F1 2013: Logitech Wheel Settings & Setting a Profile Tutorial

[Trux]

Here's my settings for DFGT and how to set up specific game settings :
(these settings also work with G25 & G27)

F1 2013 PC


If you wish to create a specific profile here's how;

Logitech profile

Open Logitech Profiler
Click Profile > New
Type in F1 2013
Click Browse
Browse to where your F1 2013.exe is located
(mine is C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\common\f12013)
Select the icon and click ok.

Back to the profiler:
Click Edit and select Specific game settings

Check the box marked Overall Effects Strength and set slider to 70%
Spring Effect Strength 0%
Damper Effect Strength 0%
Check the box marked Enable Centering Spring and set the slider to 0%
Check the box marked Use Special Steering Wheel Settings
Leave the box marked Report Combined Pedals unchecked
Set slider for degrees of rotation to 300deg
Check the box marked Use Special Game Settings
Check the box marked Allow Game to Adjust Settings.

To ensure the profile is set automatically each time you start the game
ensure you do this:

In the Profiler click options
Select Global Profiler Settings
Choose the option Apply profiles to games automatically
Click OK


In Game
Go into Advanced Wheel Settings

Steering Deadzone 0%
Steering Saturation 30% (effects responsiveness.. 30% is perfect for 300deg)
Steering Linearity 50% (This gives one to one linearity with the in game wheel)
Throttle Deadzone 0%
Throttle Saturation 0%
Brake Deadzone 0%
Brake Saturation 0%

Force Feedback Options
Environmental Effects 60% (Effects Off Track Rumble, Curbs etc. Adjust to Preference)
Feedback Strength 100% (Adjust in the Profiler start with 70% and tweak to preference)
Wheel Weight 0% (Wheel feels heavy enough and you should be able to feel the resistance of the tyres just fine. If you want more weight in the wheel increase the FFB strength in the profiler)
Override Input Device set to steering wheel.

Test:


Disclaimer:

There are many differing wheel settings available by searching the web and in the end it's all got to be down to what suits each individual pilot.
The Logitech profiler settings I posted above are commonly used throughout the simracing world across many titles.
They were recommended by Logitech with the degrees of rotation set to 460 or 540 when GTR2 came out with overall FFB set to 101%.
The only time I change them in any of my sims is I set the Overall Effects Strength to 107% for iRacing as recommended by their staff a few years back, this ensures the best feel without clipping.
Obviously I change degrees of rotation depending on the title I am playing as not all sims support 900deg.
101% FFB (as recommended for GTR2) is too strong though for F1 2013 in my opinion so a setting of around 50% - 80% is recommended. Once You have tested with it set to 70% in the profiler you can go into Specific game settings via the edit tab and either raise or lower to you requirement.

Using these settings exactly as described above will stop the wheel becoming light when you reach lock. Try it and see.
If your car understeers for the track your on then adjust your setup to make the car turn in better rather than increase Steering saturation.

As I said though at the end of the day it's all user preference.
Hopefully my settings will help some peeps though or at least give you a good base to work from.

 

[r2dc2]

I blame Codemasters for not having proper literature explaining all the settings. Did they spend on their budget on game designers and could not afford to hire instruction manual authors?

After hundreds of hours messing around on F1 2011 and F1 2013 on PS3 with a DFGT and G27, I've come to a reasonably sound conclusion on wheel settings. Without the logitech profiler found the PC only, the wheel settings on PS3 are less complicated but no less easy. Not only is the wheel settings different for every edition of F1 on the PS3, they also seem different between their PS3 and PC counterparts!

PS3 wheel rotation in F1 games is locked to 220 degrees with the DFGT and G27. Unless you use the 'secret code' detailed elsewhere on the forum to expand the G27's rotation. Here's what each setting really does:

Advanced Wheel Settings:
Steering Deadzone: self explanatory. You don't really need it above 0%, though in F1 2013 0.25% can make it a tiny bit less jittery.

Steering Saturation: The controversial setting. This affects the sensitivity of the wheel past about 50% rotation. i.e. how quickly you get to full lock. Take 5 mins and try this: park the car on the grass, use cockpit view and turn your wheel. The controller wheel has 110 degrees of lock from center to full left or full right. With saturation at 0%, the in-game wheel should reach the end of its travel the same time as your controller wheel hits max lock,display lag times not withstanding.

Now crank the steering saturation to 60% or so. Repeat the cockpit view maneuver. You'll see that when you turn your controller wheel to about 45-50 degrees, the in-game wheel has maxed out to full lock. The remainder of your controller's rotation has no more effect on the in-game wheel and car. You have already reach maximum steering in game. i.e. it's fully saturated before your controller has reached the end of its rotation. The saturation is the very thing that is causing drivers to complain about loss of FFB in corners in F1 2010 and F1 2011! Once the car is moving, and when you turn the wheel in tight corners (eg. Sepang Turn 1), once the in-game steering has reached full lock, FFB disappears totally irregardless if your controller wheel still has rotation left in it! The loss of FFB is the signal that the in game steering has reached full lock with the PS3. (This loss of FFB problem did not last beyond F1 2012 thankfully.)

