Sim Racing / Video Games are just that. Gear for video games emulate …. Video Games. Shouldn’t even be compared to real life. They’re not selling hot air, they’re selling gear for video games. If people buy this gear thinking it’ll be close to real life, they’re delusional. It’s not even close. Super sad that people expect video game gear to be realistic like the real vehicles.
As an afterthought, they are not GAMES, they are SIMULATORS. Of course the computer can't do the same things real world physics can, but saying it's nothing alike is just inaccurate.
@@aidenless3479 - Even the real life racers call them video games. Of course the gear is fantastic, but they’re limited because they emulated for video games. Calling a racing or flying video game a sim is just a fancy name for video games. Like E-Sports when they refer to themselves as athletes.. it’s silly and narcissistic. They’re competitive video gamers.. not athletes.
I think in race cars, and F1 in particular, the pedal feel will be set to driver preference, just like their seat is moulded to their body shape - maximum comfort gets maximum performance.
@@GTFan8899 isn't it only the rear brakes that are brake by wire in F1? the fronts are still on a hydraulic system connected to the pedal if i'm not mistaken and they do this because the rear wheels are where the KERS system is connected and therefore the car wants to be able to only engage the rear brake pads when the KERS system is unable to provide the amount of braking force the driver is asking for
@@perryperch8948 however much you weigh is probably about the max pedal force you could use comfortably for long periods of time, well it is for me anyway, I have a 100kg LC on my brake and max it out comfortably, its slightly harder than doing a 1 legged partial squat
@@fathead7 Even then its about leverage too. Depending on the length of the arm for the pedal and the angle it applies you can get considerably ranges of pressure. A 200KG LC could have a leverage system that makes it softer than the T-LCM 100KG. The capability of the loadcell is more about the design and how that leverage applies it doesn't mean the pedal will necessarily take more force than another.
Yep I like mine with no travel and stiff I’m a muscle memory person, basically it’s boils down to personal preference I can’t trail break on a long travel pedal, but I can with muscle memory, I have a 100kg loadcell I only have it set to about 45% atm though about 45kg/90lbs or so, I love my loadcell pedals one of my best investments besides my wheel and rig I played on regular pedals for a while it’s just not for me
I went from simracing to (club level) motorsport, and found many interesting differences that simracing just can't ever reproduce. Regarding the braking in the real world, a firm pedal gives me the confidence to brake hard, and the long pedal travel allows me to easily modulate the brake pressure as needed depending on the circumstances (the limit of brake performance is always changing and you need to be able to adjust the amount of brake you are using to stay at that threshold of brake performance). With simracing, I'm not entirely sure that a long pedal would work the same way, simply because the g-forces and other physical sensations aren't there. With the brake modulation I mentioned, knowing how much brake to use comes from feeling how the car is decelerating, feeling how the tyres are contacting the road, how the car moves around, how the weight of the car shifts from corner to corner. In a sim, you don't get that (maybe you do in the proper high end stuff, but I never had that). It makes me think that a long pedal in a sim would be discomforting, because you aren't getting the additional information needed to make use of the long travel.
The thing that stands out from what you mentioned is the feel. In my personal car, when tracking, I just KNOW the brake point based around all the feel of the car. In the Sims even with vibrations or motion platform, any of that, it just doesn't convey the same sensations.
@@timduncan2211 Absolutely. I was reasonably ok at simracing but would still run off the road a ridiculous amount compared to in the real world. People always say that's because in the sim "there's no fear of injury, so people take more risks" - that's not how it was for me at all, it was because I found judging momentum, distance, inertia etc so much harder to do in the sim than the real world. Back to braking, that "feel" that we're talking about is critical. The amount of brake I can use is different corner to corner - and can differs throughout a single braking zone. I want some pedal travel to be able to easily feel the amount of brake pressure I'm using. In the sim, I imagine that would get confusing due to not having those physical reads on what is needed at the time.
100% agree. I've done some irl racing on track and braking always came much more natural to me than sim racing. In most sims, I really had to focus a lot of my attention on memorizing braking zones whereas irl you could just kind of feel for it and I often found myself making up time in those areas. It was more instinctive and less of a deliberate conscious decision. If anything, the sims hurt me for a while irl because I would brake too early. Once I trusted myself and the equipment, I started braking much later and my times became competitive. That being said, sims really helped me to learn the subconscious muscle memory for correcting certain... undesirable situations instinctively. Lock ups, understeer, oversteer, etc. So when I got to the track I could apply those techniques without crashing expensive cars that usually weren't mine lol. Botton line: in addition to being fun, sims can be incredibly useful training devices, especially for those of us who can't afford to make expensive mistakes on the track, but they will never simulate the thousands of tiny inputs your whole body and all of its senses is receiving every second with 0 ping in a real car.
It makes it so much easier to feel when the pedal is pushing back at you. If there’s little resistance it makes it much harder to modulate because you can’t feel it. How did the F3 drive go? And how did it happen?
The "need" for a high force, short travel pedal in sim racing is all bullshit passed from one person to another and hailed as gospel. James Baldwin says he runs a low pressure brake specifically because it's less tiring over a race and so he can be consistant. When all is said and done it's all about using what you want and practicing with what you have.
@@randomcallsign the caveat with real world driving is you have other forces at play, g forces on your body and being shaken around in the cockpit, all which would prevent careful control of the pedal if it were too soft, so there you do want a decent force at the pedal (without being ridiculous) but travel really is just a preference.
@@ravey1981 yes when you brake in a real F1 car you are pressed forwards in the cockpit by the g forces, so your ability to generate high load on the pedal increases the faster you decelerate
@@johnduncan5117 well, yes and no. You don't move forward because you are strapped tight into the seat, and you're leg doesn't move forward because it's attached to your hip. But yes there is an increase in the "weight" of your lower leg but it's not as big as people would have you believe.
@@ravey1981 Since you are moving the same speed as the car, you'd have the same amount of force regardless. Plus you're beind held by Hans and a 6 point belt.
After a LOT of research, I saw that a TON of GT3, Formula Pros used Heusinkeld Ultimates. At first I stuck with the default 3 Hard elastomers. After doing more research about the travel movement that pros used in their sims, I saw that most used 45mm-62mm pedal travel in the sims. The default elastomers in the Heusinkeld Ultimate + gave about 25mm travel so I switched to the 3 softer elastomers and I get like 50mm travel now. I created two profiles in Heusinkveld Smart Control for GT3 and Formula cars with different Max force and I pretty much have the perfect travel and pedal strength I was looking for all along.
One thing I think is being overlooked in terms of the F1 brake system is the fact it is a brake by wire system. The pedal isn't connected to any part of the braking system, it is connected to a black box that determines the amount of braking force to apply and the amount of retardation used by the Energy Recovery System. So I would say the pedal travel at least in an F1 car is a driver preference. I seem to remember that Kimi had a lot of problems adjusting to the BBW system when it was first introduced as he said the pedal felt numb and had no feedback of the braking response. Edit, as pointed out below I was incorrect in the statement I made about the pedal connection to the braking system.
A very valid point but you are kind of half right. The brake by wire only operates on the rear brakes. This was introduced as part of the hybrid harvesting system. The front is still a conventional style brake setup. Maybe purely from a safety point of view. Also because if the fronts were electronically controlled we all know some devious software engineer would probably code in an anti-lock system. 😂 But yes you are spot on. A lot of drivers didn’t like it (and some still don’t) as it removes a certain amount of "feel" when braking. During testing a few teams (Williams was one) that had rear brakes catching fire because the brake by wire just wasn’t doing what it was supposed to.
I agree with Andrew. They will never have a full brake by wire system as it would require a fail safe in terms of if something would fail. Bmw has this on their new G-chassis cars. They use a DSCi module where the brake booster would be but there is still a mechanical connection to the brakes
@@Jrock-69 can confirm, have 8 series and it actually works pretty well but it will compensate for fade which I’m not sure I’m happy about. I’d be nervous if it didn’t have a mechanical failsafe
No it's not, the pedal is connected to a Tandem Master Cylinder directly, source, I work for a company that builds the Master Cylinders for both Red Bull and Alpha Tauri
At some point along my many upgrades through the years I realized I dont have a race car to emulate, therefore the setup is up to my imagination and how I want my "race car" to feel. I stopped trying to make it feel any way but perfect for me. The most important thing is that when I think I am applying 50% brake I am actually applying 50% brake, or whatever value my brain is thinking is what my foot is also feeling. I currently use the V3s with the brake performance kit one red and one green and the foam piece and about 2 preload. Then I sat there in the calibration software until with my eyes closed I could do both 50% and 80% applications of the brake. I changed the max value until the PC was seeing what I felt was right, if I had to guess Im probably around 60-65kg at 100% even though I am more then capable of applying far greater then the 90kg the load cell is rated for.
This is exactly what I ended up doing over a year with my V3’s. I tried all the suggested setups and then came to the realization I need to adjust the brakes relative to what I perceive as half the travel. Generally (if I needed to calibrate) I would press the pedal to a point that felt like what I thought maximum brake pressure would be. It would then follow that I could engage the brake to 50% without any indicator telling me I had done so. Very strange way to go about it I know.
When you're sitting there with your eyes closed and estimating half pedal travel you don't have the stimulus/stress and visual inputs of actually driving in a race or qualifying session. It's likely in the latter situations that you will be pressing the pedal harder due to being in a more excited state.
This was the first thing I thought about when I saw the footage from Lando. I got the CSL load cells and like a lot of other people found them too stiff or not having enough travel. Nice to see the pros like a bit of travel too!
That travel is not preference. Imagine how little control you'd have on the brake if you had a short travel. In Lando's video, you can see he slowly lifts the foot off the brake as his speed and gears go down.
@@chadden24 I have it at 75 at the moment. There's nothing wrong with the force. It's more about finding it more difficult to get consistent trail braking
@@grahamhill4113 Try swapping in springs or softer elastomers, and having a mix of the original hard ones and softer ones. I find having that soft bit of travel before hitting the hard point, somehow help modulating braking better (instead of the CSL LC's zero travel situation).
I recall seeing a video interview with Sebastien Loeb in a custom sim cockpit and they had a setup with a hydraulic brake that clamped on a disc that spun according to the car's speed. This might be the most genuine sim way to emulate a real brake setup instead of what we have now.
time to go salvage an electric motor and my master cylinder and caliper/rotor from my car hah. Did they have a tire and wheel on it too, to give inertia to the setup? that's a crazy setup
Excellent work! My experience in driving FF's and F2000's was that the pedals were very stiff, minimal movement. However, it isn't this or that, it's preference. You did an excellent job with this.
Elastomers that are softer and travel further also tend to brake easier and they wont produce as hard a stop. I can well see this being a compromise based around materials as harder materials are also more robust and they favour the end of the pedal feel over the route to it. Springs alone aren't the right answer either but I think its why a lot of people are finding springs + elastomer is proving a good middle ground in the DIY space because you get the travel and then you get the progression.
It doesn't matter for load cell pedals. They measure load. If you throw a mix of soft and strong stuff, the consistency for the applied load will still be the same.
