Note: In September 2000, I took another shot at setting up my Force RS for GPL. I was much happier with the results. Go here for details.
Brandon Crick of Act Labs kindly sent me a Force RS USB to try. My first impression was good; the wheel has a large-diameter, beefy, comfortable rim, and has a generous sprinkling of buttons. The buttons, which at first seemed to be positioned too high, turned out to be easily reachable. The wheel has plenty of travel, 280 degrees according to Act Labs. This is much more than the stock Logitech.
The wheel base unit's clamping mechanism is clever and works well, and takes up less room under the table than that of either the Logitech or Microsoft wheels.
The pedals are solid, with metal arms, and seemed quite sturdy. The pedal base unit is also heavy and sturdy, and the geometry of the pedals is good.
So how did it all work?
Settings. I tried various GPL core.ini settings, including those suggested by Pat Dotson, who is a great fan of the Force RS, and also those suggested by Act Labs QA Manager Zenon Holtz.
Note: In September 2000, I took another shot at setting up my Force RS for GPL, using some settings very different from those shown in this section. I was much happier with the results. Go here for details.
Note: A number of people have written that they got a Force Feedback wheel and enabled Force Feedback in core.ini but don't get any force feedback in GPL. The problem is that they've used the sample file, core.ini.sample, which comes with GPL 1.2, instead of core.ini. The fix is easy. Go here.
Here are Zenon's core.ini settings:
force_feedback_damping = 093.000000 ; damping coefficient force_feedback_latency = 0.000005 ; latency (secs) max_steering_torque = 75.000000 ; torque = max device force
Brandon says, "We would recommend you increase the value for max steering torque upwards until you find what you like. I personally leave the settings in the driver applet at 100% usually."
Here are Pat Dotson's core.ini settings:
force_feedback_damping = 40.000000 ; damping coefficient force_feedback_latency = 0.000000 ; latency (secs) max_steering_torque = 180.000000 ; torque = max device force
Steering. Unfortunately, I found that with the Force RS, no matter what settings I tried, I could not feel any of the more subtle forces which get transmitted through the Logitech wheel so well.
The subtle forces are the most useful forces in GPL; the steering goes light when the front tires begin to wash out, and castering forces make the wheel tend to counter-steer when the tail starts to come around. Unbalanced braking forces are also transmitted through the Logitech wheel, and this permits me to run more rearward brake bias, which shortens braking distances and helps with lap times.
While the Force RS wheel generates much higher forces than the Logitech wheel, none of these subtle forces are discernable to me with the Force RS. I also had my brother Nate try it; I even loaned the Force RS to him so he could live with it for a while. He gave up on it and has ordered a Logitech wheel. He, too, felt that the lack of subtle forces means that the Force RS is much less useful for GPL than the Logitech wheel.
Using Zenon's very low core.ini number for torque should amplify the more subtle forces and make them apparent. However, the problem seems to be that the Force RS's belt and pulley mechanism has very high friction. This friction is so high that it damps out all of the more subtle, useful forces that are transmitted by GPL.
Nate and I removed the cover of the Force RS and examined the mechanism, hoping to find a way to reduce its friction. The belt and pulley mechanism is of impressive quality, with beefy toothed belts, and steel shafts and what appears to be ball bearings on the pulleys. Unfortunately, the pulleys and idlers all appear to be in a fixed relationship; we could find no way to adjust any of the idlers to reduce the tension on the belts.
Pedals. I found the pedals that came with the Force RS to be virutally unusable with GPL. Although their geometry is better than that of the Logitech pedals, and they have stronger springs than the original Logitech pedals, the friction in the Act Labs pedals is so high that I found it impossible to accurately modulate either the brake or the throttle. This is essential with GPL.
Act Labs recommends that you lubricate the pedals if you find the friction too high. However, this requires disassembly of the pedal unit. The pedals I had made a scraping sound when I operated them, and it appeared that some part of the pedal mechanism was interfering with the base unit. I was skeptical that simply lubricating them would fully resolve the friction problem, so I didn't dismantle them.
I switched back to my CH Pedals, which in my opinion are far superior.
Buttons and Shifters. The Force RS has a lot more buttons than the Logitech, but unfortunately, unlike the Logitech Wingman software, Act Labs' software doesn't allow the user to assign character strings to the buttons. This leaves many of the buttons on the Force RS unused when you're racing GPL, since GPL has only a few functions that can be mapped to buttons.
