Force Feedback Settings Discussion

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

The USB 2 hub is connected directly to a PCI-E slot on my motherboard, and the USB C hub is connected to a USB C slot on the back of my motherboard.

You mentioned 100% spring force is excessive, though it is the default setting. Any recommendations?

[Hiob]

14 minutes ago, Raven (Elysian Angel) said:

The USB 2 hub is connected directly to a PCI-E slot on my motherboard, and the USB C hub is connected to a USB C slot on the back of my motherboard.

You mentioned 100% spring force is excessive, though it is the default setting. Any recommendations?

In the end you need to figure out what suits you best. Just make sure, that you don't exceed max motor current with all effects applied and all spring gains at 100%. I usually don't run it any higher than 65-70.

in case you aren't aware (yet) the gains (mastergain, settings gain, and effect gain) are multiplied. Only the last one is usually overwritten by the game (unless you make it sticky). So with settings gain 100% times master gain 100%, you basically allow any application (DCS in this case) to use maximum gain.

I would recommend, playing around with the settings (apply all the effects in the effects tab for testing) and monitor the telemetry in the VPforce application. Have a close look at how much current is drawn and how that feels. That gives you an idea, how much reserve you have (or have not).

In the end, trying all that stuff and figuring it out is part of the fun. 

The VP discord is also a super helpful source. 

[Ernest]

 

On 5/23/2024 at 12:44 PM, Super Grover said:

OK. I'll rephrase it. Currently, we have no direct way to control friction from the module in any FFB stick. Nonetheless, we will keep looking for options here.

DCS doesn't support friction effect? No wonder ffb from it feels so limp and frictionless... 

Edited August 30, 2024 by Ernest

[Ernest]

On 5/25/2024 at 8:19 AM, Rifter said:

Didn’t use the sidewinder for a long time. It had gathered a thick layer of dust, just like my hippocampus. STUPID ME - totally forgot about the FFB settings button in DCS!

Now for my feedback:
FFB stick has nice synchronisation with the animated flight stick. Pendulum effect of the bob weight-bellow-springs-damper-system very well comprehensible (even with my dust induced malfunctioning brain), but somehow it lacks dampening? You can create a damped oscillation around the pitch axis for the whole aircraft when letting go the stick rapidly and the stick will replicate the oscillation of the whole aircraft. Dampening then of course comes from the aircraft itself. Is that how it should work? I would have assumed that in the real F-4 the dampers in the flight stick control system should prevent that.

On the cool side:
As described by Kirk66, at takeoff with beginning of rotation I can relax the back pressure on the stick as the nose starts to rise and the stick will move willingly forward on itself for a smooth takeoff. Nice one!

As a side note: Since I have a motion system and a buttkicker I don’t need the FFB stick as a surrogate for all kinds of feedback. I can live with lower forces compared with the real aircraft as long as the force spectrum is replicated reasonably well. My Sidewinder is modded for double force output, so it has some punch though. Perhaps as encouragement for the Heatblur Team and Super Grover: In conjunction with the motion system, the spring force joystick does not feel strange or detached - motions do feel connected to flight stick movement. Which tells me that the special approach for modelling the system also for non-FFB sticks is not totally out of whack.

 

 

Im guessing dcs doesn't support dampening effect either.

[MAXsenna]

Im guessing dcs doesn't support dampening effect either.

No friction, and no dampening. Unfortunately.

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk

[T_O_A_D]

On 5/25/2024 at 2:50 PM, Domestos said:

I've ramped up the FFB Gain massively and I'm liking it very much. Does anyone know if I can do the same in the Tomcat? Maybe by editing a file somewhere? I have a Sidewinder2 mated to a CH Fighterstick like in da pic.

 

Domestos

Nice! I have done the same but my CH Stick is not quite the same, in this thread looking for what ever software you guys are using to tweak the FFb for our bases

[Biggus]

Has anyone with a Moza AB9 put together a decent profile?  I've been toying around and taking inspiration from some of the Rhino suggestions and the pdf linked in one of the threads on the first page of this topic.  I'm mostly interested in how people are modelling things like the buffet sliders.  Right now, I'm at spring 0, damper and inertia 50, friction 40, game feedback gain 100 and using the DCS F-4 gain of 200 for pitch and 150 for roll.  I've got a 200mm extension holding a Warthog grip, so that's a factor in how I'm setting things up.

