98 replies to this topic

[The Animaster]

Has anyone here tried the bigger demo with a G25 wheel? It doesn't seem to support the G25's 900º rotation, even when set to "multiturn" wheel. I'm still getting just 180º of input from the G25. I've gone to external front view to confirm this as well. Steering wheel moves just 180º degrees and the wheel on the car is at its full turning point.

For one thing, the included Input Calibrator still recognises only 180º from the G25 wheel. I'm guessing this is a limitation of the HID extensions... reckon only Logitech can give us the 900º features through its own driver/control panel (which obviously, Logitech-ly, is unavailable for the mac, with no future plans of ever making any in the first place).

Wonder if Feral would be able to crack the G25 and get it to perform its 900º wonders (and perhaps even H-gate shifting) on the mac?

[edddeduck]

The Animaster, on January 31st 2009, 09:21 AM, said:

Has anyone here tried the bigger demo with a G25 wheel? It doesn't seem to support the G25's 900º rotation, even when set to "multiturn" wheel. I'm still getting just 180º of input from the G25. I've gone to external front view to confirm this as well. Steering wheel moves just 180º degrees and the wheel on the car is at its full turning point.

For one thing, the included Input Calibrator still recognises only 180º from the G25 wheel. I'm guessing this is a limitation of the HID extensions... reckon only Logitech can give us the 900º features through its own driver/control panel (which obviously, Logitech-ly, is unavailable for the mac, with no future plans of ever making any in the first place).

Wonder if Feral would be able to crack the G25 and get it to perform its 900º wonders (and perhaps even H-gate shifting) on the mac?

It is possible that we can unlock the magic in a patch, I honestly don't know the imitations on the Mac but I would think 900 degree might be easier than the H gate to get working.

Edwin

[The Animaster]

edddeduck, on February 4th 2009, 05:50 PM, said:

It is possible that we can unlock the magic in a patch, I honestly don't know the imitations on the Mac but I would think 900 degree might be easier than the H gate to get working.

Edwin

I'm no programmer, but I would of thought the same just by the way it "feels" when using the G25 and also judging by one weird incident on CMR when the wheel went into a sort of 900º mode, although the center was off. Also the fact that the original DTM has support for multiturn wheels but no H-gate shifting it seems.

I've been looking around for as much information as I could gather, and the closest I found was a Linux forum where people were saying they were able to get the H-gate shifting and 900º registering on some diagnostic app they built. If these guys could do that, surely a veteran mac 'coder' somewhere could do the same for the g25 on the mac platform? Afterall... they're both UNIX systems under the hood?

But then that's easier said than done... and makes one wonder why Logitech hasn't released any of their own drivers... if it were so easy...

I'm guessing that day will come, but not before my kids are grown up and I have a Playstation 4 or 5 - with no need for games on the mac anymore

[maccer]

The Animaster, on February 7th 2009, 04:36 PM, said:

... and I have a Playstation 4 or 5 - with no need for games on the mac anymore

Well, the situation is not that much better on the PS3 – at least for the Momo wheel, even if it is listed as PS3 compatible in some shops. It is possible to navigate in the PS3 menus, but there doesn't seem to be many games that support the wheel:
Colin Mc Rade DIRT demo: wheel doesn't work
Race Driver GRID demo: wheel doesn't work, says no controller is connected
Sega Rally demo: wheel doesn't work
Gran Turismo 5 Prologue: wheel should work, but I am not that interested in this game
Gran Turismo HD: wheel should work, but can't find the game in the european or US PSN store - and I'm still not very interested.

What is wrong with the racing game makers? Have they forgotten about the racing game enthusiasts entirely? Not everyone wants to play with keyboard, gamepad or a wheel without proper FFB :-( but the worst part is that the wheels that are "officially" compatible with the consoles are often more expensive and not of a very good build quality compared to the Momo. Yes, there is the G25, but it is quite expensive and I don't even need/want a 900° steering angle.

I really hope that Momo support is added to the upcoming DIRT 2...

[The Animaster]

maccer, on February 8th 2009, 08:55 PM, said:

wheels that are "officially" compatible with the consoles are often more expensive and not of a very good build quality compared to the Momo. Yes, there is the G25, but it is quite expensive and I don't even need/want a 900° steering angle.

I dunno about the "officially compatible" wheels, but the MoMo just didn't feel solid at all to me (after having a G25). Once you go black (with leather too)... XD

[edddeduck]

Just an FYI the online demo is now available along with 4 older demos on our new downloads site!

http://downloads.feralinteractive.com

Happy Easter everyone!

Edwin

[maccer]

edddeduck, on February 4th 2009, 12:50 PM, said:

It is possible that we can unlock the magic in a patch, I honestly don't know the imitations on the Mac but I would think 900 degree might be easier than the H gate to get working.

