Logitech Driving Force Pro: Setup Questions

[jasonbar]

In addition to messing w/ my new guns today, I spent a long time messing w/ my Logitech Driving Force Pro wheel.

I've got it relatively set up, but I can't get it set up to be actually playable yet.

The list o' questions/problems:

1 - I don't quite understand the "degrees" setting in the control panel.  Off the top of my head, I think the slider goes from 40deg to 900deg.  Below a certain value, the wheel seems to engage a mechanical lock that limits travel to 90deg CW & 90deg CCW.  The mechanical lock doesn't seem to accomodate any other degrees of rotation--I thought this wheel could be set to 270deg?

2 - Even if I turn off force feedback & self-centering in the control panel, the darn wheel always gives me increasing resistance as I go off-center & does spring back to center.  Can't this be disabled entirely?

3 - Although the wheel requires power to set up & start using, it (sometimes?) seems to continue functioning (sans feedback & resistance) if you pull the power plug.  Because it goes through its funky calibration "ghost driver" routine on PC power-up, I'm going to install a small power switch on the wheel so that it will be turned on only if the player wants to drive.  I fashioned some hooks to store the wheel on the side of the cab when not in use--I don't want it going through its "ghost driver" routine on every power-up...

4 - For the life of me, I couldn't figure out usable settings for the wheel and/or MAME ("analog controls" menu) in the few games I tried: Turbo (.108), Pole Position (.115), & Spy Hunter (.115).  Well, .108 wasn't recognizing the wheel at all--might have to change my command line arguments or run Turbo on a newer rev.  Both SH & PP seem to have an awfully huge dead spot in the middle of the wheel travel & then far too much steering happens after I rotate the wheel out of its deadband.  Can any Driving Force Pro owners *please* share some settings?   

5 - Setting the Spy Hunter weapons to the various wheel buttons seems to work pretty well.  Boy, I sure have small hands.  If I use the back "shift paddles" for the triggers on SH, it's a bit of a stretch for my thumbs to reach the thumb button weapons.  I need to grow my fingers longer...


Thanks!
-Jason

[u_rebelscum]

4.  Turbo & Pole Position can't be helped very much.  They used no limits, spinner-like, wheels.  Since the DFpro has limits, even if at 900 degrees, mame treats the input as digital, with a deadzone and a single "turning speed" once the wheel gets out of the deadzone.  You can change the deadzone with mame's -joystick_deadzone setting in mame.ini (or a game specific ini), and the turning speed with mame's analog digital speed setting in mame's analog controls menu.  Spy Hunter, OTOH, should work fine, once setup correctly.  Make sure the wheel is mapped to paddle analog in mame's input menu, and NOT mapped to "paddle inc" or "paddle dec".  (The latter two are used for converting digital input to analog, even with analog inputs, after mame translates to digital)  Then decrease the deadzone close to zero (the default is 0.3, or 30%, the DFpro probably wants something between 0.0 to 0.02), and you should be good to go.

As a general rule, if you have any half decent analog controller, and are playing an absolute analog game (analog joy, paddle, 270 wheel, or lightgun) set the deadzone to close to zero (0.0 to  0.05).

[jasonbar]

URS-

Thanks for helping me out for the umpteenth time.  I mistakenly remembered Turbo as a game w/ limited wheel travel & a pot, not an endlessly spinning encoder wheel.

I set my joy_deadzone to 0.0 & that helps lots.  And it doesn't booger up my Logitech Attack 3 analog stick (just played some Star Wars & had no deadzone issues introduced by changing this value).

I had a Spy Hunter for a while & sold it less than a year ago, so I have a good feel for how it should feel.  I knocked the steering down to about 150deg in the Logitech control panel (which sets mechanical locks on 200deg of travel).  With that setting & the deadzone of zero, I got a good feel for it & had a pretty decent game.  Still not the same as the real deal, but not bad.  It'll take a while to get used to hearing those meshing gears that are approximating the spring force off center.

As for Pole Position, it's pretty playable with the paddle sensitivity & dial digital speed at thie minimums of 1% & 0, respectively.  Still, I do have 2 spinners on my cab, so I might need to just stick with spinners for the games with encoder steering wheels...


So, it seems that MAWS (and MAME) categorize an encoder wheel as a "dial" & a pot wheel as a "paddle".  That will help me sort & browse through my driving games & see which are best suited for the Driving Force Pro.


Thanks,
-Jason

[jasonbar]

Found an answer to #2 all by myself.

Even though the Logitech control panel has a checkbox for "enable centering spring force feedback games" & a % centering spring strength slider underneath the checkbox, that slider is always active.  The slider *looks* like a subset of the checkbox, so I was never using it.  Duh.

Long story short, I kicked the % centering spring strength down from 100% to 35% & it feels more like what I remember Spy Hunter feeling like.  Cheers to me!   

-Jason

[jasonbar]

Ack, I take it back.  No amount of tweaking settings makes Pole Position play as well with the Logitech Driving Force Pro as it does with a spinner.  At least the pedals can be used, if not the wheel...

-Jason