@@PaulRKeeble I have switch to a combination of the original “hard” elastomer and a dye spring I found on Amazon for a cheap and easy fix to increase travel while still giving a very nice progression and a hard stop. It’s working great so far
My brake pedal feel is exactly like my road cars pedal feel. I'm never going to race, race cars. So I'm keeping my left foot doing something that it's use to doing, and it works for me, plus it's basically worked out now, ever hour spent braking in sim couples with my actual car
I feel the exact same. However I drive a manual so I never left foot brake in my road car, yet I prefer the feeling in sim to be the same as my road car. Also can't right foot brake on sim at all. Weird how brains work lmao
@@McNab1986 hmm. It's pretty impossible to left foot brake only in a manual. Did it once by mistake for my license test tho, nearly made the officer in the passenger seat fly through the windshield
@@McNab1986 oh sorry thought that was what you meant. Yeah that would certainly be possible. Might need to practice in my mom's car first then hahaha, definitely ain't practicing that in my own😂
I don't have any info regarding the brake pedal travel for F1, but I listened to a podcast with a long serving F1 engineer (Jock Clear I think) and he mentioned around 55 mm travel for gas pedal in the Schumacher era. He mentioned Villeneuve who had less than 30mm gas pedal travel. Have in mind that the current F1 cars have brake by wire.
@@iulian2548 As per Section 11, Article 11.1.1 of the FIA Technical Regulations: "With the exception of a power unit, all cars must be equipped with only one brake system. This system must comprise solely of two separate hydraulic circuits operated by one pedal, one circuit operating on the two front wheels and the other on the two rear wheels. This system must be designed so that if a failure occurs in one circuit the pedal will still operate the brakes in the other." Even if you have an electronic system to control the rear brakes, they're still hydraulic.
I think that the pedal is set to Lando's preference, either that or it is stiff, because every time I see regular people driving f1 cars at events and such they can almost NEVER get to 100% brake pressure. F1 drivers are just very strong to be able to press it to 100% consistently
I agree 10000%. I think braking is very underrated in its difficulty in an f1 car. The maximum brake force the tires can handle changes as you decelerate because the aero becomes less effective as you slow, the tire temp matters a lot, and there is so much force to actually resist. f1 cars can pull 5G on the brakes, that is basically 5G pushing the driver into the brake pedal. Yes, the harnesses and the seat absorb a lot of this but i’d imagine it’s still well over 1G into the brake pedal. If you wanna know what that feels like, stand up and do a calf raise with your left foot. Wouldn’t be surprised if drivers put well over 1.5x-2x their bodyweight into the pedal. Controllably. For an hour and a half. Mind blowing stuff.
if your whole body is decelerating whit 5G force you obviously need a stiff break pedal to have any kind of feeling in it. keep in mind they are laying down in the car not like in your street car where you absorb deceleration by holding on to the steering wheel. im pretty sure this is all designed to put the 5G right into the break pedal.
Yeah. 100-150kg is 100-150kg regardless of pedal travel. Since these cars don't have brake boosters, the only leverage is the pedal lever arm itself. So it's always stiff, only the throw can be adjusted it seems.
I think the main thing pf the sort/stiff pedals in simracing is that, at least for me, you can be more consistent with presure than with travel. In sim there is a lot of information you lack, like the pedal vibration or G forces. Thats because in a real car, you can have larger pedal travel to modulate the braking easyer.
A potentiometer or hall sensor with a rubber block that requires increasing pressure to depress the pedal further already allows your brain to process and remember pressure. It's irrelevant whether the instrument measures pressure directly or not.
@@saintsalieri And that's literally what I'm saying, since with that ruber block, you are relaying in the pressure, not in the travel. Im not talking about the device itself.
I dont think people understant the pedal travel was never stated to be real lol. The reason its short and stopping force is due to the load cell. The sensors work faster and better with shorter teavel with a hard sropping point for readings. The reason our pedals are this way is because load cells make our braking more accurate not that it makes it more realsitic. It helps us with braking with a sensor thats using pressure or force as its reading. Instead of disntace or travel. Thats why it has nothing to do with real rscers travel vs ours lol.
I messed with the springs in my brake and found a combination of mid range travel and a medium stiffness that I love. Makes for easy heel/toe and consistency throughout.
Thumbs up for the Shirt!. That aside, I run a soft pedal on my rig as I expect the pedal to move, not just to be a solid plate that applies pressure to a sensor.
The full brake pedal experience, including the changing "free travel" as brake fluid changes temperature and as pads wear down, and vibration from worn discs, can be simulated with a servomotor to "push back" on the pedal, controlled by some clever software. The problem is this - a brake pedal servomotor would require several times the torque of the biggest direct drive wheel (which is also a servomotor). The cost, bulk and power consumption would be a little insane. There may be ways to work around the power and bulk, but the solution would be even more costly.
But the travel being much smaller, you could have a small fast motor with huge gearing to reach the desired torque. You can get RC servos that are smaller than a soda can and that would have similar torque to entry level Direct drive wheel for a few dozen bucks ... This seems very feasible from a mechanical point of view, I think the main issue would be the software to 1) control accurately the brake and 2) get info from the game about which force should the player feel. Not a single game was made with 2 in mind so appart from Asseto Corsa that in theory could be modded you simply wouldn't have any game supporting this and just have the servi act as a fancy spring
@@danieldorn9989 if you look at it this way, sim racing is over engineered as a hobby. Want to get as close to what it feels to drive a car around a circuit ? Well, go drive a car around a circuit 😂 This idea would be the best way to get as close as it gets to the real feeling of pedals in a car. It's not more over engineered than having to use a loadcell to mesure brake pressure ...
Haha yeah. But in F1 engineers can adjust the pedal travel to the drivers liking and preference. In GT3/4 and touring cars they cars are built by a manufacturer but even then the mechanics of the team can change the travel to the drivers liking. And a vast majority of driver prefer travel. When f1 drivers say the pedal is long they don’t mean that it’s traveling. They mean it’s traveling a lot more than usual. There is no such thing as a brake pedal in a race car that has zero travel. Even the stiff brakes that some drivers like travel. A lot of sim racers use pedals with zero travel or so minuscule that it barely moves. And no race cars have brake pedals that travel that little. With so little travel you don’t get any feel or feedback for you braking.
Yeah I used a set with load cells at a sim racing cafe and they felt really weird, no travel whatsoever and you had to really stand on them (to the extent that my knee was killing me after an hour) to make them work. I've driven a bunch of cars and vehicles with unassisted brakes in real life and that's not what they feel like at all, you've got to press them harder than the brakes in a road car but it's way more progressive
And spray the scent of melty R compound tires every few seconds for maximum immersion. I swear that vaporized rubber melts in my nose every track day, I smell that for like 2-3 days every time
Well I’ve driven a F4 car and a GT3 and both had really stiff short travel brakes… Even had to drive a Mclaren 675LT at work once and the pedal was stiff as a rock. You can’t use F1’s as example tho because they use brake by wire technology. So the pedals will move more and the system will compensate for the G-force pushing the foot forward according to driver preference.
Yeah nobody knows what theyre talking about in this thread. F1 went to brake by wire like you said, f2 and f3 are still as they were and have rock hard pedals.
Watching the entire video is pretty insightful. Its not just empty travel moving the disks without braking, he presses smaller shorter distances with trail into certain corners well below the maximum travel we see so he appears to have very little slack but quite a lot of practical movement range all of which is providing him with more braking force. I would love to hear some questions to Lando about the adjustments he can do to the brake pedal and his preference of setup. He clearly overlaps the brake and coming off the accelerator considerably. He trails sometimes past the apex point and they clearly use trailing to get the nose to bite in on those high speed corners which is interesting. He is very smooth off the brake every time and with really quite long periods of trail braking. So beyond just the brake travel there is also some simulator knowledge that is wrong here as we tend to get off the brakes to balance aero and we don't cross over the accelerator and brake and if you trail heavy into a high speed aero corner the car is going to snap. This pedal cam of a complete lap informs where a lot of sim knowledge isn't quite right.
I'd be careful in taking what Lando does as fully 100% applicable to everything. Ricciardo has found the braking with the McLaren to be very difficult and Sainz has told also that the braking with the car is weird. Ricciardo hasn't adapted to it in 1,5 years. What does this mean? Might be that the McLaren need help with the rotation of the car in corner entry or mid corner for example, so this technique might not apply to all cars.
exactly it all comes down to driver preference n the brake system.. a shorter travel will give stiffer feel faster braking reaching maximum pressure more increase risk of locking up because there is less range to work with. longer travel more range n precision progressive softer feeling easer to work with n less change of locking up as u can modulate with more precision.
it's also depending on the brake line that you have. in most of the road care they are flexible so the brake fluid with pressure is causing them to expand and it'll give the pedal a longer range and softy feelling due to the expension of the line. Howwever in a ''race car the brake line is made with a metal line so the presssure doesn't drop and it feels way harder. You will have a hard pedal with (old) single-seater racing cars that have no abs. Speed when you hit the brake also give you a different feeling cause when u hit the brake with a high velocity car you can put way more pressure. At low speed and the pads should be hard at the first hit then soft
i think it's possible that shorter brake travel is common because it minimizes the amount of time it takes to get from 0% - 100% brake pressure, which is a pretty common place to lose time.
Thanks for the video! Trying to find spring sets for my brake pedal to mix with the elastomers just had me confronted with sim-racing elitism that ridiculed the possibility of someone wanting some light-effort travel before hitting the elastomers and compressing those. Finally someone who points out real systems actually *do* work like that and are not hard as a stone from the first contact onward. Another thing to note is that "hardcore sim racers" are quick to ridicule people who do not want to drive formula cars all day. I bought my sim rig to yeet street cars over the Nordschleife, drift down Mt. Haruna and cruise the Shuto Expressway. In fact, I've never driven a formula car in the sim rig, I just don't like the things. Somewhere the "simracing community" has ingrained itself that: 1. You NEED 15+ Nm 2. You NEED hard-as-rock load cell pedals 3. You can ONLY do GT3 OR Formula-style racing I stopped visiting /r/simracing and related communities and just did my own thing, which made ME happy. And I don't need to make excuses of "yeah that's just what it feels like in a RAcEcAr" to everybody who hopped into my rig, as the inputs just feel similar to a generic road vehicle. It'd be a good thing if the simracing community stopped being elitist circlejerks for a minute, and see what actual cars do. /rant
Its a game. Have fun. I do agree with the 15+ thing, but thats more for redundancy reasons. But in the end you need to have fun with your hobby. No one here is a pro racer or aspires to be.
*WHOAAAAAA!!!!!!* So you’re telling me that a vehicle, that’s built specifically to maximize the most out of *every single moving part* has *DIFFERENT* brakes?!?! I’m shocked!! Thank you so much for explaining this!!!…..
The brake pedal you are used to will always be the best. Also in sim racing you have to rely on other cues to judge brake performance then you would IRL. So for me good audiovisual cues from the game may be more important then the actual brake pedal I'm using.
Yeah, I have my V3 inverted pedals set with a fairly long throw, but it does get hard at the end. Mine is a compromise, I drive trucks in American Truck Sim and race karts in GT7. Very different vehicles. I also do a lot of rally racing in Dirt Rally 2.0 so there is variety. I set my pedals as close to my real world vacuum assisted hydraulic three pedals you will find in older cars and trucks here in U.S. I have had super hard brakes but did not like it. I have had super soft brakes and I did not like that either. I am happy with my compromise.
