Force feedback of track surface

[h106frp]

Happy to here you're working on this. I think the main problem with bike sims at the moment is that no matter how realistic it is, it still doesn't feel that way because you only have visual feedback. Feeling when you're near the limit could be a useful and fun feature.
Does Force Feedback with gamepads only feature vibration? Or also forces against the controll sticks? Just recently bought a force feedback gamepad but only played gp bikes so far, so I don't know. The force feedback for driving wheels is a very cool and useful feature!

Gamepads only tend to be rumble and we only have the data normally output to the plug in to work with but hopefully some meaningful vibration effects can be added in  . Using the bike local accelerations hopefully some of the vibrations acting on the bike model will be reflected in the rumble signal,

I might finally get to see the 'rumble lighting' on my new GPX lightback controller working   

[HornetMaX]

Happy to here you're working on this. I think the main problem with bike sims at the moment is that no matter how realistic it is, it still doesn't feel that way because you only have visual feedback.

Right, but the rumble on the pad will not change that.

Feeling when you're near the limit could be a useful and fun feature.

I don't think it is possible to detect "being near the limit" with the data we have at hand.

Does Force Feedback with gamepads only feature vibration?

Only vibration.

Rumble when the front locks would help or when the rear locks

Hmm, but both front and rear are already sliding way before they are completely locked.
To do this properly I'd have to have access to some internal data (velocity vector of the contact patch of each wheel), which I haven't.

I'm still thinking this won't give anything good but I'll give it a try.
The "rumble on gear shift" is already implemented: it's is kind of useless in terms of feedback but some may consider it nice to have.

MaX.

[Ian]

keep up the good work

[SKD]

Ok, I'm no developer and  don't know which data the game gives you and how to interpret it. Still I think it's worth a try. Yes It might be that it's a useless feature, but I think the rumble when shifting or maybe when going over curbs or bumps could still be a fun feature.

[CapeDoctor]

agreed. as someone mentioned earlier, it adds to the all-important immersion factor, which is great for any sim

[HornetMaX]

Yes It might be that it's a useless feature, but I think the rumble when shifting or maybe when going over curbs or bumps could still be a fun feature.

Rumble when shifting is done, that was trivial.

Rumble when on curbs: not sure I can detect that. Curbs in GPB tends to be either pretty flat or totally unusable (when not flat).

Rumble on bumps: which bumps ?! In GPB I can't think of a single track where there's a bump I'd like to have rumble on. Any examples ?

MaX.

[Napalm Nick]

How about rumble triggered only by fast changes in front suspension travel, capturing bumps, wheelie drops, initial brake dive and the like. Rumble magnitude could even reflect amount of compression.

Full of good ideas, me. 

[Hawk]

As far as I know, and I'm sure if I remember rightly, Piboso has also stated this in a past post, that FF(rumble) is directly related to the 3D mesh model of the track surface(including kerbs).

I suppose this makes sense, as the collision detection model is directly based on the 3D mesh model too. 

Hawk.
PS: So God help us if a track is built with BTB. LOL 

[HornetMaX]

As far as I know, and I'm sure if I remember rightly, Piboso has also stated this in a past post, that FF(rumble) is directly related to the 3D mesh model of the track surface(including kerbs).

You're mixing FFB and rumble, they are separate things.

GPB (and all the other piboso games) do not have rumble but they have FFB: it is the steering torque applied by the environment.

MaX.

[h106frp]

Yes It might be that it's a useless feature, but I think the rumble when shifting or maybe when going over curbs or bumps could still be a fun feature.

Rumble when shifting is done, that was trivial.

Rumble when on curbs: not sure I can detect that. Curbs in GPB tends to be either pretty flat or totally unusable (when not flat).

Rumble on bumps: which bumps ?! In GPB I can't think of a single track where there's a bump I'd like to have rumble on. Any examples ?

MaX.

For a lovely bumpy track try Donnington national - not for everyone but i think its great fun, reminds me a lot of old GP500 tracks for some reason 

When i started the thread i was hoping that most of the vibrations would be described by the accelerations acting on the model as you see it on the screen -  do you think this is probably not the case?

[HornetMaX]

Will give Donington a try.

I didn't have a lot of time these last days: took a quick look at the telemetry from a lap on victoria with the 990.
The most promising signal seemed to be the VelY one (Y velocity of a point on the frame, expressed in bike's rotated frame).

So I coded a 2nd order high-pass bessel, filtered VelY with it and put a threshold + linear dependency on the result : the first quick test seems to be better than I thought.

MaX.

[h106frp]

Sounds promising, looking forward to giving it a try.