Edwin

I just got a Logitech Driving Force GT (Gran Turismo 5 official) wheel which is also capable of 900 degrees of turning, so I am now in line waiting for a TOCA 3 patch and a CMR patch! Any updates regarding any of these patches? BTW, 900 degrees would be nice to have in that CMR patch as well, but I guess it's harder to put it into a game that didn't have it originally.

Off topic: I must say I'm disappointed with wheel support for the PS3 as well. It was kind of OK in GRID demo; it had a 900° setting, and putting the saturation to about 35% gave a ≈360° radius which is optimal for me. In DIRT (full game) it was impossible to get any 900° functionality. It basically supported about 200° which isn't enough. I must try GT5 prologue sometimes, though. The wheel is said to function very well with that game.

[maccer]

I'm starting to doubt that we'll ever see any patches for the Feral-ported racing games...   It has been 9 months since TOCA 3 was released and, what, two YEARS since CMR came out. Edwin, anything to say to your defence?

[edddeduck]

maccer, on August 23rd 2009, 03:42 AM, said:

I'm starting to doubt that we'll ever see any patches for the Feral-ported racing games...   It has been 9 months since TOCA 3 was released and, what, two YEARS since CMR came out. Edwin, anything to say to your defence?

Yes, I do

Firstly a patch is only released when there is a reason to do so be it a bug or new feature. Secondly apart from these two titles you mentioned we have patched all our racing games over the years for new OS's and even Intel native support all for free! I think the any patches comment is a little unwarranted, even if the delay is frustrating.

The patch I mentioned in this thread to add in extra support for new wheels and wheels that have been released after we shipped the game (And any reported issues) is planned however choices have to be made when it comes to timing.

If game A has a bug that effects about 40% of users it needs to get fixed straight away within days if not hours.
If game B has a bug that that only effects a handful of users with specialist devices (I would guess under 0.5% of users) we
still need to patch it but it is less critical than lets say game A.

In this case with these two games they have both been popular with users and have sold well however we have had very few support issues and out of the ones we have had only a few have been issues that would require a patch. Almost all of these revolve around new wheels, H gate support and 900 degree support.

As a racing game fan I always want our racing games to be the best but my job also means I have to balance everything we do. Sometimes it boils down to delay one game (or needed patch) for thousands or delay one patch for a handful, although I still want to get the patch out for the handful of users it is hard to say "no we need to delay porting Rome Total War for example because maccer and some other wheel users are complaining about the time it takes us to release a patch for their H gate and 900 mode wheels!". If Feral had infinite programmers and QA then the patch would have shipped already as we don't we have to make decisions on what gets done when.

Once we get past this bulk of titles Colin is on the high list because it has been delayed a few times before. If people reading this who have wheels pm me I can look at giving you all beta access when the patch is in testing. I won't get drawn into when exactly the patch will be made live as things can change real fast but I can promise it will come for Colin.

Hope that explains the situation for you.

Cheers,

Edwin

[teflon]

edddeduck, on August 24th 2009, 02:19 PM, said:

If Feral had infinite programmersBrad Oliver and QA then the patch would have shipped already as we don't we have to make decisions on what gets done when.

Fixed.



Though, its important to remember that even with Brad on the case, patches will always get caught up in QA. Just look at CoD1, wasn't that submitted, like, 4 months ago?

[edddeduck]

teflon, on August 24th 2009, 06:46 AM, said:

Fixed.

LOL It's not quite that simple Wish it was though

Edwin

[maccer]

edddeduck, on August 24th 2009, 03:19 PM, said:

"no we need to delay porting Rome Total War for example because maccer and some other wheel users are complaining about the time it takes us to release a patch for their H gate and 900 mode wheels!".

900° steering and H-gate? I agree, these are specialist wishes - TOCA is already easier to drive using a wheel compared to a joystick/joypad or keyboard.

But the same can't be said about CMR:
- Very strange wheel handling (try to drive in a straight line or turn without turning too little or too much). Someone should play CMR 2 for PC with a wheel and compare that to CMR Mac.
- When both TOCA and CMR are installed, there's a bug in CMR that sometimes makes it impossible to make a 100% turn of the wheel to correspond to a turn of the car. I.e. it's impossible to make the car turn enough.
- (almost) no force feedback

EDIT:
In other words, driving CMR with a wheel is far more difficult than driving it with a gamepad. To make a racing game without proper wheel support is a bit like making a flight simulator without joystick support. To be fair I should probably try to obtain the Windows version of CMR 2005 and compare the wheel support. If if feels equally crappy on Win, I can't blame the Mac port as much as I'm doing now...

[edddeduck]

maccer, on August 26th 2009, 05:04 AM, said:

But the same can't be said about CMR:
- Very strange wheel handling (try to drive in a straight line or turn without turning too little or too much). Someone should play CMR 2 for PC with a wheel and compare that to CMR Mac.
- When both TOCA and CMR are installed, there's a bug in CMR that sometimes makes it impossible to make a 100% turn of the wheel to correspond to a turn of the car. I.e. it's impossible to make the car turn enough.