The strange thing is from my young days in sim racing, im doing it currently for 10 years on and off since i was 11 with old wheels Logitech grand turismo, anyways, i got load cels the TLCM ones, i thought they are great, but the strange thing was i preffered the old non load cell ones, why ? becouse they had more travel i could consistently brake better with non load cells due to fealing exactly how much i pressed in , with load cells i have problem and still having after 1 + year using them , yes i dont lock up while breaking but, i dont feel when exactly i have to fully break and I lock the brakes to much becouse i dont feel fully when where is the end point and how much presure i need to aplly due even if im using the breaks for this longs at the same setup.
I had the same experience going from t3pa to sprints. But we need to take the many many hours we've used the potentiometers into account, loadcells are cool, but it's not magic - Come time it will catch up to the muscle memory of the old pedals you used for let's say 4000 hours :)
I was just at CTMP Mosport and they had some rigs set up using Assetto Corsa and I predume a mod of CTMP. Anyway, to my point. The wheel was Thrustmaster but I'm not sure about the pedals. However hitting them was like pushing my foot up against a wall...very little travel and I have to say I liked it and I didn't fear locking the brakes. I have the regular Fanatec pedals and it's so easy to lock up so for me, I think the short throw would be good. BTW, I'm no rookie but I'm nowhere near what some sim racers can do but they were suitably impressed. Made my day.
I worked in the design of my university's FSAE car and we are able to set the brake pedal travel to driver preference from almost nothing to about 20 degrees. It's all preference or limitations in cockpit design, it really doesn't matter that much in the end of the day, what matters is brake line pressure
I sat in porsche GT3 Cups few times and first thing I noticed was quite the opposite of normal pedals: Brake was a traveller, but the throttle moves almost nothing.
Regarding the g force brake assist in a racing car, surely if the driver is securely strapped in then only the mass of your leg acting against the inherent elasticity of your ankle, hip and knee joints and your muscles stiffness would provide any ‘assist’? ie this should be minimal?
I'm not sure where I got this information from, but I heard that in a road car max brake pressure must be able to be applied with less force than whatever is necessary to an average person to stand on one leg. So assuming the average person weighs around 70kg, no more than 70kg (likely less) is necessary to get max brake application. In an F1 car afaik that max brake pressure is closer to 150kg.
I do wonder whether they have modelled the brake travel on go karts, go karts have insanely small amounts of travel in pedals. They are also readily available to any man, women on the street. It is a shame as when I started racing round the UK in the early 90s as a kid the brakes used back then had a fair bit of travel, and then as things progressed new braking systems came in, more effective, but with minute travel lengths on the pedals. The Devs could have tried these systems out? Just a theory.
Good topic, you are right about mechanical pressure and that is why pressure sensor pedals are beneficial in sim equipment. I think that is why low travel is also preferred by individuals though, as a load cell offers the ability to make even a rigid pedal still work. Regardless of travel the same amount of force is still required, so it becomes an efficiency thing. If you train your brain to focus on pressure, physical travel becomes nothing more than a preference and limiting it could improve performance. I have been finding this out myself and am looking to limit travel because of it. Pressure based sim pedals are much like a digital bathroom scale, you can change the weight simply by how hard you press even though a digital scale is pretty rigid.
Yeah I remember watching a video on some normal guy who got to drive a formula 1 car for an evening and he said that the brake pedal was really stiff. I forget what he said about the travel, but it has been something on my mind for a while now.
This is exactly my issue, I just got a set of CSL LC pedals and the travel is just rock hard. Even a noremal car brake has some travel before you feel pressure pushing back. There should be travel in a brake pedal, to give some sort of feel to the braking.
I find it hard to believe those pedals are stiffer than the clubsport v3 and those things needed to be stiffened up with the mod kit to be useful to me.
Same issue. Seems to be a difference between the elastometer rigidity in load cells shipped out in the past year from what I’ve gathered. Nearly useless in some games without endless fine tuning. I ordered new elastometers to see if I could make the load cell more useful but I’ve found the stock fanatec brake to be much more controllable especially with trailbraking and may just use that going forward and add handclutch pedals
Brake pedals always have travel, they are hydraulically connected, to the brakes so they need to move to move the pads. There are plenty of ways you can set up the pedal, for the same actuation of the pad, large or small travel. In the most famous series, you will have it set up to driver preference. In series where teams have less budget, the easiest way to create a brake system is for it to have almost no travel, by directly connecting the input of the pedal to the lines. Most people who are racing and need the realism in order to improve on their home sims, take part in those series.
Some corners also only require a soft braking, so a long travel gives you more possibilities to adjust the pressure you need. Especially if you need to hold the pressure constant at a specific amount for a bit.
I have never driven a real car in my entire life. I have no idea what's realistic - I just pick what I think is the most fun and suits my preferences the most.
A big point to also mention, Formula 1 cars are brake-by-wire and fly-by-wire throttle pedals, therefore there is no mechanical link to the brakes or throttle bodies. All of the movement used by the drivers would be completely customisable and to the preference of the drivers.
I once had the opportunity to drive a formula bmw at a bmw event and I was quite baffled how solid the brake pedal was. Of course there was no threshold braking going on that day :D After that I set my sim Pedals up that way. But I totally agree that this doesn't seem to be the norm by what I've seen on pedal cams. V8SC was actually the first where it occured to me to just setup what feels good : )
zero movement 200kg LC xd ........ jokes aside i prefere a good ammount of travel and the feel elastomers give me, the wider i press the harder it gets , and thats more realistic than most of simproduct producer say it should be.
I've always tried to replicate brake pedal movement as I know it from my road car, a ultra tight and heavy brake pedal would just make me lock up and go in a straight line all the time. To each his own, and I might be slower for it when it comes to laptimes but I'd rather have some travel and not get leg cramps when playing make believe racing driver :D
i think teams can adjust brake force, thats all to it i guess. and maybe some parts from different companies have larger or shorter parts that makes the brake pedal move more than others
For the past couple of days I tried setting my CSL-ELITE pedals up with 65 shore elastomers. Heel and tow shiffting still needs work, but left foot braking became easier to control. I can actually trail brake now? What!?! I thought squishy pedals needed more effort, but this is backwards to me? I may have been wrong too. I'll keep at it and see how I get on with the soft pedal. Oh, and I needed to turn the braking force way down.
Others have commented on it here already but of course these cars are setup to how the driver likes them. Don’t know why this sticks in my head but I always remember that Jacques Villeneuve suffered terribly in the wet (compared to Damon Hill) because he loved a brake pedal with a tiny amount of travel and a throttle with about an inch (or so) or travel. So he could be hard on the power and brakes and let the electronics (at the time) sort it out for him. Damon preferred more control. Cadence braking, smooth on the throttle, etc. but yeah a really interesting video and it shows that all these 350kg super hard sim racing setups are now always accurate.
My heusinkveld ultimate pedals drive me crazy for this reason. I can't add anymore travel in the brake pedal. I can't find a sweet spot that works. I drive a 991.1 GTS on the road and on the track on weekends. When I get back in the sim, it's difficult to be consistent.
I believe the future for sim racing brake pedals will be that of FFB pedals. I believe it will be with software as to how we achieve a more realistic feeling from our pedals, not from using hydraulics and other mechanical parts found on a real life race car. Think about how far along FFB steering wheels have come and they don't use anything that resembles an actual race car steering box, even on the high end direct drive units, so why should it be any different for your sim pedals...
After market mods that slap on a motor to the brakes to create vibrations exist. I have the mod from Sim3D on my T-LCMs and have it 'pulse' when the ABS kicks in and if the wheels lock up. Whether or not we'll see mass market versions with out of the box FFB on pedals...
There’s a distinction to be made between pedal travel and actuation. Pedal travel, especially in F1 as they have BBY, is a matter of preference. How much travel do you want before the actuation of the mechanical (or electronic of BBY) system?
The reasons Landos brake pedal travel is so far is just the fact that his legs are very strong. Every F1 car has a brake pedal that for normal people would feel like kicking a brick wall, if we was to get into that car and press the pedal as hard as we can it wouldn't even budge. The reason it's so hard is also the mechanical side but also the fact that in an F1 car your legs move around so much because of the G forces that accident pressure on the brakes would be fatal as you could be rear ended or lockup and head straight into a barrier. Now it could also be the fact that Lando prefers a softer brake pedal but going of his vids of his SIM rig where he went over the brake pedal it's very unlikely, his legs are very strong. The reason SIM companies don't make the brake pedal as hard and realistic is that to have a real hard brake pedal won't get a large market, people don't want to have fit legs just to play on a sim, myself included I prefer having a relatively soft brake so I don't have to work really hard just to stop, it's also your driving style.
In terms of F1 they are pretty much using Sim brakes, that whole part about the mechanical feel of the brake pedal isn’t particularly relevant to F1 because they’re all Brake By Wire. When the driver presses the pedal that sends an electrical signal to a computer which then applies the brakes so there’s no physical connection between the pedal and the brakes.
Only the rear brakes are brake-by-wire, because of the energy recovery system, the front brakes are still hydraulically connected directly to the brake pedal.
The problem with IRL onboard videos is that they are a drop in the ocean. They show us what the specific driver, team and manufacturer wanted their pedals to behave like under the specific conditions the video was shot under. This by no means demonstrates what the general consensus is when it comes to pedal stiffness and travel. The same problem applies to sim pedal manufacturers. They only have access to a limited number of cars (if any) for R&D purposes and maybe they've asked a few drivers about their preferences. Whichever the case, as long as the brake pedal is progressive and feels convincing, I don't think there's a right and wrong way of doing things, just personal preference. From my little experience of brake pedals in road cars, I've always felt much more comfortable with stiffer, shorter throw brake pedals because of how easy they make fine modulations.
I tried a load cell, no travel brake pedal and hated it because it's nothing like my real car. I found a progressive pedal with a decent amount of travel to be much more comfortable and controllable. I also think the "it's easier to tell how hard you're pressing vs where you're pressing to on a linear pedal" in relation to braking is a load of bs as long as you have enough resistance in the pedal. The throttle pedal is usually a linear spring so how come people don't complain about knowing how much throttle you're applying?
As (plentifully) mentioned already, hybrid cars have Brake by Wire with an ECU intervening/interfacing - F1 has a traditional front circuit though; WEC had full BBW. For information on that and a glimpse into racecar braking system design (no booster, racecar components and constraints), see "Formula One brake system, Explained!" from the Merc F1 team
I always set up my brake for "linear" feel. Whatever braking force gives you the most ability to modulate small movements is best. Too little resistance, then its easy to make too large adjustments by accident. Too much resistance then it is difficult to modulate the brake responsively. I find the sweetspot then gradually increase resistance as my leg gets stronger.
Same. And the stiffness matters depending on the loadcell. If i have 100kg loadcell i need stiffer pedal to not bottom out the pedal before reaching full force. For 50kg loadcell i need less stiff so i don't have travel left in the table when i hit 100% brake force. I think this point is ignored by people as well when stiffness is discussed.