The Force RS has a single-piece paddle unit behind the wheel for shifting, This allows you to shift up or down with either hand, by moving the paddle on either side forward or back. You can also use it in a more conventional way, pulling on one for upshifting and the other for downshifting. Unfortunately, the paddles are small, which makes them less convenient than the Logitech's, and the springs are too light. It's possible to flick the lever hard enough that it will shift up and then rebound and shift down.
Bottom Line. The Force RS transmits much higher forces than either the Logitech or the Microsoft; each time I go back to the Logitech after using the Force RS, the Logitech seems so limp that I can't help thinking it's broken. But after a few minutes with the Logitech, I've adjusted to its lower force level, and I again delight in the accuracy and usefulness of its transmission of GPL"s most subtle and useful forces.
The Force RS has a lot going for it. It's got the biggest and most powerful (and most expensive) version of the iForce technology. The Force RS' software fails to take full advantage of its multitude of buttons, and its shifter is flimsy and weakly sprung, but if the friction problems weren't present, those problems wouldn't stop me from using it. Most of it is strong and sturdy, and its ergonomics are overall quite good.
All the good qualities of the Force RS are undermined by excessive friction in both the wheel and the pedals. It is possible that lubrication of the pedals would improve their functioning, and perhaps with enough use, the belts in the steering transmission mechanism would loosen and allow more of the subtle forces to be felt. But I'm not sure of this, and I can't afford to invest what might turn out to be a large amount of time to find out.
If your focus is racing games where effects and crash impacts and rumble strips are the focus, then the Force RS would seem to be a fine choice. For GPL, however, my experience suggests that the Logitech would be a better choice.
Counterpoint: A number of people - including Pat Dotson, who is much faster than I am - have said that they really like the Act Labs Force RS wheel and that it works great for them.
I've summarized my own experiences and opinion above, but you may find that your experience with the Force RS wheel differs and that it may work quite well for you. Its low cost is certainly a point in its favor, as is the beefy construction of its motor and transmission mechanism.
Also, it's entirely possible that with use, the belts will loosen enough so that excessive friction is no longer a factor. If so, the Force RS could be very good indeed.
In September 2000, I took another stab at setting up the Force RS for GPL. I had loaned my Force RS to my nephew, Amos, for a few months, and he had put some "miles" on it. I think this stretched the belts and broke things in a bit, because it seems to have less internal friction than before.
In addition, based on things I'd learned about force feedback and GPL in recent months, and using features in the latest Act Lab driver, I tried some new settings. Specifically, I tried reducing the damping forces in both GPL's core.ini and in the Force RS control panel.
First, I downloaded and installed the latest Force RS driver from Act Labs. The version I'm using now is 1.23, dated September 18, 1999.
In the Force RS driver (under Control Panel/Game Controllers), I have the following settings:
In GPL's core.ini, I used these settings:
force_feedback_damping = 2.000000 ; damping coefficient force_feedback_latency = 0.020000 ; latency (secs) max_steering_torque = 200.000000 ; torque = max device force
The result was much improved feel, with force levels very similar to those I experience with my Logitech FF wheel. There is much more subtle detail in the forces; I can feel the front end wash out if I push the front too hard, and I can feel it load up under banking. It's much, much closer to what I experience with the Logitech now.
However, when I went back to the Logitech, I found that I still preferred the latter. It seems more precise, and there is still a bit more of the most subtle force detail. For example, with the Logitech, when I get the car sideways, I can feel the caster of the front wheels pulling the wheel into the slide (i.e. helping me correct for the slide). I can't quite feel that with the Force RS.
Another downside is that, possibly due to Amos' enthusiastic "testing", the already flimsy shifter paddle had loosened up, so that the right side paddle no longer worked. I was able to retighten the screws holding it in, and it started working again, but its shifting action is still erratic; somtimes I get an upshift, sometimes not.
The bottom line is that I still prefer the Logitech, but the gap between it and the Force RS is much smaller. If my Logitech died, I could live with the Force RS. If Papyrus were to come out with a patch to allow full use of the Force RS Shifter, I'd be delighted.
There is now available a patch written by Julien Landy which allows the Act Labs shifter console to be used with GPL. This program resides in the background and watches the shifter; when you position the shifter in a new slot, it generates the keystrokes necessary to get GPL to shift the transmission to the gear corresponding to that slot.
I haven't tried it but it sounds like a great idea, and Act Labs says it's been thoroughly tested with GPL and other legacy racing games.
Get it at the Act Labs site. Click on the link below the animated shifting graphic, or go here.
While at the Act Labs site, take a look at the accessories page. There's a replacement shift paddle mechanism that looks to be much superior to the flimsy dual-flop paddles that come with the wheel, and shifter plates that allow you to customize the RS shifter's available gears.