Point 1 - Some users with some wheels have reported this, although not all of them. Wheel users are a very small percentage of the install base and as only some a small number of people with wheels are effected it is a fairly rare but annoying bug. I said even though only a few people have the issue we will patch it just we need to find the time without delaying other bigger projects.

Point 2 - Never had this bug logged with our support (as far as I can see), if you can email support with your wheel and setup and example that will help.

Edwin

[maccer]

edddeduck, on August 28th 2009, 02:26 PM, said:

Point 1 - Some users with some wheels have reported this, although not all of them. Wheel users are a very small percentage of the install base and as only some a small number of people with wheels are effected it is a fairly rare but annoying bug. I said even though only a few people have the issue we will patch it just we need to find the time without delaying other bigger projects.

Point 2 - Never had this bug logged with our support (as far as I can see), if you can email support with your wheel and setup and example that will help.

Edwin

1.
I'll rephrase the problem after testing CMR Mac a bit again: it seems that CMR Mac has an invisible/unchangeable, positive steering linearity setting: when the wheel is turned from its center position, at first the wheel in-game turns much less than what I turn on the Logitech wheel. Note: it still turns, but just a little, it has nothing to do with deadzone. But after the Logitech has turned maybe 35-45°, the wheel in-game starts turning much faster. This kind of steering makes it very hard to drive the car. Im CMR Dirt it is possible to set this linearity setting.

2. I'm not sure if it is really TOCA that caused the problem, but all I know that when I only had CMR installed - before I beta-tested TOCA, I never had this problem. I think I've solved it by looking up my wheel in ~/Preferences/Codemasters/Colin Mc Rae Rally/Preferenes Data
by using the following info from Apple System Profiler
Vendor: 1133 (= 0x046d = Logitech)
Product-id: 49812 (= 0xc294 = Driving Force GT)
(I don't know where the 98365440 comes from, I can't match it, or its hexadecimal version, with anything I see in the system profiler)

<key name="1133-49812--98365440">
	<key name="00000012">
		<value name="CalCentre" type="integer">527</value>
		<value name="CalCentreMax" type="integer">537</value>
		<value name="CalCentreMin" type="integer">517</value>
		<value name="CalIsCalibrated" type="integer">0</value>
		<value name="CalMax" type="integer">1023</value>
		<value name="CalMin" type="integer">0</value>
	</key>
	<key name="00000013">
		<value name="CalCentre" type="integer">132</value>
		<value name="CalCentreMax" type="integer">142</value>
		<value name="CalCentreMin" type="integer">122</value>
		<value name="CalIsCalibrated" type="integer">0</value>
		<value name="CalMax" type="integer">200</value>
		<value name="CalMin" type="integer">45</value>
	</key>
</key>

The last two rows had strange values for CalMax and CalMin. I didn't write them down before I changed them, they weren't 200 and 45 but something quite close.

<value name="CalMax" type="integer">200</value>
		<value name="CalMin" type="integer">45</value>

I changed them to encompass the full 0-255 range:

<value name="CalMax" type="integer">255</value>
		<value name="CalMin" type="integer">0</value>

and now the in-game wheel turns fully again.

[edddeduck]

maccer, on September 5th 2009, 08:54 AM, said:

I think I've solved it by looking up my wheel in ~/Preferences/Codemasters/Colin Mc Rae Rally/Preferenes Data

Thanks noted all your comments in the bug tracker, might PM you when we are testing the patch see if you can try it out on your machine and setup.

Cheers,

Edwin

[Laechteblouschtiz]

I used to play Race Driver on PC, years ago. I was pretty good, played the game to the end. Now I got it on my MacBookPro. But I'm soooo bad. I have no chance whatsoever, even catching up with the worst computer opponents.

I'm using a Logitech Wingman Formula Force GP Wheel.

Thing is, I'm much faster with the keyboard!!!

Is there a setting I could be missing? I'm so clueless...

Thanks
m

[Laechteblouschtiz]

I found out myself, thank you.

[Janichsan]

Laechteblouschtiz, on 30 June 2011 - 01:31 PM, said:

I found out myself, thank you.

Oh, sorry, I saw your post back then but then forgot about it. My guess was that you had to calibrate the pedals' axis. Right?

[Laechteblouschtiz]

Janichsan, on 30 June 2011 - 01:39 PM, said:

Oh, sorry, I saw your post back then but then forgot about it. My guess was that you had to calibrate the pedals' axis. Right?

Yes, exactly! I didn't figure out that I could press "Enter" to see how far up my throttle goes. I had to set it to 60, now it's fine.

What I still don't get ist how to calibrate the Wheel. It keeps going to the right when in neutral position...