[Bog9y]

On 5/28/2024 at 10:09 PM, Super Grover said:

I'm in contact with VPforce. Hopefully, soon, I'll get my hands on the glorious Rhino so I can tune all outputs from the F-4E for the best experience. And, of course, I'll do my best to find the best way to expose from the code anything the stick needs for proper operations.

Hi Super Grover, did you get a Rhino in the end? 

[Bog9y]

On 5/23/2024 at 9:21 PM, Hiob said:

I think the only effect that is completely overridden by the game is "Spring". But when you make it sticky, you loose the proper feedback in the game. You can get around this by NOT making it sticky and instead use "Balance Spring" for that. Make use of aircraft individual .conf files!

Those are my settings for the Phantom so far (still wip), if that is of any use to anybody (disregard the static force - that is only to compensate for my heavy grip):

 

What kind of FFB stick are you using?

Hi Hiob, do you still use these settings? And is your FFB gain in the DCS special options still set to 150%

Edited May 19 by Bog9y

[Hiob]

3 minutes ago, Bog9y said:

Hi Hiob, do you still use these settings? And is your FFB gain in the DCS special options still set to 150%

Hey, certainly not. I'm constantly tinkering with the settings. 
But I don't use F-4 specific settings anyway. I have a profile for fixed wing and one for helicopters, that's all.

I not using the F-4 much lately, so from the top of my head I can't tell you my special option settings.

[Bog9y]

26 minutes ago, Hiob said:

Hey, certainly not. I'm constantly tinkering with the settings. 
But I don't use F-4 specific settings anyway. I have a profile for fixed wing and one for helicopters, that's all.

I not using the F-4 much lately, so from the top of my head I can't tell you my special option settings.

Ah  , that's a shame, was hoping you had found the magical setting for the Phantom. I initially didn't use any friction or inertia and only 30% on the damper.  But I found that jet was very unstable in pitch. Adding a bit of friction solved that problem to a degree but now it feels like the stick is too stiff. I need to have another play with it to perfect it.  

[Hiob]

30 minutes ago, Bog9y said:

Ah  , that's a shame, was hoping you had found the magical setting for the Phantom. I initially didn't use any friction or inertia and only 30% on the damper.  But I found that jet was very unstable in pitch. Adding a bit of friction solved that problem to a degree but now it feels like the stick is too stiff. I need to have another play with it to perfect it.  

Unfortunately there is no such thing as a silver bullet here. For once everybody has different hardware (grip weight, extension length), and then there is different taste.
I don't have any reference on how it "should" feel anyway. 
I usually set the Rhino up without any application running. Just VP config. Tune it until it feels like a proper Aircraft control column (as you would assume).
Once I have a basic setup, I fine tune it occasionally whilst airborne. I have VP config and TelemFFB running most of the time and a quick alt tab for changing the settings a bit is all it needs.

 

For example, I came to the conclusion to reduce friction almost to zero (for fixed wing) and increase damping instead. Friction has always been a relative weak spot. The feel is hit and miss and it introduces some adverse effects like jittering dpending on the gains and filters.

For Helicopters I kept a bit more friction (single digit still) to make the stick hold in place where I put it without spring.

[Bog9y]

4 hours ago, Hiob said:

Unfortunately there is no such thing as a silver bullet here. For once everybody has different hardware (grip weight, extension length), and then there is different taste.
I don't have any reference on how it "should" feel anyway. 
I usually set the Rhino up without any application running. Just VP config. Tune it until it feels like a proper Aircraft control column (as you would assume).
Once I have a basic setup, I fine tune it occasionally whilst airborne. I have VP config and TelemFFB running most of the time and a quick alt tab for changing the settings a bit is all it needs.

 

For example, I came to the conclusion to reduce friction almost to zero (for fixed wing) and increase damping instead. Friction has always been a relative weak spot. The feel is hit and miss and it introduces some adverse effects like jittering dpending on the gains and filters.

