Logitech G940

[MikkOwl]

what happens if only one of the three peripherals needs replacement at some point?

Judging from the forum stories of how Logitech support was like with the G25 wheel, they will ask you to disconnect and send that specific part in and they send a replacement. Generally the support seemed most generous and willing to please, at times not even asking for the defunct unit to be returned, and simply dispatch a new one directly.

As i understand it, they use their own connector jacks, so you won't be able for example to substitute a pair of Saitek pedals if the Logitech ones stop working.

Are the Saitek pedals not USB? If they are, one would simply connect them to a free USB port and use them instead of the G940 pedals if one so wished.

a small "deadzone" in the middle of the stick's range of motion that they can't get rid off, no matter what settings they use in the profiler. Is this something that depends on what each person is used to with their previous joystick, or is it visible/tangible enough to be considered a manufacturing flaw?

You can get rid of it by using the stick with a sim that makes use of the whole range for force feedback. Alternatively, enable self-centering, which leaves only a minimal zone in the middle where the forces aren't pulling. The stuff you mention is IL-2 implementation (and other games) of force feedback, set up to have a sizable zone in the middle where no pulling forces can reach. Game implementation of force feedback needs to be made with smaller tolerances for the hardware now available.

my sidewinder is so old there is a bit of "wobbling" around the center position where the response is slow or almost non existent. That doesn't bother me at all, because i don't want the aircraft to jerk around the sky everytime i move my little finger. After all, if i want to really move the stick the response is good. If the G940 is similar then i wouldn't mind since it would help cancel out the small, involuntary motions, but having more than a couple degrees of no-resposnse zone makes it harder to judge your inputs.

Agreed on the difficulty of judging the inputs. If I understand things correctly, the sidewinder2 from way back had a fairly short throw (range of motion), meaning that the zone in the middle is also, by extension, smaller. The G940 moves maybe 50 degrees from full left to full right deflection (25 degrees either direction from center). But as we know, it's the way IL-2 force feedback was set up way back in the day when those old sticks were around. Nothing much happened since until now. Logitech is pressuring and helping companies tidy up their crappy force feedback implementations, and the G940 has a chance of being a big success like the G25 wheel was, leading to direct support from developers who know that there's a customer group that has this hardware and wants to make good use of it.

I wrote in detail in my long wall of text earlier here on page 2, which may help you understand the G940 in general better.

IL2 does have constant centering tension, with MSFFB2 I feel the this all the time, more so especially as a stall approaches you go from soft to hard tension then buffeting on the stick, there a also specific event FFB occurrences, most of which I have removed from the FFB folder in IL2 directory as they were a bit unrealistic ie: canon and bump but you need the spring file in there to keep the overall tension.

You are both right, and wrong. IL-2 simulates, in a simplified way, the resistance encountered by the speed of the wind moving over the control surfaces of the wings, when trying to move the stick. Faster speed (unstalled) means more tension, while lower speed (or in stall) means lower or no resistance. But IL-2 is using no relative center but an absolute center of the stick. Even if I trim the plane and do all kinds of things to make sure that, in real life, the stick should be forcefully be moving forward or back due to the forces acting upon the control surfaces of the wings, absolutely nothing happens. The center is unaffected. And worse, they put the treshhold for at how much input needs to be given from the joystick pretty high before the 'wind resistance' on the control surfaces can be felt through force feedback. This gives the 'sloppy center' where there's no effects from the control surfaces, and which is no where near as good as it could have been had they utilized the full range, or even gone with relative center (i.e. the forces could then pull to want to center the stick forward or backward depending on how you trim, you would instantly feel the effects of trimming the plane through the forces and so on).

Can you imagine how it would be like to fly like that? Relative center, true forces acting, the trims.. the stick is more than capable of this, but we haven't gotten to try it out yet. Can't wait!

how does it feel compared to the Cougar and Fighterstick? The stick's shape is a very different from the F-16's, does it changes much when flying or it's just a matter of getting used to it?