Don't believe me? back off saturation to 0%, and go for a drive. The loss of FFB mid-corner feel isn't there. Turn wheel saturation up, and try again. The higher the saturation, the faster the game steering reaches full lock compared to your controller wheel, and the faster the FFB goes away.

Despite this, it's useful to have 1-5% saturation in the wheel, I find that it helps me get through the tight hairpins easier (eg. Loews at Monaco and Abu Dhabi hairpins).

Steering Linearity: Similar to Saturation, but it affects the initial half of steering wheel rotation instead of the later half. The higher it is the slower the car will react to your initial steering input. Parking the car on the grass in cockpit view and steering the wheel really helps visualise this. On F1 2011 PS3 I can see 0% is 1:1 mapping. But some may feel that this makes the car very twitchy, though it really helps flick the car through fast chicanes. Setting it up to 5% slows the initial steering a little and is reasonable in F1 2011 PS3.

However I found that in F1 2013 PS3, 30% seems to be the 1:1 setting. going above 40% makes the car feel slower to react, while below 20% the car is very jumpy and twitchy. In simple terms to help you visualise, with low linearity (below 25% in F1 2013) you turn your controller wheel 5 degrees and the in-game wheel would have turned 6 degrees. Go really high on Linearity in F1 2013 PS3, and with a 5 degree turn of the controller wheel the in-game steering would have turned 3 degrees.

The Linearity setting in very crucial to getting the car to hold its line on long, fast corners like Turn 3 at Catalunya and the Turn 7 complex at Istanbul. Too high and the car doesn't turn in fast enough even as you wind on more steering lock. Too low (really only possible rom f1 2012 PS3 onwards), and the the car turns in too quickly (and spins out mid corner) with a short flick of the wrist.


Try two extremes to understand linearity and saturation. Crank Linearity to max and Saturation to max. You'll have a comically undriveable car that is lethargic to initial steering input, then as you wind on more lock will spin you around abruptly.

This bit works only in F1 2012 and F1 2013 because of the different linearity scale: turn both Linearity and Saturation to minimum. You'll have a quick reacting car at initial steering, then the steering seems to evaporate the further you turn the wheel.


Here's a very simple graph to show roughly what saturation and linearity does. The trouble is, while they go in the same direction, the curve settings are different for the different games. Also the way the linearity and saturation interact at the mid point where they crossover varies between games too.

Force Feedback:
Environmental Effects: 0% is off, 100% is full power. Effect of the rumble strips, punctures and road bumps. Setting it high can make it more immersive overall, but I found that I was worried about the rumble strip effects, which can be very violent, rattling my steering wheel to bits!

Feedback Strength: 0% is off, 100% is full power. The main tyre grip feedback is controlled by this setting, the bit where you feel the wheel lightening when the tyres start to run out of grip. I don't think it clips out or overloads the amplifier at 100%, and there is little benefit from lowering it too far.

Wheel Weight: The return to center/damper spring. This one is mostly dead weight, but oddly, the lower the the setting, the wider range of 'flop' you get around the wheel centering. It's a flawed tuning set. Rather than actually control the centering spring resistance, it controls where in the rotation circle the resistance starts. Leave it at 0% and the wheel simply flops from full lock left to right with no resistance until in-game traction related FFB engages, or it hits the in-game set full-lock endpoints. Raise it to 50% and the first 45 degrees of rotatation each way has no resistance. Put it to 100% and the wheel has weight the moment it is turned.

The greater the difference between Wheel Weight and Feedback Strength, the more detail you'll feel in the force feedback. But the big caveat is at wheel weight settings of less than 100% the wheel has no resistance around the centre point and feels very toy-like, and makes it very difficult to keep the car pointed straight.

 

[Awong124]

I always have saturation at 0%. Almost each of the games from F1 2010 - F1 2014 seem to require a different setting for linearity. The setting for F1 2010 won't feel the same on F1 2011. I've always had linearity somewhere between 25% and 40%.

 

[mu22stang]

That's quite a post, though I'm not in agreement. I also spend many days researching and testing. I too am displeased with the lack of explanation for each setting. Just to clarify, the steering wheel animation is completely useless and should not be reference at all.

In my experience, linearity simply controls the rate at the second half of the steering rotation, not the first. A high setting (e.g. 100%) yields a parabolic steering rack that quickens towards either end of lock. A low setting (e.g. 0%) yields a linear input-to-output ratio (1:1).

Saturation, which is always a linear setting, compresses the input rotation range to the output rotation range. The higher the setting (e.g. 100%), the faster the steering rack ratio.

Force feedback any higher than 40-50% on F1 2013 all but eliminates the understeer force "dropout." If I could run it a 100% and feel the tires lose grip, I would. I usually run about 30%.

