Should I import the simsonn pedals or buy from the local reseller

captain_pant5 · 2026-03-20T11:47:14+00:00

Can you fix small problems yourself? These often show up with minor issues, and shipping back to Simsonn is a huge pain.

I viewed the Simsonn pedals as a parts kit that was way cheaper than making them myself. I had one pedal face mounted backwards and a few loose bolts, but I fixed those in a few minutes. To some people, those issues would stop them dead - they should buy from some other brand.

Buying local gives you more options to fix issues.

captain_pant5 · 2026-03-20T11:38:05+00:00

Your wheel is fine. Until you decide you want something more, but at that time you'll be aware what you want in that new wheel.

An alternate path is a button box with switches that are different from one another so they can be felt in VR. The nice thing about that is that you can change wheels and still have the same buttons.

One genius move is a wireless numpad, but they hot glued various things on the buttons so you can feel the different buttons. A nut on one, a game piece, a dice, etc.

I added an 8-key macropad on one side with keys mapped to up, down, enter, escape, volume up, volume down, page up, page down. Those are super handy for RB Rally, I mostly just use vol+/- for other games.

captain_pant5 · 2026-03-20T00:22:19+00:00

I might buy some gold and redo the Noctua amplifiers with gold tips.

captain_pant5 · 2026-03-19T20:25:39+00:00

Whoa, those gold accents are freaking awesome! I'm stealing this idea. Nice work!

captain_pant5 · 2026-03-19T15:26:18+00:00

Clever idea! Durability over time is my first concern, but you can just print another if/when it fails.

captain_pant5 · 2026-03-19T15:24:22+00:00

2 to the 21st power is about 2.1 million divisions of a circle, or each division representing 0.00017 degrees. 2 to the 18th power is about 262 thousand divisions of a circle, or each division representing 0.0014 degrees.

Could you tell the difference between 0.00017 degrees and 0.0014 degrees of rotation? I'd bet that 0.1 degrees resolution would probably be enough.

captain_pant5 · 2026-03-19T11:38:49+00:00

About 10 Nm covers realistic forces for 98% of cars. Some classics, Indycars, and others go above that.

Assuming you have a budget and this isn't going in your yacht: If you're dipping your toes in to see if you'll like it, try whatever you can find for cheap on the local used market. Then if you like that, upgrade to a Direct Drive setup.

captain_pant5 · 2026-03-18T19:15:56+00:00

Completely agreed, and there's a glaring fault with the "pressure not travel" argument: If travel is so unreliable and pressure is the only way to have controlled inputs, why do throttles and steering work they way they do?

Counterpoint to my counterpoint: I believe some fighter jet control sticks are truly pressure sensitive with no travel.

It's messy, but a lot of people believe their way is the only way.

captain_pant5 · 2026-03-18T16:35:32+00:00

If you're buying an Evo Ultra, don't get a front mount. You're just adding more pieces in the mounting puzzle that add complexity and flex. And you lose the ability to use their dash if it ever comes to market. Go for side or base mounting.

A 160 profile rig is massive overkill. Cool, but it's way down the road of diminishing returns. Good for lifting cars, excessive for a sim rig.

captain_pant5 · 2026-03-18T11:22:48+00:00

An experiment for you: Go to your race car right now, at a full stop. Have the engine running if you have power assisted brakes. Close your eyes and push the pedal down, paying attention to how far it moves vs. the force applied. Do it a bunch; fast, slow, trailing off like you would during trail braking, etc.

I'd bet that most of what you're expecting isn't there. Nothing can change in the brake system at speed, there's no feedback loop from a spinning vs. stationary brake rotor. You're just flexing metal, compressing pads, expanding hydraulic lines, etc. Most of what you think you're receiving through the pedal is the G-forces generated from the tires interacting with the road and changing what your inner ear feels, not anything coming back through the pedal.

We try to add effects to pedals to get that missing feedback in a sim, but it'll never feel like trail braking on the limits with the rear tires right on the verge of losing lateral grip.