The shape of grip and trigger is less square and more rounded, circumference of grip is slightly smaller and the in-reach buttons are a bit easier to manipulate. I haven't flown with my CH Combat Stick (F-16) since the early 2000's and it behaved awfully, so I cannot draw any parallels to the sticks you mention. I have size "L" (large) hands and I find the shape to be a better fit and more ergonomic. Maybe not wearing F-16 nomex pilot gloves also helps?

If your used to hitting your target quickly I would avoid the G940 at-least until new drivers come out. The constant changes in force around the center and thru the x and y axis make targeting more difficult than it should be.
If your like most people and can't hit what your shooting at anyway, the G940 is a nice overall system. Actually you can hit your target with the G940, but it takes a few seconds longer than with a more constant pressure stick...just long enough for his wingman to get in position to shoot you down.

The vibration effects of the weapons firing is adjustable, though even at high settings I dont think it interferes with the accuracy. When taking unloaded shots (correctly trimmed, don't need to apply force to the stick) it is as easy as any other high end stick these days I would gamble. But definitely, when pulling G's + being untripped and experiencing buffeting, it is more difficult to hit. Part of it is the immersion, I think. It's more apparently stressful and urgent what kind of stresses you are putting on your plane with the feedback you are getting. More tense moment one might say.

[335th_GRSwaty]

Wow MikkOwl!

Thanks for posting,I think this is a really helpful post!You said pretty much everything someone has to know to decide!

[Sokol1]

MikkIwk

Nice post!

Autohotkey is required to make FOV return to wide when releasing the button.

You can share your Autohotkey scrips?

Sokol1

[MikkOwl]

Sure, I can share the autohotkey scripts. I must say, that night I spent a couple of months ago learning how it works was more than well spent - it's super helpful in customizing anything to one's liking, especially with sims. I do not have the scripts prepared for public use, and I have this one 'basic' that I run for myself with some nonsense in it. What kind of functionality would you be interested in? I will have to clean out that specific part and add some commentary so you can easily swap in the keys you want.

------

I spent more time tinkering with the G940 in and out of IL-2 by the way.

- With effects raised enough, yes, it can be a bit hard to hit stuff from a distance, even when flying level. Hardcore effects.

I found and used two different force feedback programs. One is an editor made by Microsoft from their directX SDK for developers, and I can open and edit the IL-2 force feedback files with it. I already changed the vibration of the machine gun file to about 20 vibrations per second - the RPM of both the MG17 and the Browning .303. The default was slower, maybe 15 or so. Also tweaking the strength of the effects to get the levels I want (less machine gun, much more cannon shake). -- The other program was a force feedback test program where it tells you what effects your device has and you can try out different things.

My findings point to that the old force feedback API simply does not try to enforce a tight center on the devices, allowing some slop/play. The spring.ffe file in IL-2 controls how much it should be centered, the deadzone and other things, and it's already set to the minimum allowed. I got the same results trying to force the stick to center in the other program as well. However, the stick sometimes, when switching programs, alt tabbing, or putting self-centering to maximum, is able to center much more tightly. Maybe about half the diameter of 'slop' compared to IL-2 (approximately 1.5x1.5cm or a bit more, compared to IL-2 and the force feedback programs maybe 5x5cm). And the stick can do this at any point/angle. As if there is no mechanical center it has to deal with.

This bodes very well for future improved force feedback API/implementation, as there is nothing to stop the stick from, for example, having it's force center forward or backward of center, if the plane is trimmed a certain way/speed etc. And when trying to fight those forces to keep the plane level, the force should lighten and eventually go away as we trim the elevator - just like real life.

For fun, I put a sock over my stick, as it triggered the sensor that checks if it's being gripped. And then I could remote control it with the testing programs. That's some awesome show I tell you - it moves instantaneously to the position indicated (moving sliders in a window with one's mouse) without a hiccup. Pretty advanced accurate stuff.