Seems to me that: 1) Brake travel is dependent on the car, the drivers preference, or both. 2) Brakes seem harder IRL because they have to be, to compensate for G forces the drivers will also be under then being applied to their brake pressure. If they weren't, the drivers would smash the brakes every single time. 3) Sim pedals try to compensate for G forces by replicating force required, when they should be focusing more on feel and providing racers the ability to fully change the pressure required to their own preference. Cracking vid mate.
Regarding GT3 brake pressure (in KG), I've heard numbers close to 180kg at high speed to get an ABS christmas tree. It seems to depend on the car. The Nissan does have a very long travel but seems hard too. On some other onboard cameras, you will spot the driver's shoe bending under the heavy forces that's being put on the pedal face, it's no joke. Since G forces are always brought up, to my knowledge it seems to help for about 20% of the pressure. Now, if the brakes are lighter - like in, say, McLaren GT4 - I can see why drivers don't really like servo brakes if the maximum is ~70kg, but you have 30kg of G forces coming forward as you're braking. Should feel like very minimal control, for them.
The f1 rear brake are close to sim pedals than they are actually mechanical brakes. The BBW is controlled by a pedal and potentiometers. There is not physical connection between the brakes and the pedals(or the throttle and PU)
My own track car is nothing like my gaming rig. I've had 3 track cars and none of them felt the same. None of them have been anything like video games. You keep calling them sims but lets be real they are still video games. None of them are close to 1 to 1 realism, I dont think they cano or will ever be. Remember the 90s video games and look at what we have now, I'd rather just enjoy what we have today instead of complaining about how it isnt real enough lol.
I used my Fanatec V3 stock for almost a year and thought they were great. Then, out of boredom, I decided to install the brake kit that I had. I used the two hardest green units it had. It was very hard to press and the travel was near zero. I had a lot of control when braking though. Since I didn’t have a racing rig I found my chair would move back and my lower back would hurt a little. So, after another year I decided to change it last week. I wanted some pedal travel. After contemplating which would be best I used the lowest green and lowest red modules. Now there’s travel but the same control while braking as when it was hard to press. However my back doesn’t hurt as much and the chair doesn’t move back. So things are better and the brakes don’t need to be hard as a rock to move.
Yeah, there’s definitely the aspect of your rig to consider. I’m sure I’d be happy with mine being a bit harder and shorter if I had a proper sim rig, but since I’m currently using an office chair that has a fair bit of flex in it, softer with more travel is far superior for me.
@@pieflies I'm using a Secret Lab chair so it's a little like your office chair but I changed the wheels to ones that lock so they don't move as much. I also have "feet" that don't have wheels at all and those too won't move the chair as much.
@@nathantw I also have wheel stoppers, and my pedals mounted to a board, so nothing moves, but I get a lot of flex in the back of my chair. Luckily I my pedals are highly adjustable so I can get a good pedal feel. I look forward to having a proper rig one day though.
Honestly I have to say that in my case my brake pedal (heusinkveld sprint) is absolutely STIFF. I also added one more elastomer to the travel so now I have 4 instead of 3 like it comes out from the factory. I immediately found myself more consistent in braking and the force that I apply is the same every lap. I’m not here to say that this must be the way but for sure for me it was a massive improvement if I have to compare to the clubsport V3 i had with a longer pedal travel. BTW there are a lot of customizations for the heusinkveld so maybe I’ll take a look
Perhaps, to truly emulate brake feel in pedals, we need to plumb up a real master cylinder, caliper, and pad to our sim brakes, attached with a joint to the back of the pedal just like it would be in the real vehicle. Honestly, the clutch could be done the same way, given hydraulic clutches use a similar cylinder setup. Of course, you could use real automotive hardware across the board, but given that the same effect of a caliper+pad and clutch spring could be entirely recreated on a much smaller scale, sim specific hardware could be made, with a caliper that just piston compresses a polycarbonate brake pad into a metal backplate, and a relatively strong encased spring on another caliper for the clutch, with a small lighter spring closer to the piston, to emulate the bit of travel before the clutch disc actually starts getting separated from the flywheel. Bam! You've got authentic brake and clutch feel in a relatively compact space, by recreating exactly what they do on a smaller scale. Of course, the brakes and clutch won't represent the active stare of the ingame vehicle very well, but they'll definitely reflect the springy nature of the hydraulic system in the most authentic way possible.
This would simulate a stationary car very well, but a lot of what we feel when braking a real car comes from the pads pushing against a rotating disk (especially when it’s fast) and that’s impossible to recreate in a simulator. I think brake pedals need force feedback, but this is kind of futuristic at the moment
I recall watching a clip from one of Lando's streams playing iRacing in his big red rig and noticed the brake pedal had almost no travel in that. Interesting then that the MCL22 has a decent amount of travel, perhaps it is for performance reasons? Just some food for thought.
I also think that everybody should adjust their sim rig as they prefer it to be and how they perform the best. For me personally, I always felt that a decent travel for the brake pedal feels better, gives you more resolution to dial in the brake pressure and is not as harsh to your body. Dogmas never work, the world is complex.
Yep, I've been arguing this for a while. I've seen pedal cams before, of course, but I was very glad to see McLaren bring it back with Lando just to prove the stiff pedal crowd wrong. I also think the fixation on load cells is a bit misplaced. A rubber block with progressive pressure requirements to move the pedal further, along with a potentiometer or hall sensor, is a proxy for pressure. There might be advantages to load cells which measure pressure directly, but the familiar claim that it's about muscle memory is not one of them.
I will say that IRL, F1 cars have such big travel due to the cars REQUIRING degressive braking, i.e going full send at the start and easing it out through the turn where as normal racing and road cars are the opposite, requiring starting light and progressively adding more and more brake.
Braking has been my problem in simracing ever since I started. Currently I have T LCM pedals and I need twice more of travels, I don't care how it is in a race car. What people forget is that you have much more information when driving real car, braking in real car you get g-force that tells you how much you are braking and you can adjust from that. In sim racing you don't have that, only force of your leg and your eyes to tell you how is your braking doing.
Your points are valid and I will admit i came into watching this video with alot of skepticism given the title. I agree it is driver preference. What I think you got wrong was how the race cars systems work. Cup cars and gt4 cars may still use a brake booster I could be wrong but pretty much every race car uses manual brakes and not using a brake booster. They will have separate master cylinders on the brake pedal usually mounted on the pedal box. So the only amount of movement your pedal can travel is length of the push rod. Now these can be changed and swapped out given track and or driver preference like you said. Other than that...was a great video and enjoyed it 👍
I got good travel and strength/smoothness with V3 pedals, the HPK, and a damper set firmly. I just recently added the damper and its more interesting than reviewers have led to believe.
I prefer the longer travel. Might be because I'm used to that feeling from road cars. But also in my mind, the longer travel means it easier to be more precise
My understanding is that with a stiff brake you will rely more on pressure rather than travel for feedback, which is ultimately what matters in a car. So manufacturer made stiff pedals as a way to train for real racing, because even if you have more travel you will still rely on muscle memory for how luch pressure should be applied and how to modulate that pressure. That's what i understood, i find the "race car brake is stiff" stupid because as you said they are multiples parameter that can be adjusted to have it feel the way you want, but for training purposes a stiffer brake is a better option ... (Might be completely wrong though)
I'm surprised. I'll have go and find pedal videos for Formula 1 and other race cars. Decades ago I raced Formula Ford. The brakes were light even without a servo because the cars are light. The pedal movement was next to nothing. It was like pushing on a block of wood. It was necessary to get used to it after only driving road cars but the brakes were hugely effective and controllable once mastered.
As a former employee of Brembo its funny to remember how much I missed the laughs that were had because of Civic tuners who wanted a 6 piston caliper big brake upgrade yadda yadda yadda.
A shorter pedal-travel makes sense in F1 and similar, because you get up to 6 G on the brake . Using this (probably) an inch of body-movement forward to brake with with the weight instead of muscles seems logic during such long and exhausting races. But since the g-force while braking depends on the grip-conditions, some travel is needed to mind-measure the inputs more accurately. In sim-racing without surge motion you don't need much travel to feel how much pressure you put into the brake since no forces tries to throw your body around.
Tbf I'd want stiffer pedal irl and softer pedal in sim racing. Bc in sim racing, specific muscle memory is important and having wiggle room for adjustments from reading what's happening in the FFB and the screen. IRL your entire body is a sensor. You can still drive cars just fine with a dead feeling steering wheel and short pedal throws simply bc you can immideatly feel how the car is reacting to your inputs and how it reacts to the road
I don't think you're wrong at all, mate. It's all about preference. Because at the end of the day you've to feel comfortable with your rig, be it a sim rig or a real car. Before upgrading my rig, I thought load cell or hydraulic pedals would be all the rage. But after that I realised that what I treasure most now is the ability to fine tune the curve of actual output given a certain input for the brakes; not to digress too much but I deviated from the linear progression and used more of a log type curve, however I plan on changing it to a longer travel before the forces actually kick in (to help trailing). Having elastomers or fluids is cool and stuff, but I won't spend a dime on a Fanatec if they don't allow for such customisation. I spend tons of time on F1 2021 controller configuration screen! Hahaha! Great content. Cheers!
Os it lots of hot air from marketing companies, the reality of what we can have in simracing or something else like leaving a like and subbing?
RIP English
Sim Racing / Video Games are just that. Gear for video games emulate …. Video Games.
Shouldn’t even be compared to real life.
They’re not selling hot air, they’re selling gear for video games. If people buy this gear thinking it’ll be close to real life, they’re delusional. It’s not even close. Super sad that people expect video game gear to be realistic like the real vehicles.
As an afterthought, they are not GAMES, they are SIMULATORS. Of course the computer can't do the same things real world physics can, but saying it's nothing alike is just inaccurate.
@@aidenless3479 - They Are Video Games… Don’t try and church it up lol.
@@aidenless3479 - Even the real life racers call them video games. Of course the gear is fantastic, but they’re limited because they emulated for video games. Calling a racing or flying video game a sim is just a fancy name for video games.
Like E-Sports when they refer to themselves as athletes.. it’s silly and narcissistic. They’re competitive video gamers.. not athletes.
I think in race cars, and F1 in particular, the pedal feel will be set to driver preference, just like their seat is moulded to their body shape - maximum comfort gets maximum performance.
definitely. Isnt very hard to do mechanically. Different ways even, i suppose
You also have to consider that modern F1 cars have brake-by-wire. So its basicly like a sim-racing pedal.
And they use different throttle maps for different weather conditions.
Couldn't be said any better, maximum comfort gets maximum performance 👌🏁
@@GTFan8899 isn't it only the rear brakes that are brake by wire in F1? the fronts are still on a hydraulic system connected to the pedal if i'm not mistaken and they do this because the rear wheels are where the KERS system is connected and therefore the car wants to be able to only engage the rear brake pads when the KERS system is unable to provide the amount of braking force the driver is asking for
Yeah the whole 'has to be short travel and super hard' thing is a myth, set up your brake how you like it to feel and play
Yeah I love when someone tells me I need a 200kg load cell and like 20mm travel but I'm over here with chicken legs lmao
@@perryperch8948 however much you weigh is probably about the max pedal force you could use comfortably for long periods of time, well it is for me anyway, I have a 100kg LC on my brake and max it out comfortably, its slightly harder than doing a 1 legged partial squat
@@fathead7 Even then its about leverage too. Depending on the length of the arm for the pedal and the angle it applies you can get considerably ranges of pressure. A 200KG LC could have a leverage system that makes it softer than the T-LCM 100KG. The capability of the loadcell is more about the design and how that leverage applies it doesn't mean the pedal will necessarily take more force than another.
