Fanatec Direct Drive
Thomas Jackermeier
Member
in Blog
It is an open secret that we are working on a Direct Drive wheel. I have posted in several forums and there are some bits of information here and there. It's time to open a single thread for this subject.
Steering Wheels
This post will be updated from time to time and the main purpose for us is to collect information of what you really want. Of course we already have nailed down several specs but there are still things we can change or add. So please tell us what your dream system looks like.
Models
We are developing more than one base. The main difference will be the maximum torque. The torque range is starting at a competitive level far above the CS WB V2.5 and ranges up to a level most of you will not be able to use for a long time.
It will not replace the CS WB V2.5 and we will keep this model as the best non-DD solution on the market.
We are developing more than one base. The main difference will be the maximum torque. The torque range is starting at a competitive level far above the CS WB V2.5 and ranges up to a level most of you will not be able to use for a long time.
It will not replace the CS WB V2.5 and we will keep this model as the best non-DD solution on the market.
The DD wheel bases are the first products of a complete series of hardcore products which are positioned above the ClubSport series. This series will include wheel bases, steering wheels, pedals, shifters and handbrakes in the (very) long run.
Plug&Play
The DD will be a typical plug&play product like other Fanatec wheel bases. All in one housing and no cable mess.
The DD will be a typical plug&play product like other Fanatec wheel bases. All in one housing and no cable mess.
Certification
Like any other Fanatec product, the DD will be fully certified and lab tested. This will avoid EMI issues and other interference with your other devices. The DD uses a lot of power and huge magnets are involved so this is a very important point which is often not considered until you get a lot of mysterious issues and damages to your whole system.
Compatibility
PC for sure as this is the main market and there is no reason that it should not work on Xbox One. The first generation will not be compatible to PS4.
We have a great relationship with all racing game developers and you can be sure that there will be broad support for this wheel base. Our target is to set a new standard in simracing.
Motors:
PC for sure as this is the main market and there is no reason that it should not work on Xbox One. The first generation will not be compatible to PS4.
We have a great relationship with all racing game developers and you can be sure that there will be broad support for this wheel base. Our target is to set a new standard in simracing.
Motors:
We looked at the current motors on the market and there was nothing which really fulfilled our requirements. Those industrial motors were not designed for simracing. Steppers and hybrid steppers deliver a way too notchy feeling for a hardcore product, no matter how good you tweak the software. Also other servo motors are always a compromise. Therefore we developed complete custom servo motors where we decided about what speed, torque, size, power consumption, pricing etc. we need.
Steering Wheels
All the current ClubSport steering wheels will be compatible. We developed a new QR system on the base to handle the extra power but it will stay a quick release.
There will be no cable from the wheel to the base or to USB. The wheel will be able to rotate unlimited without the risk to snap off a cable or to disturb you while driving.
There will be no cable from the wheel to the base or to USB. The wheel will be able to rotate unlimited without the risk to snap off a cable or to disturb you while driving.
The CSL and CSL Elite steering wheels will be compatible as well but torque will be reduced if such a wheel is detected.
Software
Please let us know what kind of software your are expecting to get with the DD. What parameters do you want to adjust and how and where do you want to adjust these parameters. We are pretty flexible on this point.
Target Dates
Disclaimer
Dates are always a very sensitive subject. In principle you need to understand that the DD technology is not only new to us, our DD wheels are completely designed from scratch and a breakthrough for the whole industry. This involves some completely new technology which had to be invented and everything is customized. A lot of unknown factors are not good to give any solid time projections.
We simply cannot give you any guaranteed dates at this point. But at least you get some indication of our target dates.
Community event:
There will be a community event where we invite interested simracers to test and compare our new DD wheels directly to all other solutions on the market. Time and date is not defined yet but it will obviously be before the launch date. More news and how to apply for this test will be posted here.
Beta Test:
The external beta test will start after all internal tests are done. We will also make a separate announcement where you can apply to become a tester. We are interested in the opinion of current DD users and ultra hardcore users as well as people with analytic and structured thinking which are able to find remaining bugs and make suggestions for improvements.
Please make sure you already filled out this form.
Please make sure you already filled out this form.
First public appearance:
We plan to show this product at the Simracing Expo this year.