For Helicopters I kept a bit more friction (single digit still) to make the stick hold in place where I put it without spring.

Yeh, I think that is probably best. Mess with the settings until I find something im happy with.  I really ought to just change 1 setting at a time and see the difference.

[Hiob]

8 minutes ago, Bog9y said:

Yeh, I think that is probably best. Mess with the settings until I find something im happy with.  I really ought to just change 1 setting at a time and see the difference.

I would start with no spring and adjust friction, damping and inertia to get an idea what that feels like. Then you can add spring back in. If the centering force is to weak in the middle tweak the gain curve, so that it is a bit steeper in the middle.

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

9 hours ago, Hiob said:

have a profile for fixed wing and one for helicopters, that's all.

Oh and here’s me with specific profiles for:

- warbirds;

- up to 3rd gen fixed wing;

- 4th gen fixed wing non-FBW;

- FBW jets;

- light helicopters;

- heavy helicopters;

- and a default profile I use as baseline.

I wanted to simplify my profiles too but in the end I decided using these 7 profiles works best for me.

I am quite happy with that, but as you said it depends on many factors such as grip weight, extension weight, total weight distribution of extension + grip; mounting points, …

 

3 hours ago, Bog9y said:

Mess with the settings until I find something im happy with

Yes but as Hiob said be careful, especially with friction and inertia: I’ve had very weird interactions causing oscillations.

DCS only uses the spring force and by default overwrites any software setting. I keep friction and inertia to an absolute minimum and instead put damping to what feels natural and doesn’t interfere with trimming.

Oh and I also use the default 100% on both pitch and roll for the F-4.

Edited May 19 by Raven (Elysian Angel)
Typo

[Super Grover]

On 5/19/2025 at 10:03 AM, Bog9y said:

Hi Super Grover, did you get a Rhino in the end? 

Yes, but I haven't yet finished the FFB review pass, as other items were prioritised. However, I'll probably return to this after the next update is published.

[Bog9y]

Ok, I found a settings that seems to be OK for me with a 5 cm extension and full force. 

Spring enabled and at 100%

Damper enabled and at 23%

Inertia disabled

Friction enabled and at 2%

Deadzone enabled and at 2%

 

I can be much more accurate with these settings and the pitch power couple that i experienced seems to be better too for some reason.

[asut]

On 5/20/2025 at 2:12 PM, Super Grover said:

Yes, but I haven't yet finished the FFB review pass, as other items were prioritised. However, I'll probably return to this after the next update is published.

It would be really nice if you could try F4 with Rhino and tweak the FFB settings as right now Rhino feels very weak.

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

1 minute ago, asut said:

It would be really nice if you could try F4 with Rhino and tweak the FFB settings as right now Rhino feels very weak.

Mine doesn’t

The VPForce software is brilliant for its customisability.

[Hiob]

7 minutes ago, asut said:

It would be really nice if you could try F4 with Rhino and tweak the FFB settings as right now Rhino feels very weak.

I’m with Angel on that.

You can increase the FFB gain in the special options for the Phantom up to 500% per axis.

and for the mushy center point you can steepen the gain curve in the middle in the VP config a bit.

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

Yes an I’m simply using 100%/100% and still it’s the module with strongest forces, the way I have it set up…

[asut]

On 5/24/2025 at 6:57 PM, Raven (Elysian Angel) said:

Yes an I’m simply using 100%/100% and still it’s the module with strongest forces, the way I have it set up…

Could you please share your customizations if it's not too much trouble.

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

51 minutes ago, asut said:

Could you please share your customizations if it's not too much trouble.

Here you go. If you want even more force, you can increase master gain from my 80% to 100.
Third_generation.vpconf

[asut]

24 minutes ago, Raven (Elysian Angel) said:

Here you go. If you want even more force, you can increase master gain from my 80% to 100.
Third_generation.vpconf

Thanks a lot, I'll check it out tonight.

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

12 minutes ago, asut said:

Thanks a lot, I'll check it out tonight.

Keep in mind you might want to edit it a bit to suit your particular setup, which is most likely different from mine. I use a Z-extension which offsets the grip, so that needs to be compensated in order to allow for proper re-centring.