any mode is not natural even being 100% calculated correctly in terms of physics/maths.

Therefore, the DS mode 2 is the way to go. If you'd invested just a couple of days or maybe a week into DS2 specifically, setting your wheel angle to 50 while keeping max_angle at 25, you'd see for yourself. At some point you stop dropping the bike "for a reason unknown". You proceed to improve your lap times or whatever it is you want to improve.

i have no problems with unknown reasons of bike falling in DS2 mode. I just see that it's very far from my perception of natural bike control and i will never be stable and fast with this control method. that's all. btw this is also seen from your videos (thank you for posting them), you are not smooth in handling, this is kinda merit of your control method. for the record, if you havent watched this video by SimUK, maybe you'll find it interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_Vh_vsRYWs

I think you have an improper understanding of what an autopilot is. For example, mentioned by you earlier Ka-50 and Su-27 both employ autopilots by default...

i think autopilot in GPB do not steal too much from your control of bike and autopilots in DCS are something really different.

When you can't focus on the riding itself, it can hardly help you to understand it at all. You need to be thinking to understand, not competing. Watching your own mistakes from a side, analyzing them. Trying to make it to the podium would help to do anything but that.

competing is the next stage after watching mistakes, analyzing, thinking, understanding and even working them out to automatism.

What do you want then? Podiums? Prizes? That stuff is only good for boosting one's ego. Having fun is much more important. And challenging fun is the proper kind of fun. It also helps you to become a better person, whereas beating others works the other way around.

there is nothing about ego. even podiums are not important. i love competition for the beauty of the battle of masterhood, for emotions, for personal improvement during the process of learning how to fight, it's some kind of philosophy. you seem to look like a single player mode user, me - not, so i think we should stop the discussion coz now things are clear and there is no reason to continue.

[passerBy]

car behaviour while drifting depends on which suspension setup is applied to the car, castor angle is not so important.

You have missed my point. Castor angle is what makes the front wheels want to go in line with the skidding. Yes, you could just saw at the wheel frantically, but having the steering mostly doing this work for you sounds better, or doesn't it? Especially when you are left with "Degrees Of Rotation" far greater than 900.

ARBs and springs do a lot of work, tyres too.

That's obvious, but theoretically speaking, you could drift pretty much anything with real wheel drive. So, you could say that nothing is really important.

I had RL racing experience and at the moment of it i was pretty strong virtual racer with good physical condition (trained a lot in a gym) with no real car driving exp at all. At first start real car seemed totally different to me but that was due to new feelings coming to my body, they confused me as i never felt them before, once they were filtered, after few laps, i noticed that car handling IRL is not that different from virtual in terms of technique (braking, throttling, wheel control, even FFB was pretty close, not in strength but in the informational part), and my virtual skills helped me a lot - at the end of first session i was second, even faster than all those guys who already raced the track before, they drove everyday cars from home to their workplace and back. we all were not many years professional racers IRL (and i was the only virtual racer there) but results told me that my practice with logitech g25 was not waste of time, it actually gave me a lot.

Again, my point wasn't that the aforementioned controllers are useless when it comes to dealing with reality. In fact, if what you said above is true, that only proves the theory that simming is not at all useless.
My point was that if you are ok with the level of abstraction either your X52 or the G25 forces you to deal with (not to mention an XBox controller), I see no reason why the same G25 would magically throw your suspension of disbelief off when it comes to the controller feel, once applied to GPB with DS.

Using a wheel with default steering in GPB makes absolutely no sense to me. The biggest asset of a force feedback wheel controller is, well, the force feedback itself. With the default steering FFB makes no sense whatsoever: you'll be getting something completely unrelated to your input.

at least after getting used to it i easily undestand what happens to my bike, especially to the rear end.

That sounds more in the vein of your own statement about people adopting weird techniques because they refuse to know any better, honestly...

seems that we are talking about different things all the time. all my words are coming from the thoughts about learning handling technique

Oh, and mine aren't? Steering is quite a big part of the handling... Some would even argue, the biggest part of it.

vehicle behavior with control methods which are easy to get accustomed and do not fall in total contradiction with my perception

Why should they follow your perception in particular? Between a perception of someone on the net and the perception that comes as a result of mathematical modelling, I'd rather go with the latter. Especially when it's a facility provided by the sim author himself.

X52 for Su-27, G25 for car, DD's bars for bike (and even pad or car wheel) are enough to learn and absolutely enough for hardcore competition despite the fact they do not bring 100% identical feel or immersion or whatever. your thougths seem something totally different and probably that's why we still talk so much about DS and what is realistic however i already said so much about why DS in any mode is not natural even being 100% calculated correctly in terms of physics/maths.