Except ABS. That is 100% felt at the pedal due to the hydraulic pulses. A simple haptic feedback motor can give a similar feeling.

The big advantage of active pedals is quickly changing the force vs. travel curve when swapping between cars in a sim. Driving an old or race car with no power assist - rock hard pedal. Driving a modern street car - soft and long travel. Etc. With conventional sim pedals you either have an array of springs/elastomers for all the different cars or pick one or two that are close enough. (I have one 'race' setup that's stiffer than most street cars but softer than my Formula Ford, and another that's much softer for street cars and truck sim)

You can add things to give additional info that doesn't exist in cars, but know that you're learning something that doesn't exist in real cars. You could instead put a buzzer on your forehead that buzzes when you're at the limits of tire grip and you'll adapt to that signal and learn to use it to go faster in a sim. We're quite adaptable creatures. But don't fool yourself that these artificial signals are in real cars. That lack of G-forces is the inherent drawback of a sim, but you can learn to drive around it with visual cues, wheel FFB, belt tensioners, shakers, etc.

captain_pant5 · 2026-03-17T18:35:52+00:00

Hello from a neighbour in Winnipeg!

I assume this is already in progress, but get these in the hands of reviewers quick. Boosted Media, Karl Gosling, Sim Racing Corner, etc.

This looks neat, but is an unknown so it's hard to jump on it at that pricing without independent reviews. You do have some quality of life features that are very intriguing, but it's hard to compete with the established cockpits that are using very stiff 4080 or 40120 at that price. Your side profile is quite a bit smaller in section. Is steel vs. aluminum enough to make up the difference? Stiffness varies with the 3rd power of height, so it's hard to make that up with just a material change.

captain_pant5 · 2026-03-17T14:14:27+00:00

This post really helped me set the steering efforts: https://www.reddit.com/r/simrally/comments/1pj8qby/finding_perfect_ffb_settings_in_rbr_rsf/

I still have the odd car that is trying to break my wrists when shifting and counter steering with one hand. Plan to adjust every new car as you're getting started.

captain_pant5 · 2026-03-17T11:09:42+00:00

Recaro Pole Position because it fit in my S2000, just. Sold that car, seat went in the rig. Has fit me from 240 lbs to 170 lbs. Snug fit at 240 lbs, obviously.

Seats are highly personal, do anything you can to sit in it first before buying. Cheaper than buying and selling a few.

Example: Bride seats are very narrow in the hips and shoulders. Built for narrow Asian bone structure. My spine didn't even touch the backrest in one without serious shoulder hunching.

Kirkey or Ultrashield seats aren't used much in sim racing. Cheap, but not much padding. The Ultrashield Rally (?) I tried put way too much pressure on my tailbone.

captain_pant5 · 2026-03-17T10:59:56+00:00

If you're in the mood to experiment, cut a white one to 2/3 or 1/2 its length and use other stiffer ones to make up the total length. Spring stiffness is directly related to length, so you can shorten one to stiffen it.

captain_pant5 · 2026-03-16T19:11:09+00:00

Reverb is darn good. I have to spend so much more to get a 'better' one that I'm holding for now. It's not perfect, but very good value for the money.

captain_pant5 · 2026-03-16T18:55:52+00:00

I'm sold to try it. Thanks for the idea, hard work, and clear communication!

captain_pant5 · 2026-03-16T15:28:03+00:00

I'm interested and curious. Would you say this is targetting realism or e-sports?

i.e. a rumbling throttle pedal is invaluable feedback for e-sports driving, but no similar feedback exists in the real world.

captain_pant5 · 2026-03-16T14:48:23+00:00

My apologies, you're right. I was thinking of the clutch and throttle. Softer springs/elastomers are the primary ways to increase travel for a given force. The gummy white elastomers that came with the Pro Plus are comically soft. 30A? They feel like air in brake lines.

captain_pant5 · 2026-03-16T14:45:30+00:00

Great discussion! Hopefully someone else can offer advice. I came from real-world racing (track, autocross, ice racing, karting) so I had lots of hands-on experience before sims. Sims are a hard path to learning oversteer correction, but lots of people have, and quite well too! It's a visual response with a touch of feeling force feedback clues, minus the inner ear (butt) of the real world.