Launch date:
Launch date:
Q4 2017
Pricing
There will be a significant difference to the current wheel bases we have so there will be different performance levels at different price points. As the current CS WB V2.5 is still priced significantly lower than any other DD wheel on the market (please compare it with a full system incl. steering wheel with buttons) there is still room for us to make a very competitive offer.
Our new DD bases can compete in pricing as well as superior functionality and performance.
Our new DD bases can compete in pricing as well as superior functionality and performance.
Oh and did I mention the beauty of them? 
Comments
Bring it on!
But i hope there will be a "no-compromise"-wheel base with more than 20-25Nm and a lot of speed and fidelity, even if the price is a lot higher. Speed and torque output should be similar or better than any current DD wheel (26Nm-Bodnar or OSW with MiGE/Lenze motor).
As far as i know, sony is already developing the next gen. Platform PS5.
Are you in contact in this regard?
I hope we don´t wait as long for a PS5-License, as for the Ps4!
Best regards
This is already rising hype among simracers on forums
Some questions/remarks about the currently revealed informations:
All in one housing: so you mean power supply will be integrated to the base ? I'd personally prefer external PS because it makes repair/replacement easier and allow for minimal size wheelbase.
Custom servo motors: good news for specs that will suit the best simracing ffb needs. Although customers will undoubtely be very demanding on reliability. Is it developped internally or hand in hand with a reknown brand ?
Software parameters: SMS went an interesting route for pcars ffb for which they exposed parameters building the ffb (Fx, Fy, Mz and many other parameters). This made a powerful tool but was a pain to tweak because it was not possible to do it in realtime. As a member (funding community) I tried to lobby for a button box (or at least an API to be able to make the buttons ourselves) that would allow tweaking those ffb parameters in realtime (which of course was way beyond their acceptable demands).
This is what I would love to see on your DD, ffb parameters than can be tweaked in realtime so we can feel the result of the changes immediatly, while driving. Otherwise those tweakings take a huge amount of time and most people get discouraged. Realtime is the way to go, with still the possibility to save the parameters to make presets of course.
I see 2 ways how this could be achieved:
1°) An external button box: it would be made of many potentiometers (or rotary switches) so you can dedicate 1 parameter to 1 switch, which allow much more direct tweaking ability compared to a single switch for which you would change the associated setting by navigating though a list of parameters.
2°) Voice command: an alternative that would undoubtely be worse looking into. I was using voice recognition for flight sim a few years in the past (tweak flaps, command landing gear, command flight computer display etc) and it was very efficient as I could do a lot of things while still remaining focused on my flying.
Imagine how powerful it would be to be able to tweak your DD WB and ffb parameters by voice. You could make the tweaks without removing your hands from the steering wheel for a perfect feel of the change you are doing. It would also be great for VR helmet users for whom a button box is less convenient (and VR helmets have built-in mic). Also the voice recognition tech is mature enough for that kind of use (it was already ok years ago when I used it for flight sim) and I guess it is accessible enough to integrate it to your product. I think it would be fantastic to put on our VR helmet and be able to call back a ffb preset by just saying the name it was saved to (I would still want to be able to display in the VR view a summary of all current settings to ease up the tweaking management).
Using both the AF and OSW reveals some pro's and con's to each system that some users fail to recognize imo. There are currently some titles that are not able to leverage their FF system to reach optimal results and much of the OSW community limit their use to iRacing and may have little experience with other titles using DD systems so some issues are not discussed or solved by hardware / game developers.
It's not that any of the DD-systems aren't great - they are but, they could be even better across more titles. Being that Fanatec already has some very nice wheels / features / hardware available makes entry into the DD market a good choice imo - especially if console support can be offered.
One thing that the OSW users would like is broad support for custom wheels, QR's and button boxes being that many of them already have invested significant expense to purchase one-off wheels / BB's and displays.
As more Sim-racers move to VR, button layout and variation becomes more important also while display use may be less important.
Advanced FFB tuning options are great for some but, it might be best to offer a couple of different paths depending on how deep the user wants to go into the tuning process (Basic / advanced). Personally, I like SimCommander's tuning options but, some find it overly complicated and totally unnecessary so it's better to design for different preferences from the start imo.
These are just some of the things that you may want to consider while in the design process imo. I look forward to seeing what you develop for the Sim-racing market and I think more and more players are going to move to DD-wheel use. What many Sim-racers don't yet understand is how DD use can be trans-formative for racing games, spurring growth and even greater interest in the hobby / sport.
But i think it's quite a big effort to make someting like this.
When I tweak my ffb (cswv2 owner), the first thing I set is the force felt at the highest speed turn. This is what I consider being my "main ffb strength". I try to set it to leave as many room as possible for understeer and oversteer effects (so I keep an eye at clipping too). I also consider reaching a strength that is not ridiculously low or high, and if I plan an endurance race I admit I tend to set it a (slightly) bit lower to help consistency and limit physical strain.
When this is done I generaly face 2 mains issues: unbalanced effects strength and exagerated sharpness/harshness of effects.
Unbalanced effects strength: the main unbalancing concerns understeer/oversteer. Either they are not felt enough to be a good help when trying to reach the grip limit, or they are felt too strong and then they disturb your driving by interfering too much with your inputs.
Another frequent unbalancing is the kerbs vibrations and also the bumps/holes of the track (and effects when going offtrack, like grass / sand). Ideally I want kerbs vibrations strong enough to feel well when I'm driving on it (for non flat kerbs of course) but not too strong so it doesn't feel unnatural. Same for bumps/holes on track which can sometime feel overdone (although I admit I have no real reference point to judge that). And same for off-track which often produces very unpleasant effect when overdone in term of strength.
Exagerated sharpness/harshness: when I got the csw (it was the v1 at this time) I was coming from your gt3rs wheelbase. By nature the latter produced very soft/smooth ffb, the effects were always very pleasant even with old and/or arcade games titles. I was very disturbed when I switched to the much more analytic csw as ffb effects were felt so harsh in comparison with the gt3rs. It was probably partially due to project cars which was still in development at this time, but I had the same feeling with older games I tried (or just more arcade games, like when I tried "the crew" with the cswv2). It took me some time to get used to that more analytic wheelbase producing sharper ffb effects, for some time I was even regretting the great smoothness of my previous gt3rs.
Fortunately I got used to this over time, although some effects can still feel exessively sharp from time to time. So with my dream ffb unit I would like to be able to tweak that, by softening some effects while still keeping sharpness where it is needed and without loosing the finest details (which seems one of the main strength of DD wheelbases).
Although from what I know about how ffb effects are produced I understand doing the above may be a very complicated task. I guess it could only be done well if you can work with the game developper to get access to the forces computed by the physics engine and that are used to make the ffb effects. With such a deep access you can then tweak the balance for each force mixed to create the ffb, and you can also apply filtering on each independently before mixing them, which allow a more refined tweaking.
This is basically what pcars was offering, although it was not tweakable in realtime. And even if this is allowing a more fine tweaking than applying filtering over the final ffb signal (after mixing) I guess it would still remain difficult to target a specific effect like tweaking kerbs vibration specifically for exemple (making it stronger/weaker, sharper/softer, without affecting the rest of the effects).
Assetto corsa uses a different method. While I guess the main ffb is still built using the same method (by mixing forces at the rack computed by the physics engine, and iirc some other forces taken elsewhere like at the suspensions), this title doesn't offer access to this mix balancing/filtering to the player (so it would require to work with kunos if you want to get access to it). But this title also use an additionnal layer where some effects are "canned effects". This is the case for kerbs vibrations, or also understeer (with an optionnal function they call "enhanced understeer", which is a good starting point but lack tweaking possibilities to be really usable. Atm I find it too unnatural to use it, but it could be very good and helpful if we could tweak some parameters about it). This additionnal layer of canned effects has the benefit of letting you do that specific filtering, affecting a precise effect only with the others remaining untouched.
And then we have the games with which you have almost no access at all to the ffb parameters and with which you can only apply filtering over the final signal. Doing so would certainly produce the less efficient/precise tweaking, unless you manage to make a superfast AI able to identify effects to apply filtering on specific ones only.
Finally, Dean is also right that too much or too complicated parameters discourage many users. It is certainly good to have different tweaking levels like he suggests, for exemple with a simple mode where you would have a single parameter for sharpness affecting the whole ffb. A deeper level could allow the same (+levels) by frequency bands (would this let you isolate kerbs vibrations ?). And then the deepest level for hardcore users where you put all the tweaking possibilities you manage to create.
