April 21, 2021
#423
Gentle reader,
A little backstory: I was never much interested in computers until I watched my wife copy and paste a paragraph in a work processing program. "Whoa! How did you do that and what else can this do?" At that point in 1996, I became interested in PCs and my old portable Olivetti typewriter was forgotten.
As time went by I built an entire PC, a 586 Tower. I used a processor from the now defunct Cyrus chip company. That dates it.
Anyway, I am retired after 44 years working first as a dealership auto mechanic and then on our nation's capital's subway cars.
The point of that little tale is that I have a LOT of experience working on things that if one does something wrong, they could very well end up dead. I have been hit with 700 volts DC twice, fortunately, both times it went in and to ground through the same hand.
This is the face of Microsoft's proprietary Steering Wheel which they created to work exclusively (and wirelessly) with their then-new Xbox 360 console. It includes an equally nice set of pedals.
Microsoft played their cards right when they decided to enter the lucrative world of GAMING and came out with their original Xbox console. Since that happened, a LOT has changed. Now their most popular racing series, Forza Motorsport is up to number seven and runs on their new Xbox ONE S consoles.
I have never been on to have to have the latest and greatest. For example, I do not want nor need a smart phone. If I want to go onto the Internet, I do it the way God intended, I sit down at my PC and open a browser. And I am perfectly happy with my Sonim XP3 military-grade flip phone. It doesn't even have a camera. Over all the years of flip phones I have used I have used it's tiny camera ONE time to send my wife a photo of something she was looking for at the hardware store. But I digress.
Another way I am old fashioned is that I shift gears myself while driving. Below is the gearshift of my turbocharged 2005 Volvo V50 wagon. Not a bit of "tech" anywhere on that dash.
While today's kids cannot imagine a world without smart "devices" and a constant connection to the worldwide network of computers called The Internet, and thus they seem to have been born innately knowing how to play electronic games, I was not. As a result, I cannot "drive" with a controller
To operate a vehicle, real or virtual, I MUST have a steering wheel, pedals, a sturdy stand to hold same and a way to SHIFT the virtual gears in the virtual transmission of whatever I am pretending to operate.
Above is the Logitech steering wheel made for the SONY PS3 console. I have updated it with carbon fiber-looking larger paddles. Note, at the right of the wheel is the shift-knob for pretend sequential transmission I might be operating.
NOW, all THAT being said, have YOU ever wondered just HOW that plastic wheel and pedals can make that virtual car do what you want it to? No? Well, I have.
This is a shot of my "Simulation Station". By the way, I have written a number of articles about simulation racing, here is a link to a LIST of LINKS to each and every previous article:
The Robb Collections: INDEX TO Simulation Racing THE ROBB COLLECTIONS
Once again, the tiny microswitch inside my steering wheel has had enough and would shift no more. And I cannot drive in Automatic mode!
I have replaced the steering wheel at least five times in all the years I have been racing. The first time I physically broke the right (upshift) paddle! I know that I am not alone in having done that. Since then, I shift less aggressively, but still the microswitches, they wear out.
So, I looked for yet another used wheel on eBay. I found one which the seller promised worked perfectly.
Yet, when it arrived, NOTHING worked! With the AC power plugged in, pressing the "horn" button did nothing. Nor with two AA batteries in their pack.
So, I tried the battery holder from my old wheel and at last it came on and worked.
BUT, when using battery power, ONLY the wheel, shifter paddles and pedals work. NO: Feedback of any kind, nor the vibrations which greatly help the racer to feel what their car is doing.
I contacted the seller and he offered to refund half the money since I said that I could probably fix it. I had not taken one apart before, BUT, I have fixed THOUSANDS of things in my lifetime. What could go wrong?
Let's start with what I found once I figured out how to get the wheel itself apart and separated from the base.
There is the motor what provides the jerks when one bounces over a curb or any other bumpy surface on the virtual tracks.
The small tan board on top, with three wires attached, is for a sensor which reads the large gear's position and tells the console whether the wheel is centered (the car is going straight) or is turned and how far, and which direction.
You can just see the small round sensor at about 8 o'clock by the largest gear. The wheel is directly attached by that white shaft of the large gear. A pinion gear (the smaller one attached to the medium sized one) is rotated by largest gear when the wheel is turned. That medium sized gear which is part of the pinion gear assembly, turns the motor or vice versa.
The motor will jerk or move the wheel in your hands when a virtual tire or tires encounters rough pavement or curbs.
This photo by Dave Alan of Getty Images, shows a rough curb. If you look at the far curb (left side of the photo) you will see it is almost saw-toothed. There ARE smooth curbs, also painted red and white which race cars jump over like this:
Oh, look! A racing Volvo! Yes, my favorite racer, New Zealand's Scott McLaughlin racing his Volvo S60 in the V8 Supercars Series in 2014. They race mostly in Australia and a few times a year in New Zealand. For more: Supercars - YouTube
To me, and millions of others, Supercars provides the BEST racing experience. Did you KNOW that in Forza 4 one can buy and drive several authentic V8 Supercars? Just look at the bunch of racing sedans under FORD or HOLDEN and you too can virtually experience these awesome cars.
This is one of the two vibration motors which are glued into the TWO silver portions of the bottom of the wheel. They and the chrome ring between them create the flat bottom of the wheel. The paddles are physically part of the lighter grey portion of this assembly. Above you can see the "L" shaped levers which press the microswitches which tell the console to upshift or downshift.
Here is the inside of the back of the wheel's center arms/column. You can see the two springs which push the paddles back to their original position after you let them go. Do you see the two square silver and black devices with a round black button in their centers? Those are the microswitches the "L" shaped levers press. The board is facing you, but inside the wheel it faces away from you.
Now it is facing up, or towards the driver. The smaller board is the one within the "horn" portion of the wheel center. Three carbon switches are closed when any of the three buttons are pressed. On the larger board beneath that, you can see the eight carbon switches which are closed by the "L Pad" on the left side and the four colored buttons on the right side. See below:
You can clearly see the "L Pad" on the left, the three buttons on the "horn" and the four colored buttons on the right. Pretty cool, right? This large board, 90 degrees left of and upside down from the position is occupies in the right side of the white portion of the wheel platform assembly. For example, the AC power plug inserts into the cylindrical black thing at the bottom left corner. Directly above that is where the telephone plug from the PEDALS plugs in. Yes, it IS a telephone plug from a "landline" type telephone.
On the right side, top, the clear thing is a projector for the green LED power indicator. Below that is the microswitch operated by the small white button one presses to sync the wheel/pedals to the console. At the bottom right is where one can plug in their Microsoft Gaming Headset.
This last and smallest board, is wired to the main board shown above. The curly (and blurry) metal things are AA battery terminals.
I do not know what the six gold terminals are for, but suspect they are test terminals for use when the wheel has been freshly built (or rebuilt) to test all the moving parts and make sure they are working as they should be prior to shipping it out to the stores then finally to us.
Hopefully, you now have a much better understanding of the complex devices needed to virtually operate a virtual wheeled vehicle. Do these work on Tanks and such? I have no idea.
Blogger just notified me that by the end of July, 2021, they will not longer be able to e-mail followers with news of new articles. Sigh. But take heart! I WILL post new Racing Simulation articles to the Facebook Forza Motorsports 4 Group.
Thank you SO much for taking the time to read my humble blog. When I began doing this, it was just for fun. To my surprise, people READ it, more than 300,000 so far!
Scott
April 21, 2021
#423
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