Yep I like mine with no travel and stiff I’m a muscle memory person, basically it’s boils down to personal preference I can’t trail break on a long travel pedal, but I can with muscle memory, I have a 100kg loadcell I only have it set to about 45% atm though about 45kg/90lbs or so, I love my loadcell pedals one of my best investments besides my wheel and rig I played on regular pedals for a while it’s just not for me
Yeah but what if i want my sim to emulate real life as much as possible?
I went from simracing to (club level) motorsport, and found many interesting differences that simracing just can't ever reproduce. Regarding the braking in the real world, a firm pedal gives me the confidence to brake hard, and the long pedal travel allows me to easily modulate the brake pressure as needed depending on the circumstances (the limit of brake performance is always changing and you need to be able to adjust the amount of brake you are using to stay at that threshold of brake performance).
With simracing, I'm not entirely sure that a long pedal would work the same way, simply because the g-forces and other physical sensations aren't there. With the brake modulation I mentioned, knowing how much brake to use comes from feeling how the car is decelerating, feeling how the tyres are contacting the road, how the car moves around, how the weight of the car shifts from corner to corner. In a sim, you don't get that (maybe you do in the proper high end stuff, but I never had that).
It makes me think that a long pedal in a sim would be discomforting, because you aren't getting the additional information needed to make use of the long travel.
The thing that stands out from what you mentioned is the feel. In my personal car, when tracking, I just KNOW the brake point based around all the feel of the car. In the Sims even with vibrations or motion platform, any of that, it just doesn't convey the same sensations.
@@timduncan2211 Absolutely. I was reasonably ok at simracing but would still run off the road a ridiculous amount compared to in the real world. People always say that's because in the sim "there's no fear of injury, so people take more risks" - that's not how it was for me at all, it was because I found judging momentum, distance, inertia etc so much harder to do in the sim than the real world.
Back to braking, that "feel" that we're talking about is critical. The amount of brake I can use is different corner to corner - and can differs throughout a single braking zone. I want some pedal travel to be able to easily feel the amount of brake pressure I'm using. In the sim, I imagine that would get confusing due to not having those physical reads on what is needed at the time.
thank you for your collaboration on it!
I know what you mean with missing the sensations of the car slowing down etc, braking is the one part I really can't seem to get with sim racing.
100% agree. I've done some irl racing on track and braking always came much more natural to me than sim racing. In most sims, I really had to focus a lot of my attention on memorizing braking zones whereas irl you could just kind of feel for it and I often found myself making up time in those areas. It was more instinctive and less of a deliberate conscious decision. If anything, the sims hurt me for a while irl because I would brake too early. Once I trusted myself and the equipment, I started braking much later and my times became competitive.
That being said, sims really helped me to learn the subconscious muscle memory for correcting certain... undesirable situations instinctively. Lock ups, understeer, oversteer, etc. So when I got to the track I could apply those techniques without crashing expensive cars that usually weren't mine lol.
Botton line: in addition to being fun, sims can be incredibly useful training devices, especially for those of us who can't afford to make expensive mistakes on the track, but they will never simulate the thousands of tiny inputs your whole body and all of its senses is receiving every second with 0 ping in a real car.
I've drove a F3 car a few years ago. The brake pedal had no slop, was very heavy, but easy to modulate. Loved it.
It makes it so much easier to feel when the pedal is pushing back at you. If there’s little resistance it makes it much harder to modulate because you can’t feel it.
How did the F3 drive go? And how did it happen?
@@TheSnaveeelPlaysGamesmoney. You can pay for F3 experiences in a bunch of USA tracks
The "need" for a high force, short travel pedal in sim racing is all bullshit passed from one person to another and hailed as gospel. James Baldwin says he runs a low pressure brake specifically because it's less tiring over a race and so he can be consistant. When all is said and done it's all about using what you want and practicing with what you have.
Absolutely. Swapping master cylinders to fit the driver or track is pretty common.
@@randomcallsign the caveat with real world driving is you have other forces at play, g forces on your body and being shaken around in the cockpit, all which would prevent careful control of the pedal if it were too soft, so there you do want a decent force at the pedal (without being ridiculous) but travel really is just a preference.
@@ravey1981 yes when you brake in a real F1 car you are pressed forwards in the cockpit by the g forces, so your ability to generate high load on the pedal increases the faster you decelerate
@@johnduncan5117 well, yes and no. You don't move forward because you are strapped tight into the seat, and you're leg doesn't move forward because it's attached to your hip. But yes there is an increase in the "weight" of your lower leg but it's not as big as people would have you believe.
@@ravey1981 Since you are moving the same speed as the car, you'd have the same amount of force regardless. Plus you're beind held by Hans and a 6 point belt.
After a LOT of research, I saw that a TON of GT3, Formula Pros used Heusinkeld Ultimates. At first I stuck with the default 3 Hard elastomers. After doing more research about the travel movement that pros used in their sims, I saw that most used 45mm-62mm pedal travel in the sims. The default elastomers in the Heusinkeld Ultimate + gave about 25mm travel so I switched to the 3 softer elastomers and I get like 50mm travel now. I created two profiles in Heusinkveld Smart Control for GT3 and Formula cars with different Max force and I pretty much have the perfect travel and pedal strength I was looking for all along.
Thanks do much for the super thanks
One thing I think is being overlooked in terms of the F1 brake system is the fact it is a brake by wire system. The pedal isn't connected to any part of the braking system, it is connected to a black box that determines the amount of braking force to apply and the amount of retardation used by the Energy Recovery System. So I would say the pedal travel at least in an F1 car is a driver preference. I seem to remember that Kimi had a lot of problems adjusting to the BBW system when it was first introduced as he said the pedal felt numb and had no feedback of the braking response.
Edit, as pointed out below I was incorrect in the statement I made about the pedal connection to the braking system.
A very valid point but you are kind of half right. The brake by wire only operates on the rear brakes. This was introduced as part of the hybrid harvesting system. The front is still a conventional style brake setup. Maybe purely from a safety point of view. Also because if the fronts were electronically controlled we all know some devious software engineer would probably code in an anti-lock system. 😂 But yes you are spot on. A lot of drivers didn’t like it (and some still don’t) as it removes a certain amount of "feel" when braking. During testing a few teams (Williams was one) that had rear brakes catching fire because the brake by wire just wasn’t doing what it was supposed to.
I agree with Andrew. They will never have a full brake by wire system as it would require a fail safe in terms of if something would fail. Bmw has this on their new G-chassis cars. They use a DSCi module where the brake booster would be but there is still a mechanical connection to the brakes
@@Jrock-69 can confirm, have 8 series and it actually works pretty well but it will compensate for fade which I’m not sure I’m happy about. I’d be nervous if it didn’t have a mechanical failsafe
No it's not, the pedal is connected to a Tandem Master Cylinder directly, source, I work for a company that builds the Master Cylinders for both Red Bull and Alpha Tauri
So thats what BBW stands for...
At some point along my many upgrades through the years I realized I dont have a race car to emulate, therefore the setup is up to my imagination and how I want my "race car" to feel. I stopped trying to make it feel any way but perfect for me. The most important thing is that when I think I am applying 50% brake I am actually applying 50% brake, or whatever value my brain is thinking is what my foot is also feeling. I currently use the V3s with the brake performance kit one red and one green and the foam piece and about 2 preload. Then I sat there in the calibration software until with my eyes closed I could do both 50% and 80% applications of the brake. I changed the max value until the PC was seeing what I felt was right, if I had to guess Im probably around 60-65kg at 100% even though I am more then capable of applying far greater then the 90kg the load cell is rated for.
This is exactly what I ended up doing over a year with my V3’s. I tried all the suggested setups and then came to the realization I need to adjust the brakes relative to what I perceive as half the travel. Generally (if I needed to calibrate) I would press the pedal to a point that felt like what I thought maximum brake pressure would be. It would then follow that I could engage the brake to 50% without any indicator telling me I had done so. Very strange way to go about it I know.
When you're sitting there with your eyes closed and estimating half pedal travel you don't have the stimulus/stress and visual inputs of actually driving in a race or qualifying session. It's likely in the latter situations that you will be pressing the pedal harder due to being in a more excited state.
This was the first thing I thought about when I saw the footage from Lando. I got the CSL load cells and like a lot of other people found them too stiff or not having enough travel. Nice to see the pros like a bit of travel too!
That travel is not preference. Imagine how little control you'd have on the brake if you had a short travel. In Lando's video, you can see he slowly lifts the foot off the brake as his speed and gears go down.
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what brf # are you using with your CSL:
@@chadden24 I have it at 75 at the moment. There's nothing wrong with the force. It's more about finding it more difficult to get consistent trail braking
@@grahamhill4113
Try swapping in springs or softer elastomers, and having a mix of the original hard ones and softer ones. I find having that soft bit of travel before hitting the hard point, somehow help modulating braking better (instead of the CSL LC's zero travel situation).
I recall seeing a video interview with Sebastien Loeb in a custom sim cockpit and they had a setup with a hydraulic brake that clamped on a disc that spun according to the car's speed. This might be the most genuine sim way to emulate a real brake setup instead of what we have now.
time to go salvage an electric motor and my master cylinder and caliper/rotor from my car hah. Did they have a tire and wheel on it too, to give inertia to the setup? that's a crazy setup
@@kylecossette5044 Maybe you could just bolt a weight to the brake cylinder for that purpose?
Excellent work! My experience in driving FF's and F2000's was that the pedals were very stiff, minimal movement. However, it isn't this or that, it's preference. You did an excellent job with this.
I’m guessing from an engineering standpoint it’s easier to make a sim pedal be consistent and accurate with a very small range of travel.
Elastomers that are softer and travel further also tend to brake easier and they wont produce as hard a stop. I can well see this being a compromise based around materials as harder materials are also more robust and they favour the end of the pedal feel over the route to it. Springs alone aren't the right answer either but I think its why a lot of people are finding springs + elastomer is proving a good middle ground in the DIY space because you get the travel and then you get the progression.
It doesn't matter for load cell pedals. They measure load. If you throw a mix of soft and strong stuff, the consistency for the applied load will still be the same.
@@PaulRKeeble I have switch to a combination of the original “hard” elastomer and a dye spring I found on Amazon for a cheap and easy fix to increase travel while still giving a very nice progression and a hard stop. It’s working great so far
@@kylekroes6989 What is a dye spring? I can’t find anything called it on Amazon.
The comments can say whatever they want but you cant argue with someone wearing a Iron Maiden T-shirt
My brake pedal feel is exactly like my road cars pedal feel. I'm never going to race, race cars. So I'm keeping my left foot doing something that it's use to doing, and it works for me, plus it's basically worked out now, ever hour spent braking in sim couples with my actual car
I feel the exact same. However I drive a manual so I never left foot brake in my road car, yet I prefer the feeling in sim to be the same as my road car. Also can't right foot brake on sim at all. Weird how brains work lmao
@@AcD420 Should get use to left foot braking in it, whenever I drive hard I switch to heel n toe + left foot
@@McNab1986 hmm. It's pretty impossible to left foot brake only in a manual. Did it once by mistake for my license test tho, nearly made the officer in the passenger seat fly through the windshield
@@AcD420 who said anything about using only the left foot. Don't need the clutch, left foot brake, you do need the clutch, you heel n toe
@@McNab1986 oh sorry thought that was what you meant. Yeah that would certainly be possible. Might need to practice in my mom's car first then hahaha, definitely ain't practicing that in my own😂
I don't have any info regarding the brake pedal travel for F1, but I listened to a podcast with a long serving F1 engineer (Jock Clear I think) and he mentioned around 55 mm travel for gas pedal in the Schumacher era. He mentioned Villeneuve who had less than 30mm gas pedal travel.
Have in mind that the current F1 cars have brake by wire.
Current F1 cars have hydraulic brakes and steering. The electric variations of those two are banned.
Jock Clear mentioned this in his episode on the official F1 Podcast.
@@BrunodeSouzaLino I looked it up, the rear is wire, the front is hydraulic.
@@iulian2548 As per Section 11, Article 11.1.1 of the FIA Technical Regulations:
"With the exception of a power unit, all cars must be equipped with only one brake system. This system must comprise solely of two separate hydraulic circuits operated by one pedal, one circuit operating on the two front wheels and the other on the two rear wheels. This system must be designed so that if a failure occurs in one circuit the pedal will still operate the brakes in the other."
Even if you have an electronic system to control the rear brakes, they're still hydraulic.
@@redscreentrombone4685 I did read the technical regulations to confirm that before posting.
I think that the pedal is set to Lando's preference, either that or it is stiff, because every time I see regular people driving f1 cars at events and such they can almost NEVER get to 100% brake pressure. F1 drivers are just very strong to be able to press it to 100% consistently
I agree 10000%. I think braking is very underrated in its difficulty in an f1 car. The maximum brake force the tires can handle changes as you decelerate because the aero becomes less effective as you slow, the tire temp matters a lot, and there is so much force to actually resist.
f1 cars can pull 5G on the brakes, that is basically 5G pushing the driver into the brake pedal. Yes, the harnesses and the seat absorb a lot of this but i’d imagine it’s still well over 1G into the brake pedal. If you wanna know what that feels like, stand up and do a calf raise with your left foot. Wouldn’t be surprised if drivers put well over 1.5x-2x their bodyweight into the pedal. Controllably. For an hour and a half.
Mind blowing stuff.
if your whole body is decelerating whit 5G force you obviously need a stiff break pedal to have any kind of feeling in it. keep in mind they are laying down in the car not like in your street car where you absorb deceleration by holding on to the steering wheel. im pretty sure this is all designed to put the 5G right into the break pedal.
Yeah.
100-150kg is 100-150kg regardless of pedal travel.
Since these cars don't have brake boosters, the only leverage is the pedal lever arm itself.
So it's always stiff, only the throw can be adjusted it seems.
I think the main thing pf the sort/stiff pedals in simracing is that, at least for me, you can be more consistent with presure than with travel. In sim there is a lot of information you lack, like the pedal vibration or G forces. Thats because in a real car, you can have larger pedal travel to modulate the braking easyer.
A potentiometer or hall sensor with a rubber block that requires increasing pressure to depress the pedal further already allows your brain to process and remember pressure. It's irrelevant whether the instrument measures pressure directly or not.
@@saintsalieri And that's literally what I'm saying, since with that ruber block, you are relaying in the pressure, not in the travel. Im not talking about the device itself.
@@POVmotorsport fair, I misconstrued your point a bit.
I dont think people understant the pedal travel was never stated to be real lol. The reason its short and stopping force is due to the load cell. The sensors work faster and better with shorter teavel with a hard sropping point for readings. The reason our pedals are this way is because load cells make our braking more accurate not that it makes it more realsitic. It helps us with braking with a sensor thats using pressure or force as its reading. Instead of disntace or travel. Thats why it has nothing to do with real rscers travel vs ours lol.
I messed with the springs in my brake and found a combination of mid range travel and a medium stiffness that I love. Makes for easy heel/toe and consistency throughout.
Thumbs up for the Shirt!. That aside, I run a soft pedal on my rig as I expect the pedal to move, not just to be a solid plate that applies pressure to a sensor.
The full brake pedal experience, including the changing "free travel" as brake fluid changes temperature and as pads wear down, and vibration from worn discs, can be simulated with a servomotor to "push back" on the pedal, controlled by some clever software. The problem is this - a brake pedal servomotor would require several times the torque of the biggest direct drive wheel (which is also a servomotor). The cost, bulk and power consumption would be a little insane. There may be ways to work around the power and bulk, but the solution would be even more costly.
But the travel being much smaller, you could have a small fast motor with huge gearing to reach the desired torque. You can get RC servos that are smaller than a soda can and that would have similar torque to entry level Direct drive wheel for a few dozen bucks ...
This seems very feasible from a mechanical point of view, I think the main issue would be the software to 1) control accurately the brake and 2) get info from the game about which force should the player feel. Not a single game was made with 2 in mind so appart from Asseto Corsa that in theory could be modded you simply wouldn't have any game supporting this and just have the servi act as a fancy spring
thats over engineering
@@danieldorn9989 if you look at it this way, sim racing is over engineered as a hobby.
Want to get as close to what it feels to drive a car around a circuit ? Well, go drive a car around a circuit 😂
This idea would be the best way to get as close as it gets to the real feeling of pedals in a car. It's not more over engineered than having to use a loadcell to mesure brake pressure ...
Simucube have literally done this, the pedal is £1600 just for the brake alone!
I’ve been saying this for ages. Some load cells are completely unrealistic with 0 travel…
Haha yeah. But in F1 engineers can adjust the pedal travel to the drivers liking and preference. In GT3/4 and touring cars they cars are built by a manufacturer but even then the mechanics of the team can change the travel to the drivers liking. And a vast majority of driver prefer travel. When f1 drivers say the pedal is long they don’t mean that it’s traveling. They mean it’s traveling a lot more than usual. There is no such thing as a brake pedal in a race car that has zero travel. Even the stiff brakes that some drivers like travel. A lot of sim racers use pedals with zero travel or so minuscule that it barely moves. And no race cars have brake pedals that travel that little. With so little travel you don’t get any feel or feedback for you braking.
Yeah I used a set with load cells at a sim racing cafe and they felt really weird, no travel whatsoever and you had to really stand on them (to the extent that my knee was killing me after an hour) to make them work. I've driven a bunch of cars and vehicles with unassisted brakes in real life and that's not what they feel like at all, you've got to press them harder than the brakes in a road car but it's way more progressive
Coolest thing would be like an actual spinning rotor with pads for feeling. Would make a huge mess in the room tho lol.
Ferodo everywhere
Hey hun where's the vacuum? I need to clean up the brake dust in my sim rig again, lol
Sebastien Loeb has a custom setup with this exact idea.
And spray the scent of melty R compound tires every few seconds for maximum immersion. I swear that vaporized rubber melts in my nose every track day, I smell that for like 2-3 days every time
Well I’ve driven a F4 car and a GT3 and both had really stiff short travel brakes… Even had to drive a Mclaren 675LT at work once and the pedal was stiff as a rock. You can’t use F1’s as example tho because they use brake by wire technology. So the pedals will move more and the system will compensate for the G-force pushing the foot forward according to driver preference.
Yeah nobody knows what theyre talking about in this thread. F1 went to brake by wire like you said, f2 and f3 are still as they were and have rock hard pedals.
The only thing wrong with this video was I couldn't see all of your Iron Maiden T-Shirt.
Watching the entire video is pretty insightful. Its not just empty travel moving the disks without braking, he presses smaller shorter distances with trail into certain corners well below the maximum travel we see so he appears to have very little slack but quite a lot of practical movement range all of which is providing him with more braking force. I would love to hear some questions to Lando about the adjustments he can do to the brake pedal and his preference of setup.
He clearly overlaps the brake and coming off the accelerator considerably. He trails sometimes past the apex point and they clearly use trailing to get the nose to bite in on those high speed corners which is interesting. He is very smooth off the brake every time and with really quite long periods of trail braking. So beyond just the brake travel there is also some simulator knowledge that is wrong here as we tend to get off the brakes to balance aero and we don't cross over the accelerator and brake and if you trail heavy into a high speed aero corner the car is going to snap. This pedal cam of a complete lap informs where a lot of sim knowledge isn't quite right.
I'd be careful in taking what Lando does as fully 100% applicable to everything. Ricciardo has found the braking with the McLaren to be very difficult and Sainz has told also that the braking with the car is weird. Ricciardo hasn't adapted to it in 1,5 years. What does this mean? Might be that the McLaren need help with the rotation of the car in corner entry or mid corner for example, so this technique might not apply to all cars.
exactly it all comes down to driver preference n the brake system.. a shorter travel will give stiffer feel faster braking reaching maximum pressure more increase risk of locking up because there is less range to work with. longer travel more range n precision progressive softer feeling easer to work with n less change of locking up as u can modulate with more precision.
it's also depending on the brake line that you have. in most of the road care they are flexible so the brake fluid with pressure is causing them to expand and it'll give the pedal a longer range and softy feelling due to the expension of the line. Howwever in a ''race car the brake line is made with a metal line so the presssure doesn't drop and it feels way harder.
You will have a hard pedal with (old) single-seater racing cars that have no abs.
Speed when you hit the brake also give you a different feeling cause when u hit the brake with a high velocity car you can put way more pressure. At low speed and the pads should be hard at the first hit then soft
i think it's possible that shorter brake travel is common because it minimizes the amount of time it takes to get from 0% - 100% brake pressure, which is a pretty common place to lose time.
Thanks for the video!
Trying to find spring sets for my brake pedal to mix with the elastomers just had me confronted with sim-racing elitism that ridiculed the possibility of someone wanting some light-effort travel before hitting the elastomers and compressing those. Finally someone who points out real systems actually *do* work like that and are not hard as a stone from the first contact onward.
Another thing to note is that "hardcore sim racers" are quick to ridicule people who do not want to drive formula cars all day. I bought my sim rig to yeet street cars over the Nordschleife, drift down Mt. Haruna and cruise the Shuto Expressway. In fact, I've never driven a formula car in the sim rig, I just don't like the things.
Somewhere the "simracing community" has ingrained itself that:
1. You NEED 15+ Nm
2. You NEED hard-as-rock load cell pedals
3. You can ONLY do GT3 OR Formula-style racing
I stopped visiting /r/simracing and related communities and just did my own thing, which made ME happy. And I don't need to make excuses of "yeah that's just what it feels like in a RAcEcAr" to everybody who hopped into my rig, as the inputs just feel similar to a generic road vehicle.
It'd be a good thing if the simracing community stopped being elitist circlejerks for a minute, and see what actual cars do.
/rant
Its a game. Have fun. I do agree with the 15+ thing, but thats more for redundancy reasons. But in the end you need to have fun with your hobby. No one here is a pro racer or aspires to be.
*WHOAAAAAA!!!!!!* So you’re telling me that a vehicle, that’s built specifically to maximize the most out of *every single moving part* has *DIFFERENT* brakes?!?! I’m shocked!! Thank you so much for explaining this!!!…..