With a T500RS on F1 2013, I first set the wheel to 360 degrees of rotation (mode button + right D-pad, I think 1 blink...). Linearity is set to 0% for 1:1 ratio. Saturation was set to about 8%, yielding 330 degrees of user rotation according to the below formula (I don't recall the source).

(total wheel degrees of rotation) x (1 – saturation %) = (angle of rotation)

360 x (1 - .08) = 331.2

 

[Awong124]

In my experience, linearity simply controls the rate at the second half of the steering rotation, not the first. A high setting (e.g. 100%) yields a parabolic steering rack that quickens towards either end of lock. A low setting (e.g. 0%) yields a linear input-to-output ratio (1:1).

I don't agree with this part. I increase linearity to make it less twitchy on center.

Force feedback any higher than 40-50% on F1 2013 all but eliminates the understeer force "dropout." If I could run it a 100% and feel the tires lose grip, I would. I usually run about 30%.

I agree with this part. It's the reason why I run FFB strength at 10%.

 

[r2dc2]

In my experience, linearity simply controls the rate at the second half of the steering rotation, not the first. A high setting (e.g. 100%) yields a parabolic steering rack that quickens towards either end of lock. A low setting (e.g. 0%) yields a linear input-to-output ratio (1:1).

Saturation, which is always a linear setting, compresses the input rotation range to the output rotation range. The higher the setting (e.g. 100%), the faster the steering rack ratio.

I think you're right. Then the graph would look like this:

But I think this is only true for F1 2010 PS3 and F1 2011 PS3.


The F1 2012 PS3 and F1 2013 PS3 graph would look like this, and can others confirm this for me? Linearity at 0% makes the cars really jumpy and somewhat 'floaty' around the initial steering just left and right of centre. I think the true zero is somewhere between 25% to 35%, though without actual hard data it's very hard to guess:



I would still argue that the steering wheel and tyre rotation animation still correlates to the controller's movements when the car is parked. But what makes it feel wrong is that there is a small amount of un-tunable speed sensitive steering built into the game. i.e., the faster the car goes, the less steering lock is applied for the same amount of controller rotation. This is really apparent in F1 2010 and F1 2011 PS3 in Melbourne. You have to swing the wheel full lock right to get through many of the 3rd gear chicanes's first corners. And also in Canada at the last chicane.

The shape of the Linearity curve means that if it's set high, small corrections in the middle of long high speed curves are very hard to do accurately. In F1 2011, The Turn 8 complex in Istanbul, Shanghai Turn 1, as well as the last corner in Hungary was really hard to get through with a linearity setting above 20% or so. While holding a constant speed, and with Linearity above 20%, I go from consistent, predictable understeer to sudden oversteer once my steering lock passes a definite point, which is where I guess the steering graph transitions from a gentle slope to slanting steeply upwards.

F1 for PS3 has got very little documentation. Even the steering wheel setup guide on the playseat website is wrong. With our heads, we should be able to come up with a definitive guide to which setting does what.

 

[mu22stang]

Some interesting points indeed. I may try 30% linearity on F1 2013 when I get some time. Although, if history provides any insight into F1 2015, any knowledge gained will be for naught. I really don't mind if they change it, but an explanation for each setting would be welcomed.

 

[r2dc2]

Although, if history provides any insight into F1 2015, any knowledge gained will be for naught. I really don't mind if they change it, but an explanation for each setting would be welcomed.

Right on! We are intelligent enough to understand some in depth explanation, if only we had it. Geoff Crammond's grand prix 3 from 1999 had a really nice detailed manual that no other f1 game has surpassed to date.

I too can't understand why the steering wheel settings are never the same year on year. They're constantly moving goal posts

Here's another interesting thing i've noticed. I actually work in the auto industry in singapore and have been up close at f1 promo events. I have witnessed in close quarters sebastian buemi play f1 2012 with a t500rs n red bull f1 playseat, and daniil kvyat play f1 2013 with a g27 at media events they attended.

Buemi got caught out by f1 2012's understeery tyre modeling and understeered into the wall at anderson bridge hairpin in game at the singapore track.

Kvyat was running 3 laps in f1 2013, steering all at zero percent, and i could see he was seriously perplexed by the strange, floaty non linear steering. He kept over correcting. So much that he stuck the car into the wall at turn 7 in singapore, in game, in front of 300 guests watching. Was kind of embarassing.

I bet the drivers hate these events. The announcer always goes, " and here tonight is sebastian buemi, setting a lap time for us in our f1 simulator!" While buemi's probably thinking, "simulator my ass. This is an arcade game."

The f1 series is a great racing game with some intelligent racing AI, but there are too many hoops for most people to jump through before we find the serious racing intensity buried within.

Well here are some random bonus photos from this year's singapore grand prix that i took from the paddock, just to show that i do work in F1 when its in singapore.

The paddock in the evening:


Before race start: