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Using a direct drive wheel for Pole Position

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Namco:
Has anyone tried using a direct drive wheel for spinner games like Pole Position? It would be an elegant solution in a dedicated driving cabinet to switch between 270 degree games and spinner games if it works.

I've been thinking about taking an Atari wheel with an optical encoder and designing a lever and gear mechanism that would couple and de-couple it to a potentiometer. But if it could be done easily using a DD wheel, then that's the way to go IMHO. Thoughts?

Fursphere:
When my Fanatec DD wheels are powered on, there is a FF 'drag' that is constant.  Its light, but its not the free-spinning smooth rotation of a spinner / proper 360 wheel. 

That said, I've never actually gotten around to trying it.   I've been noodling over building a Super Off Road cabinet from scratch for 360 wheel games, but I'm not sure I actually have room for it.  (that sucker is huge - my Daytona Twin already takes up a massive piece of real estate).

Let me go mess with it and see what happens.   

Fursphere:
It works.    Fanatec CSL DD 8mn

The Good - Pole Position setup was easy.   Wheel, gas, brake, shifter (put my Fanatec shifter in sequential mode, and just pushed forward to register the shifter button).  The clutch pedal was trying to register as everything until I pumped it a few times to self-calibrate it.  (this is kinda normal - same for the analog handbrake)

The Bad - Sensitivity is way off.  Going to take some work to figure out the right settings to get it to play right.  I crashed on purpose, because with a 270' wheel wherever the wheel is pointing when the car respawns will be the 'new' center position, and that's exactly what happened with the Fanatec DD - but it didn't care as it was in 360' mode.  So that barrier is overcome.

The Ugly - To get rid of the 'drag' on the wheel, I went into the Fanatec app and set "Sensitivity" to Auto (this is where you'd set 270 degree travel for example) "Force Feedback" to 0%, and 'Natural Damper" to 0%.   This made it just spin freely, like a spinner.  This sucks because the Fanatec app sucks.  There is no command line support, so you'll have to go into this app and change profiles manually for different games.   This seems to be the norm for sim racing gear - Logitech is the only one I know of that has a robust gaming profile automation package.  Too bad Logitech wheels suck for other reasons.  Now that Fanatec is under new ownership (Corsair) maybe they'll revisit the software package. 

I've thought about automating the Fanatec Profiling software with AutoIT or something.   (You could probably count TAB stops and use AHK too...  seems to work).  You only get 5 profiles without having to adjust sliders, but that would probably be enough for most things. 

Well.  thanks a lot.   Now I have to re-consider a whole bunch of games I had originally dismissed because I didn't have a 360 wheel.  But apparently I actually do (two of them actually).   :lol

Namco:
Amazing. Thank you for trying it out and reporting back! It sounds very promising. If Fanatec doesn't have a way to set the wheel via commandline, maybe Moza or another vendor does.

Fursphere:
Might be a way to do it with Fanalab software.   I haven't messed with it in awhile.   

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