Still related to Dean comment, I would suggest you create a server side presets database. So people with little time or will to create complicated presets could at least download them very easily, with a built-in feature so there is no mess with dowloading and copying files in a given folder. The user would just select a game and could then choose to use presets made and shared by other users, being global presets or even per car presets. This would promote and take advantage of the work of the community of users, and would justify your work on offering deep tweaking possibilities. Because even if 0.1% of the users make use of it, you can be sure a large part of the userbase will take benefit of the presets shared by those 0.1%. If it works well you can even later add votes/comments/downloads to help filtering the most popular presets.
I have been wondering for a long time if a ffb pedal set would be technicaly doable (and commercialy viable).
I mean pedals driven by motors or actuators.
This would allow for insane possibilities like:
- tweakable pressing feel
- variable throw
- tweakable clutch hard point (position and feel !)
- clutch slipping effect
- realistic and tweakable ABS effect (by pushing back the brake pedal)
- presets (completely different pedals feel from car to car !)
The same could apply to a H-shifter (one day, I used a user-made program that was emulating a H-shifter with the old microsoft sidewinder ffb flightstick):
- tweakable number of gears
- tweakable gear engaging feel
- tweakable throw
- tweakable resistance (neutral)
- tweakable gears spacing
- badly-engaged gear effect !
- presets
Also about the vibration motors on the pedals (brake and gaz): the current version using the motors and moving mass is nice as a decorative effect but the latency is too high (the time it takes for the motor to induce a fast enough rotation to the mass to produce the vibration) to make this feature really usable as a wheel lock/spin signal.
I have been thinking for some time about trying a mod based on a lower latency vibration system, and that would not be attached to the pedal set but integrated in elastic straps that would be worn over ankles (so no possible crosstalk, and I hope good feel of the vibrations). Although to be convenient I guess it would ideally require to be wireless. I wonder if this would become fast enough (latency) to really help you react in time to wheel lock/spin, or if it still could not beat relying on visual and sounds informations.
And a last idea which came to my mind one day: contracting straps to wear over thighs to transmit haptic feel for centrifugal force in curves. Because in a real car (maybe not/less in a racecar where you are hold well by a harness, idk), you tend to contract thigh muscles to resist this centrifugal force.
I wonder if such a system would make it easier to go to the grip limit in curves by the use of memory muscle, as I always found complicated to find this limit in a sim, where such force is missing (unless you have a moving cockpit to simulate it).
What a weekend it's been for Fanatec
Quick release and backward compatibility with rims is great to hear.
In regards to options in the software I would personally like:
Motor Gear Ratio Changing (increase/lower torque <> increase/lower wheel rotation speed)
Personal gear change indicators. Allow me edit what the wheel displays / how the LEDS flash etc when I'm hitting the limiter etc.
Ability to adjust each FFB input the game sends to the base on a more granular level (Not Just FFB = 100) e.g. FFB (Bumps) FFB (OverSteer) etc and allow us the ability to adjust all of these individually from 0-200% (if the game sends them in such a recognisable manner of course)
Auto Clutch
USB Data Output on the base that we can use to connect USB Dials/Dash/Rev Counters directly to etc.
Temperature Monitor by default in when menu.
Time/Clock in menu
Ability to download community setups (uploaded by users here on the forums) much like steam workshop (Like having Pit Crews / Engineers for those less likely to tweak but still want the best effects)
Dual Firmware capability for those testing and wanting to keep a stable base for gaming.
Macro recording (some games require we bring up a menu, move the joystick to select the fuel mix, close the menu). Recording a macro that maps this particular set of movements to a single button on the base (directly in the driver) would be exceptional. This can be done in the driver application or in the wheel base menu.
Ability to adjust clutch throw/sensitivity in the wheel menu.
Ability to manually set a cruise control / speed limiter buttons etc in the pc driver menu. When button "x" is pressed the speedo can not send output above 59kph etc.
Emulation mode (emulate a CSWv1/v2/v2.5/CSR Elite / CSL Elite etc
The ability to control the brake / accelerator rumble motors directly from the base (customise their rumble effect/strength etc)
I'll keep thinking and update this post with other ideas, perhaps one or two may be useful
https://www.gtplanet.net/thrustmasters-new-gt-sport-wheel-to-include-direct-drive-motor/