The brake pedal you are used to will always be the best. Also in sim racing you have to rely on other cues to judge brake performance then you would IRL. So for me good audiovisual cues from the game may be more important then the actual brake pedal I'm using.
Yeah, I have my V3 inverted pedals set with a fairly long throw, but it does get hard at the end. Mine is a compromise, I drive trucks in American Truck Sim and race karts in GT7. Very different vehicles. I also do a lot of rally racing in Dirt Rally 2.0 so there is variety. I set my pedals as close to my real world vacuum assisted hydraulic three pedals you will find in older cars and trucks here in U.S. I have had super hard brakes but did not like it. I have had super soft brakes and I did not like that either. I am happy with my compromise.
It all depends on what the driver finds comfortable
Agree. I have an logitech g920 and I brake with the left pedal because its brake pedal is just hard as shit to find the certain point.
The strange thing is from my young days in sim racing, im doing it currently for 10 years on and off since i was 11 with old wheels Logitech grand turismo, anyways, i got load cels the TLCM ones, i thought they are great, but the strange thing was i preffered the old non load cell ones, why ? becouse they had more travel i could consistently brake better with non load cells due to fealing exactly how much i pressed in , with load cells i have problem and still having after 1 + year using them , yes i dont lock up while breaking but, i dont feel when exactly i have to fully break and I lock the brakes to much becouse i dont feel fully when where is the end point and how much presure i need to aplly due even if im using the breaks for this longs at the same setup.
I had the same experience going from t3pa to sprints. But we need to take the many many hours we've used the potentiometers into account, loadcells are cool, but it's not magic - Come time it will catch up to the muscle memory of the old pedals you used for let's say 4000 hours :)
I was just at CTMP Mosport and they had some rigs set up using Assetto Corsa and I predume a mod of CTMP. Anyway, to my point. The wheel was Thrustmaster but I'm not sure about the pedals. However hitting them was like pushing my foot up against a wall...very little travel and I have to say I liked it and I didn't fear locking the brakes. I have the regular Fanatec pedals and it's so easy to lock up so for me, I think the short throw would be good.
BTW, I'm no rookie but I'm nowhere near what some sim racers can do but they were suitably impressed. Made my day.
The Fanatec load cell kit makes a world of a difference, it's a bit stiff at first but it makes braking soooo much more consistent.
I worked in the design of my university's FSAE car and we are able to set the brake pedal travel to driver preference from almost nothing to about 20 degrees. It's all preference or limitations in cockpit design, it really doesn't matter that much in the end of the day, what matters is brake line pressure
I sat in porsche GT3 Cups few times and first thing I noticed was quite the opposite of normal pedals: Brake was a traveller, but the throttle moves almost nothing.
Regarding the g force brake assist in a racing car, surely if the driver is securely strapped in then only the mass of your leg acting against the inherent elasticity of your ankle, hip and knee joints and your muscles stiffness would provide any ‘assist’? ie this should be minimal?
okay, please do a review on the LONGEST brake travel in the market,
cause I DEFINITELY want one
I'm not sure where I got this information from, but I heard that in a road car max brake pressure must be able to be applied with less force than whatever is necessary to an average person to stand on one leg. So assuming the average person weighs around 70kg, no more than 70kg (likely less) is necessary to get max brake application.
In an F1 car afaik that max brake pressure is closer to 150kg.
I do wonder whether they have modelled the brake travel on go karts, go karts have insanely small amounts of travel in pedals. They are also readily available to any man, women on the street. It is a shame as when I started racing round the UK in the early 90s as a kid the brakes used back then had a fair bit of travel, and then as things progressed new braking systems came in, more effective, but with minute travel lengths on the pedals. The Devs could have tried these systems out? Just a theory.
Good topic, you are right about mechanical pressure and that is why pressure sensor pedals are beneficial in sim equipment. I think that is why low travel is also preferred by individuals though, as a load cell offers the ability to make even a rigid pedal still work. Regardless of travel the same amount of force is still required, so it becomes an efficiency thing. If you train your brain to focus on pressure, physical travel becomes nothing more than a preference and limiting it could improve performance. I have been finding this out myself and am looking to limit travel because of it. Pressure based sim pedals are much like a digital bathroom scale, you can change the weight simply by how hard you press even though a digital scale is pretty rigid.
The right pedal feel is the one you like the most
Change my mind
Yeah I remember watching a video on some normal guy who got to drive a formula 1 car for an evening and he said that the brake pedal was really stiff. I forget what he said about the travel, but it has been something on my mind for a while now.
This is exactly my issue, I just got a set of CSL LC pedals and the travel is just rock hard. Even a noremal car brake has some travel before you feel pressure pushing back. There should be travel in a brake pedal, to give some sort of feel to the braking.
I find it hard to believe those pedals are stiffer than the clubsport v3 and those things needed to be stiffened up with the mod kit to be useful to me.
Same issue. Seems to be a difference between the elastometer rigidity in load cells shipped out in the past year from what I’ve gathered. Nearly useless in some games without endless fine tuning. I ordered new elastometers to see if I could make the load cell more useful but I’ve found the stock fanatec brake to be much more controllable especially with trailbraking and may just use that going forward and add handclutch pedals
Brake pedals always have travel, they are hydraulically connected, to the brakes so they need to move to move the pads. There are plenty of ways you can set up the pedal, for the same actuation of the pad, large or small travel. In the most famous series, you will have it set up to driver preference. In series where teams have less budget, the easiest way to create a brake system is for it to have almost no travel, by directly connecting the input of the pedal to the lines. Most people who are racing and need the realism in order to improve on their home sims, take part in those series.
Some corners also only require a soft braking, so a long travel gives you more possibilities to adjust the pressure you need. Especially if you need to hold the pressure constant at a specific amount for a bit.
As a spanish guy watching the video, you killed me with the unexpected Pedro Gaseosa
I have never driven a real car in my entire life. I have no idea what's realistic - I just pick what I think is the most fun and suits my preferences the most.
A big point to also mention, Formula 1 cars are brake-by-wire and fly-by-wire throttle pedals, therefore there is no mechanical link to the brakes or throttle bodies. All of the movement used by the drivers would be completely customisable and to the preference of the drivers.
I once had the opportunity to drive a formula bmw at a bmw event and I was quite baffled how solid the brake pedal was. Of course there was no threshold braking going on that day :D After that I set my sim Pedals up that way. But I totally agree that this doesn't seem to be the norm by what I've seen on pedal cams. V8SC was actually the first where it occured to me to just setup what feels good : )
zero movement 200kg LC xd ........ jokes aside i prefere a good ammount of travel and the feel elastomers give me, the wider i press the harder it gets , and thats more realistic than most of simproduct producer say it should be.
I've always tried to replicate brake pedal movement as I know it from my road car, a ultra tight and heavy brake pedal would just make me lock up and go in a straight line all the time. To each his own, and I might be slower for it when it comes to laptimes but I'd rather have some travel and not get leg cramps when playing make believe racing driver :D
i think teams can adjust brake force, thats all to it i guess. and maybe some parts from different companies have larger or shorter parts that makes the brake pedal move more than others
For the past couple of days I tried setting my CSL-ELITE pedals up with 65 shore elastomers. Heel and tow shiffting still needs work, but left foot braking became easier to control. I can actually trail brake now? What!?! I thought squishy pedals needed more effort, but this is backwards to me?
I may have been wrong too. I'll keep at it and see how I get on with the soft pedal.
Oh, and I needed to turn the braking force way down.
Others have commented on it here already but of course these cars are setup to how the driver likes them. Don’t know why this sticks in my head but I always remember that Jacques Villeneuve suffered terribly in the wet (compared to Damon Hill) because he loved a brake pedal with a tiny amount of travel and a throttle with about an inch (or so) or travel. So he could be hard on the power and brakes and let the electronics (at the time) sort it out for him. Damon preferred more control. Cadence braking, smooth on the throttle, etc. but yeah a really interesting video and it shows that all these 350kg super hard sim racing setups are now always accurate.
That's the beauty of active pedals, you can mimic any braking system accurately.
My heusinkveld ultimate pedals drive me crazy for this reason. I can't add anymore travel in the brake pedal. I can't find a sweet spot that works. I drive a 991.1 GTS on the road and on the track on weekends. When I get back in the sim, it's difficult to be consistent.
I believe the future for sim racing brake pedals will be that of FFB pedals. I believe it will be with software as to how we achieve a more realistic feeling from our pedals, not from using hydraulics and other mechanical parts found on a real life race car.
Think about how far along FFB steering wheels have come and they don't use anything that resembles an actual race car steering box, even on the high end direct drive units, so why should it be any different for your sim pedals...
After market mods that slap on a motor to the brakes to create vibrations exist. I have the mod from Sim3D on my T-LCMs and have it 'pulse' when the ABS kicks in and if the wheels lock up. Whether or not we'll see mass market versions with out of the box FFB on pedals...
There’s a distinction to be made between pedal travel and actuation. Pedal travel, especially in F1 as they have BBY, is a matter of preference. How much travel do you want before the actuation of the mechanical (or electronic of BBY) system?
The reasons Landos brake pedal travel is so far is just the fact that his legs are very strong. Every F1 car has a brake pedal that for normal people would feel like kicking a brick wall, if we was to get into that car and press the pedal as hard as we can it wouldn't even budge. The reason it's so hard is also the mechanical side but also the fact that in an F1 car your legs move around so much because of the G forces that accident pressure on the brakes would be fatal as you could be rear ended or lockup and head straight into a barrier. Now it could also be the fact that Lando prefers a softer brake pedal but going of his vids of his SIM rig where he went over the brake pedal it's very unlikely, his legs are very strong. The reason SIM companies don't make the brake pedal as hard and realistic is that to have a real hard brake pedal won't get a large market, people don't want to have fit legs just to play on a sim, myself included I prefer having a relatively soft brake so I don't have to work really hard just to stop, it's also your driving style.
I think I heard in some interview that Jacques Villeneuve used to have his pedal set to travel ~ 1.5cm :)
In terms of F1 they are pretty much using Sim brakes, that whole part about the mechanical feel of the brake pedal isn’t particularly relevant to F1 because they’re all Brake By Wire.
When the driver presses the pedal that sends an electrical signal to a computer which then applies the brakes so there’s no physical connection between the pedal and the brakes.
Only the rear brakes are brake-by-wire, because of the energy recovery system, the front brakes are still hydraulically connected directly to the brake pedal.
I have always run quite a bit of travel on my Fanatec v3, it just feels more natural and easier to get my trail braking better.
The problem with IRL onboard videos is that they are a drop in the ocean. They show us what the specific driver, team and manufacturer wanted their pedals to behave like under the specific conditions the video was shot under. This by no means demonstrates what the general consensus is when it comes to pedal stiffness and travel. The same problem applies to sim pedal manufacturers. They only have access to a limited number of cars (if any) for R&D purposes and maybe they've asked a few drivers about their preferences. Whichever the case, as long as the brake pedal is progressive and feels convincing, I don't think there's a right and wrong way of doing things, just personal preference. From my little experience of brake pedals in road cars, I've always felt much more comfortable with stiffer, shorter throw brake pedals because of how easy they make fine modulations.
