Any affordable force feedback wheel without any deadzone?

[mickael28]

Hi guys,

I don't know much about racing wheels, in fact, I didn't even know about the existence of deadzones in them. The thing is that I bought a Logitech Driving Pro and GT and both of them have a pretty bad deadzone, maybe like 10 to 15 degrees each side, which is kind of ok'ish for slower games, but if one is playing proper arcade games where one has to change directions pretty quickly I've started noticing like a massive area where the wheel doesn't respond at all after a crash.

Not sure if what I am noticing is specific to certain games only, but I was wondering if it's possible to avoid it all together.

Do force feedback wheels without any deadzone even exist?
And if they do, is there any that's affordable (for casual gaming)?

Thanks!

[BadMouth]

Have you reduced the deadzone to almost nothing in whatever emulator or game you are using, as well as in the windows or Logitech profiler settings?

The default deadzone in MAME is 30% which is about what you are describing.

I've played with a Logitech MOMO and G27 and never noticed such deadzone issues.
The bigger issue with the 900 degree wheels is that you need to reduce the rotation to 270 degrees for arcade games and 150-180 for console games (anything meant to be played with thumbsticks).

See  "!!!IMPORTANT MAME CONFIGURATION INFORMATION!!!" in the stickied driving cab info thread.

[mickael28]

Yes, I chekced the config settings. With the games I tried, the logitech config didn't have any deadzone and the games I tried were configured at zero if there was an option there (like Outrun 2 with FX launcher), or I didnt notice such an option in-game or in their launcher.

For those games I had configured the wheel at 200 degrees, but still the 10-15 deadzone degrees to each side is there.

I've not tried any other emulator (such as MAME) for now but when I read about these issue, people were mentioning that this is the way the logitech wheels work due to 2 motors they've got in their designs to allow force feedbacck... people were commenting about the G27 as well though, so not sure until what point is hardware and what are settings or games if you've not noticed such an issue (there are around 85000 results searching for "deadzone G27" and the seem to be experiencing something similar to me with the GT or Pro model, so I thought the issue is something to do with logitech)

Not having tried anything else, it's difficult to know what to look for though...

[DarthMarino]

The G27 definitely has a force feedback deadzone.  This is where the wheel doesn't fully center itself.  I don't think there is any way to fix it. It does not, however, have a traditional deadzone where your vehicle in the game won't respond.

[mickael28]

I've been using the logitech GT more today, and as I don't have much experience of one which doesn't have a deadzone (where the car won't respond in the game) not sure if mine is correct. I'll create another post with a descriptive title and a video to clarify...

[shaolindrunkard]

Deadzone in my opinion is a necessary evil. If you had zero deadzone the car would be impossible to control. Everybody is looking for zero deazone. I don't think that's really the right battle. Spend some time practicing steering and you will get used to it. Using a wheel isn't usually a pick up and immediately master it kind of thing...

Anyway good luck

[mickael28]

Deadzone in my opinion is a necessary evil. If you had zero deadzone the car would be impossible to control. Everybody is looking for zero deazone. I don't think that's really the right battle. Spend some time practicing steering and you will get used to it. Using a wheel isn't usually a pick up and immediately master it kind of thing...

Anyway good luck

Hiya, that's what I was wondering, if I just need to get used to or if what I am experiencing at present is too much of a deadzone, it looks weird.

Could you please look at my last post in the other thread to see what you think about how it behaves at present? I've put a copy of my wheel settings, a video of the config where the wheel registers correctly whilst moving in this deadzone area and a video of a game where the car doesn't move at all whilst moving in this deadzone area (which is what I'm not sure if it's normal).

The other post is... http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,155367.0.html

Many thanks!

[mickael28]

I've been using the wheel more this weekend and I'd like to make the question in a different way, as I think I was not explaining my doubt correctly before.

It seems the issue I was talking about is regarding the "resistance" that the wheel offers when it's moved. These are the settings that Logitech profiler offers:


That resistance is controlled by the section 'Centering Spring'. If I don't tick it, then the wheel doesn't have a deadzone regarding the steering movement (as it's registered fine by the windows controller settings) but the steering is really smooth (as in, not resistance at all - you can turn the wheel with a single finger and it won't center back once it's turned).
By enabling this section and adjusting the 'Centering Spring Strength' (eg, from 100% to 150%), one can get a lot of resistance (which I like) so that you have to hold the wheel tight and use quite a lot of strength when turning it and it will center by itself when released.

The problem I was finding with this setup is that once the 'Centering Spring' setting is enabled, then such a Resistance doesn't start until une turns around 15 degrees each side, ie, there's around a 30 degrees area in the middle of the wheel without any resistance at all, and then one starts feeling the setting we've choosen.

But, is there a way to configure this wheel so that the Resistance is offered in the complete area?
Or if not, do you know any other Force Feedback wheel where the Resistance can be felt even in the middle section, when the wheel is centered, so that one cannot move the wheel around 15 degrees each side with a single finger before the Resistance starts to be felt?