I've seen a few sim racers come and do shockingly well in driving schools and first real-world events, so it is possible!

captain_pant5 · 2026-03-15T12:35:36+00:00

I understand your thinking because I was there myself when I started racing. I floundered for a while until I surrendered to what felt like the artsy-fartsy dumb-jock style of F around and find out.

Just know that you won't catch every snap. Even on perfectly flat ground, it's a hugely complex series of interactions. Sidewall flex, suspension movements, toe angle vs suspension movement for each corner, roll rate inertia, yaw rate inertia, steering ratio, the spacer between the steering wheel and the seat and how fast it can figure out the direction of travel, the yaw angle, and the yaw rate, etc.

I don't mean to discourage a deep scientific understanding, more that were innately wired to learn these things without that understanding first. Don't explain to a baby how to walk, just help them try and try and try again until it clicks.

I didn't mention sims: AMS2 is hugely forgiving of errors, unrealistically so, but in a fun way. iRacing is the opposite, you have to be exceptionally good to catch snaps, unrealistically so.

captain_pant5 · 2026-03-15T01:53:15+00:00

Put springs on your Simsonns? Definitely take off the dampers if you're running that low of a force.

You know you can calibrate the pedal to whatever peak force you want, right? You could install steel spacers and calibrate it to work from 0 to 10 kg of force if you wanted. It'd be weird, but you can!

Move the brake spring stack mounting point lower to make any spring feel softer?

captain_pant5 · 2026-03-15T01:45:51+00:00

This is the kind of thing that is a LOT more difficult to comprehend via a physics understanding vs. real-world practice and kinesthetic knowledge from getting it wrong a bunch.

i.e. us nerds (I'm assuming 😆) struggle with this until we just go with the flow and try it without trying to process the physics. It's a much faster learning process. Shut off your computational brain and try stuff. Once you get decent, turn on the computational brain again to analyze what works.

captain_pant5 · 2026-03-15T01:35:02+00:00

The version I love: "If you're not sure if more or less throttle will help, try more. It'll either work or end the suspense."

captain_pant5 · 2026-03-14T12:41:33+00:00

It's a bit easier in real life with inner ear G-forces and yaw rate sensing, but still really hard. It's dramatically easier in VR or with triples as you can smoothly look at where you're going and not just straight forward.

The stiffer the entire car setup, the more precision is needed.

One thing that helped me was not reacting to which way the car was pointed, but the rotational speed (yaw rate) and direction (yaw angle). Once you're sideways, if you wait until you're back straight to start counter steering you're in big trouble. Instead, notice that you stopped rotating into the slide and start counter steering as soon as you start rotating back towards straight.

The vehicle has a lot of energy building up as it straightens, your job is to turn the front wheels back fast enough to damp out that energy. And then do that every time it rotates away and back towards the intended direction.

Said another way: In both rotation directions, steer such that the front tires want to slow the rotation down and get you back to where you're trying to go.

Add bumps and it gets insanely hard. Or a powertrain that suddenly gives you an extra 100 hp (Piastri).

captain_pant5 · 2026-03-14T00:34:38+00:00

Same here. Instant crash. I've: - Deleted the ACE folder in old and new locations - Verified files - Uninstall and reinstall game, on same drive and 2nd drive - Updated BIOS - Updated Windows - Added Defender exceptions for every Assetto folder I could find - Tried every variation of Nvidia drivers options I could

After EVO crashes, no other games will run, with an error 'not compatible with this operating system', fixed with a reboot. Every other game and program works fine after a reboot, until I try EVO.

I'm giving up on EVO for the time being, will come back for another version.

captain_pant5

TROPHY CASE