I tried a load cell, no travel brake pedal and hated it because it's nothing like my real car. I found a progressive pedal with a decent amount of travel to be much more comfortable and controllable. I also think the "it's easier to tell how hard you're pressing vs where you're pressing to on a linear pedal" in relation to braking is a load of bs as long as you have enough resistance in the pedal. The throttle pedal is usually a linear spring so how come people don't complain about knowing how much throttle you're applying?
As (plentifully) mentioned already, hybrid cars have Brake by Wire with an ECU intervening/interfacing - F1 has a traditional front circuit though; WEC had full BBW. For information on that and a glimpse into racecar braking system design (no booster, racecar components and constraints), see "Formula One brake system, Explained!" from the Merc F1 team
That’s what I love about my real life car - both clutch and brake are hard and have a lot of travel still.
I always set up my brake for "linear" feel. Whatever braking force gives you the most ability to modulate small movements is best. Too little resistance, then its easy to make too large adjustments by accident. Too much resistance then it is difficult to modulate the brake responsively. I find the sweetspot then gradually increase resistance as my leg gets stronger.
Same. And the stiffness matters depending on the loadcell.
If i have 100kg loadcell i need stiffer pedal to not bottom out the pedal before reaching full force. For 50kg loadcell i need less stiff so i don't have travel left in the table when i hit 100% brake force.
I think this point is ignored by people as well when stiffness is discussed.
Seems to me that:
1) Brake travel is dependent on the car, the drivers preference, or both.
2) Brakes seem harder IRL because they have to be, to compensate for G forces the drivers will also be under then being applied to their brake pressure. If they weren't, the drivers would smash the brakes every single time.
3) Sim pedals try to compensate for G forces by replicating force required, when they should be focusing more on feel and providing racers the ability to fully change the pressure required to their own preference.
Cracking vid mate.
Regarding GT3 brake pressure (in KG), I've heard numbers close to 180kg at high speed to get an ABS christmas tree. It seems to depend on the car. The Nissan does have a very long travel but seems hard too. On some other onboard cameras, you will spot the driver's shoe bending under the heavy forces that's being put on the pedal face, it's no joke. Since G forces are always brought up, to my knowledge it seems to help for about 20% of the pressure. Now, if the brakes are lighter - like in, say, McLaren GT4 - I can see why drivers don't really like servo brakes if the maximum is ~70kg, but you have 30kg of G forces coming forward as you're braking. Should feel like very minimal control, for them.
The f1 rear brake are close to sim pedals than they are actually mechanical brakes. The BBW is controlled by a pedal and potentiometers. There is not physical connection between the brakes and the pedals(or the throttle and PU)
My own track car is nothing like my gaming rig. I've had 3 track cars and none of them felt the same. None of them have been anything like video games. You keep calling them sims but lets be real they are still video games. None of them are close to 1 to 1 realism, I dont think they cano or will ever be. Remember the 90s video games and look at what we have now, I'd rather just enjoy what we have today instead of complaining about how it isnt real enough lol.
Another factor is they are not strong enough to use the full brake without the force from slowing down pushing them harder on the brake.
Love the video! It's great to start some discussion about topics like this.
I used my Fanatec V3 stock for almost a year and thought they were great. Then, out of boredom, I decided to install the brake kit that I had. I used the two hardest green units it had. It was very hard to press and the travel was near zero. I had a lot of control when braking though. Since I didn’t have a racing rig I found my chair would move back and my lower back would hurt a little. So, after another year I decided to change it last week. I wanted some pedal travel. After contemplating which would be best I used the lowest green and lowest red modules. Now there’s travel but the same control while braking as when it was hard to press. However my back doesn’t hurt as much and the chair doesn’t move back. So things are better and the brakes don’t need to be hard as a rock to move.
Yeah, there’s definitely the aspect of your rig to consider. I’m sure I’d be happy with mine being a bit harder and shorter if I had a proper sim rig, but since I’m currently using an office chair that has a fair bit of flex in it, softer with more travel is far superior for me.
@@pieflies I'm using a Secret Lab chair so it's a little like your office chair but I changed the wheels to ones that lock so they don't move as much. I also have "feet" that don't have wheels at all and those too won't move the chair as much.
@@nathantw I also have wheel stoppers, and my pedals mounted to a board, so nothing moves, but I get a lot of flex in the back of my chair. Luckily I my pedals are highly adjustable so I can get a good pedal feel.
I look forward to having a proper rig one day though.
Honestly I have to say that in my case my brake pedal (heusinkveld sprint) is absolutely STIFF. I also added one more elastomer to the travel so now I have 4 instead of 3 like it comes out from the factory. I immediately found myself more consistent in braking and the force that I apply is the same every lap. I’m not here to say that this must be the way but for sure for me it was a massive improvement if I have to compare to the clubsport V3 i had with a longer pedal travel. BTW there are a lot of customizations for the heusinkveld so maybe I’ll take a look
Perhaps, to truly emulate brake feel in pedals, we need to plumb up a real master cylinder, caliper, and pad to our sim brakes, attached with a joint to the back of the pedal just like it would be in the real vehicle. Honestly, the clutch could be done the same way, given hydraulic clutches use a similar cylinder setup. Of course, you could use real automotive hardware across the board, but given that the same effect of a caliper+pad and clutch spring could be entirely recreated on a much smaller scale, sim specific hardware could be made, with a caliper that just piston compresses a polycarbonate brake pad into a metal backplate, and a relatively strong encased spring on another caliper for the clutch, with a small lighter spring closer to the piston, to emulate the bit of travel before the clutch disc actually starts getting separated from the flywheel.
Bam! You've got authentic brake and clutch feel in a relatively compact space, by recreating exactly what they do on a smaller scale.
Of course, the brakes and clutch won't represent the active stare of the ingame vehicle very well, but they'll definitely reflect the springy nature of the hydraulic system in the most authentic way possible.
This would simulate a stationary car very well, but a lot of what we feel when braking a real car comes from the pads pushing against a rotating disk (especially when it’s fast) and that’s impossible to recreate in a simulator. I think brake pedals need force feedback, but this is kind of futuristic at the moment
I recall watching a clip from one of Lando's streams playing iRacing in his big red rig and noticed the brake pedal had almost no travel in that. Interesting then that the MCL22 has a decent amount of travel, perhaps it is for performance reasons? Just some food for thought.
Brundle mentioned in austrian grand prix that f1 brakes are not connected with wires to the brakes.
I also think that everybody should adjust their sim rig as they prefer it to be and how they perform the best.
For me personally, I always felt that a decent travel for the brake pedal feels better, gives you more resolution to dial in the brake pressure and is not as harsh to your body.
Dogmas never work, the world is complex.
it depends on lot on brake pad thickness and master cylinder sizes
Yep, I've been arguing this for a while. I've seen pedal cams before, of course, but I was very glad to see McLaren bring it back with Lando just to prove the stiff pedal crowd wrong. I also think the fixation on load cells is a bit misplaced. A rubber block with progressive pressure requirements to move the pedal further, along with a potentiometer or hall sensor, is a proxy for pressure. There might be advantages to load cells which measure pressure directly, but the familiar claim that it's about muscle memory is not one of them.
I will say that IRL, F1 cars have such big travel due to the cars REQUIRING degressive braking, i.e going full send at the start and easing it out through the turn where as normal racing and road cars are the opposite, requiring starting light and progressively adding more and more brake.
Braking has been my problem in simracing ever since I started. Currently I have T LCM pedals and I need twice more of travels, I don't care how it is in a race car. What people forget is that you have much more information when driving real car, braking in real car you get g-force that tells you how much you are braking and you can adjust from that. In sim racing you don't have that, only force of your leg and your eyes to tell you how is your braking doing.
Your points are valid and I will admit i came into watching this video with alot of skepticism given the title. I agree it is driver preference. What I think you got wrong was how the race cars systems work. Cup cars and gt4 cars may still use a brake booster I could be wrong but pretty much every race car uses manual brakes and not using a brake booster. They will have separate master cylinders on the brake pedal usually mounted on the pedal box. So the only amount of movement your pedal can travel is length of the push rod. Now these can be changed and swapped out given track and or driver preference like you said. Other than that...was a great video and enjoyed it 👍
I got good travel and strength/smoothness with V3 pedals, the HPK, and a damper set firmly. I just recently added the damper and its more interesting than reviewers have led to believe.
I prefer the longer travel. Might be because I'm used to that feeling from road cars. But also in my mind, the longer travel means it easier to be more precise
My understanding is that with a stiff brake you will rely more on pressure rather than travel for feedback, which is ultimately what matters in a car. So manufacturer made stiff pedals as a way to train for real racing, because even if you have more travel you will still rely on muscle memory for how luch pressure should be applied and how to modulate that pressure.
That's what i understood, i find the "race car brake is stiff" stupid because as you said they are multiples parameter that can be adjusted to have it feel the way you want, but for training purposes a stiffer brake is a better option ...
(Might be completely wrong though)
The V8 Supercar heel-toe clip makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside
Lol " probably completely wrong here on some if not all... but keep watching" 🤣🤣
Guys, a fact i learned long time agora, race cars doesn’t have brake pedal free play before the actual brake pressure length applied. That’s just it.
I'm surprised. I'll have go and find pedal videos for Formula 1 and other race cars. Decades ago I raced Formula Ford. The brakes were light even without a servo because the cars are light. The pedal movement was next to nothing. It was like pushing on a block of wood. It was necessary to get used to it after only driving road cars but the brakes were hugely effective and controllable once mastered.
As a former employee of Brembo its funny to remember how much I missed the laughs that were had because of Civic tuners who wanted a 6 piston caliper big brake upgrade yadda yadda yadda.
i think it differs per driver though. they adjust it in a way that is best for them
A shorter pedal-travel makes sense in F1 and similar, because you get up to 6 G on the brake . Using this (probably) an inch of body-movement forward to brake with with the weight instead of muscles seems logic during such long and exhausting races. But since the g-force while braking depends on the grip-conditions, some travel is needed to mind-measure the inputs more accurately. In sim-racing without surge motion you don't need much travel to feel how much pressure you put into the brake since no forces tries to throw your body around.
Tbf I'd want stiffer pedal irl and softer pedal in sim racing.
Bc in sim racing, specific muscle memory is important and having wiggle room for adjustments from reading what's happening in the FFB and the screen.
IRL your entire body is a sensor. You can still drive cars just fine with a dead feeling steering wheel and short pedal throws simply bc you can immideatly feel how the car is reacting to your inputs and how it reacts to the road
I don't think you're wrong at all, mate. It's all about preference. Because at the end of the day you've to feel comfortable with your rig, be it a sim rig or a real car. Before upgrading my rig, I thought load cell or hydraulic pedals would be all the rage. But after that I realised that what I treasure most now is the ability to fine tune the curve of actual output given a certain input for the brakes; not to digress too much but I deviated from the linear progression and used more of a log type curve, however I plan on changing it to a longer travel before the forces actually kick in (to help trailing). Having elastomers or fluids is cool and stuff, but I won't spend a dime on a Fanatec if they don't allow for such customisation. I spend tons of time on F1 2021 controller configuration screen! Hahaha!
Great content. Cheers!
Is Lando’s style completely different to Daniel’s considering previously in other manufacturers cars he was the last of the late brakers?