You've been very helpful, thanks. I'm not sure I would have tried going that low on the Steering Force but that seems to be the key. I won't be adding much damper, too much and it makes things start to feel numb. But maybe adding 10% or so would help with the lightness/deadzone around center? I know a lot of people advocate for a lighter wheel, but I spent 15 years racing on consoles where I didn't know about clipping so I just cranked the FFB to the max and it's proven difficult to shake the FFB expectations I developed from doing that. What I felt last night was pretty light but still felt good and by the end I was kind of enjoying it. I found if I upped the steering force by even a couple percent the "soft lock" feeling would start to come back in the turns, so I'll probably leave it there and just tinker with the vert/lat/damp from now on. And just to be clear, when you guys talk about adding a bit of damper you're referring to the in-game menu and not the profiler, correct? I haven't had enough time for testing to say for sure, but so far I don't think I've encountered this problem again. But, this is something I've experienced in R3E since I first started playing over a year ago, when I fire it up I never fully know what the FFB is going to feel like and that seems to be more pronounced on the CSW. My profile says I have over 250 hours in R3E and I'm not exaggerating when I say ~100 of those hours have been spent messing with the FFB. Hopefully these new changes coming down the pipe will put an end to that.
Well, it happened last night. The last test I did was last week where I lowered the steering force intensity to 30, it resulted in a much lighter wheel than I'm used to but it felt smooth throughout the steering range and didn't have this "soft lock" feeling at 90º anymore. Turned the game on last night (first time it's been on since that test, no settings have changed) and took the same car to the same track and the heavy lump in the turns was back, difficult to turn the wheel more than 90º in either direction. Absolutely nothing had changed since I last played yet the steering went from feeling light and communicative to feeling heavy and dull. I had to drop the steering force down to 20 which mostly got rid of the lump in the turns but felt way too light around the center and seemed to lose most information from the tires/road/suspension. Seriously frustrating, there was a whole lot of cursing going on last night. I've heard rumors some new FFB settings may be coming in the future, I think this game is going back on the shelf until then because it's rather silly having to spend 20-30 minutes screwing with the FFB settings every time I turn the game on.
Interestingly, although probably more to me than you since it's regarding the T500 but saw a similar post to my issue on the ISRTV forum today. http://www.isrtv.com/forums/topic/20365-t500rs-ffb-inconsistent-please-help-p/ This is what I have, one day light, the next heavy. I don't get the dead around centre issue but is incredibly light compared to the previous session. For now I've just gone back to the default setup for both profiles and adjust the vertical load to get the weight I want during the practice of the race. I'm happy with this until we can save the FFB for each car which I reckon is right around the corner... hopefully!
I really hope that you can use the same FFB setting for all cars when all cars have the same "updated physics".
I ended up doing as suggested somewhere here and creating 3 different controllers configs, old cars grp5 2014dtm and before, gt3 and another for 2015 dtm, its a pain having to switch but it makes the feeling a little better across the board.
I have also one for old physics cars, but whilst testing I can use the same settings for all updated cars. Best part of it is that all the updated cars feel different.
It gets on my tits when i forget to swap profiles but its not so much of an issue as the actual old feel.
will i still need damper thats my main question? I pray the min force can eradicate the use for this at centre!