My thoughts are just coming from the theory behind motorcycles (and the experience with bicycles). Not to mention that even the GPB's autopilot in the end has to deal with DS (even though it's DS1, not DS2). You are simply putting a barrier between you and DS like that, but can't exactly get around it. And from what you said, I couldn't get a single idea about what is so wrong with DS in your opinion, apart maybe from the tendency of the bike to try to fall to a side on braking to lower speeds. But then again, if you do the braking properly, that tendency can be alleviated. Though I agree that the threshold is kind of abrupt. Not something I would expect from losing the gyro support of the wheels while coming to lower speeds. Maybe the modelling is not quite perfect at the moment... Still, it's either you or the autopilot who is going to deal with this. Personally, I prefer to do that directly. The less proxies, the better (hence, no anti-wheeling or TCS in my riding either).

i have no problems with unknown reasons of bike falling in DS2 mode. I just see that it's very far from my perception of natural bike control and i will never be stable and fast with this control method. that's all. btw this is also seen from your videos (thank you for posting them), you are not smooth in handling, this is kinda merit of your control method.

What do you expect of a cheap wheel? If you want smoothness, get a direct-drive wheel. Or at least one of those Thrustmasters...
To be honest, I think you are turning this into a bigger problem than it really is. And if the majority of riders would use a similar setup, they would all be evenly disadvantaged. So, in the end it would still be the question of skill. Yes, some would use better wheels. But they use them for car sims too. And that doesn't necessarily make them go faster.
As for me personally, I agree, partially it is due to the wheel. Especially when the FFB goes wild in some corners... But you are forgetting the time I've spent learning riding like this (not to mention other disadvantages), or the lack thereof. Give me a year, and we'll see how bad or good will I be then. For now, I'd say I'm having quite a nice progress, considering all the things that do not play in my favor (plenty of them).

I post the videos because I feel it's important to show what a typical person's learning curve looks like exactly over time. In my opinion, Klax did a huge mistake with posting his. Even though he mentioned the hard learning process, you can hardly see him actually learning to DS.
And if I would come here after him and had no prior experience with what he calls DST, watched the videos and tried it myself, I think that would have a great chance of discouraging me from learning further. That's why I'm doing the opposite now. And with a more appropriate form of direct steering in mind.

for the record, if you havent watched this video by SimUK, maybe you'll find it interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_Vh_vsRYWs

Not only did I find it interesting (saw that video when it was out), I also tried to convince the guy (on more than one occasion) to try DS. No luck so far...
But take a closer look at his brother. He's obviously having problems in the beginning with the default steering... Now I wonder... If DD's bars had some direct drive wheel level FFB and they tried running GPB with DS2... How that would change the outcome? Something tells me he would actually have much less problem getting the thing going right from the start.

I think you have an improper understanding of what an autopilot is. For example, mentioned by you earlier Ka-50 and Su-27 both employ autopilots by default...

i think autopilot in GPB do not steal too much from your control of bike and autopilots in DCS are something really different.

Autopilots in DCS (excluding the 'hold' ones, like altitude hold, heading hold, etc.) do even less than the GPB's one does. And I already described why. Aircraft SAS is more about dampening out unneeded motion, or (in case of the Flanker) to prevent the pilot from going over certain threshold. The autopilot in GPB is more of a lean hold (or roll hold, if you will), and that means actually taking control of the bike.

When you can't focus on the riding itself, it can hardly help you to understand it at all. You need to be thinking to understand, not competing. Watching your own mistakes from a side, analyzing them. Trying to make it to the podium would help to do anything but that.

competing is the next stage after watching mistakes, analyzing, thinking, understanding and even working them out to automatism.

I could probably agree with you, but I still strongly stand on the opinion that it's only then is serious, when there are no (or almost no, considering DS2 being slightly "indirect") corners cut in the previous stage.

What do you want then? Podiums? Prizes? That stuff is only good for boosting one's ego. Having fun is much more important. And challenging fun is the proper kind of fun. It also helps you to become a better person, whereas beating others works the other way around.

there is nothing about ego. even podiums are not important. i love competition for the beauty of the battle of masterhood, for emotions, for personal improvement during the process of learning how to fight, it's some kind of philosophy. you seem to look like a single player mode user, me - not, so i think we should stop the discussion coz now things are clear and there is no reason to continue.

If I was a competitive type, I'd be much more ashamed of using a helper, to be honest, especially calling it a battle of masterhood like that... But if you insist on using it nonetheless, there's nothing I can do about that. But it would be best if you'd abstain from calling DS "unrealistic".  And if it is, how exactly is having an AI layer between you and DS makes it more realistic?

[passerBy]

Time for some progress report

http://www.youtube.com/v/JwRdqLBrqkU
I won't hide it, I like Manu's bikes. I don't quite like MotoGP ones, however... And with this one I'm struggling to find understanding: sometimes it tries to cut the corner short, most of the time it goes out of the corner too wide... At least it seems I can fix the latter developing more finesse over the throttle application.
One thing is certain though, I really like this particular MotoGP bike.

Here come more lengthy vids. Pardon my still not knowing how to perform a U-turn on a narrow road.
http://www.youtube.com/v/r3hn5Wy2llc

http://www.youtube.com/v/W8eBxGaOaIs
It really is more narrow than it should be, or isn't it?

http://www.youtube.com/v/O7p1I-Xlvas