-- More findings. I figured out more specifically how the force feedback screen works in the games tab for the stick (control panel > Controllers etc).

The first slider, Overall Force or what it is called, is the only one that controls stuff like vibrations, including gun shake, buffeting, getting hit, bomb release and so on. Important to note that is also acts as the ultimate multiplier of the other two sliders as well, spring and damping. It's the head honcho slider. If set very low, it doesn't matter what you set spring and damping to, the stick will be lifeless. And if set over 100% just the same, it will also make spring and damper stronger. Something to keep in mind when tweaking.

The second one, spring, is pulling/centering forces, that get stronger the further you move the stick from where it wants to be. In IL-2, this affects how strongly it will resist movement as the plane travels faster (more air resistance on control surfaces).

The third one, damper, is in force feedback a simple effect that is just 'resistance to movement', with no necessary center. Imagine that the cables/wires in the control column leading to the wing surfaces has friction no matter what speed you are traveling, then this 'damper' effect would simulate the resistance that this friction is giving. (When checking out that test program and reading about effects, I saw that the stick also supports 'friction' and several other neat sounding effects that I got to try out. Friction was a variation of damper but slightly different. Doesn't seem to be used in IL-2 and the force feedback editor (which is from 1999) doesn't even support that effect. Either way, I have not ever found proof that 'damper' as an effect does anything in IL-2. There's no resistance what so ever when flying up into the air and going below 120km/h no matter what damper is set to.

Lastly there's the self-centering force. It adds the equivalent of a mechanical spring that only wants it to center all the time, without exception, and it adds to the effects that are already taking place. It does not work well in any form with IL-2 and I don't recommend trying to.

From having tinkered around, I find that the following setup is ideal for me, at least.

Overall Force: 112%. This adds much more sting to the general effects like MG, Cannon, bomb, buffeting/turbulence and such things, without being overbearing or very loud. For some reason there's a HUGE difference between the default 100% (very, very anemic) and even 112%.

Spring: 90%. I tried setting to 150% and thereabouts to get a more 'real' feeling, but two bad things happen instead - Firstly, it's even harder to feel how fast one is going based on airspeed, because the airspeed effect seems to go from no resistance around 120-140km/h, to full force by about 300km/h+. With increased spring tension, it feels like this threshold is even narrower, with it being 'very tense' by something like 200-260, making the whole range smaller. Even going relatively slow at 250 gives the impression of being much faster. Secondly, the point of travel when stick goes from 'slop' to force feedback effects is even more pronounced when the forces are stronger, and it feels even more unnatural - to 'break' into this force one has to pull somewhat hard, and it makes it suddenly 'jump' too far as one puts enough force to make it start moving past this point (often all the way to the edge of travel). With spring at 100% it's more progressive and the range when it goes from loose to firm (that sounds naughty) seems larger and more useful, and the 'end' result, max force, is about the same anyway. In my case, I set it to about 90%, because it's multiplied by the 112% of the overall force slider above to be about 100%.

Damper: I leave it at 90% like spring, not being able to tell any difference. Can't hurt.

And no self-centering, of course.

---

More setup tips for pedals and throttle:

The rudder pedals did not work well when being wound too tight. No matter what, they never give a satisfyingly firm resistance of the hydrualic/cable connected kind, so one must just accept that they are a bit toy-like light. If one doesn't add too much friction, the self-centering force can at least help it return to center so you don't fly all messed up. The ideal spot for this appears to be to first wind it up so much that it does not return to center by itself, when nothing is touching it, after being moved. Then to unwind it until it starts to self center, then unwind it a little bit more beyond that point. More than that and it becomes difficult to fly due to lacking self-centering.

The throttle can be tightened until your fingers almost bleed, and it does give some decent resistance, but the travel isn't as smooth. Mine is set as tight as I could possibly muster and it has a slightly artificial strange feel that I do not like, and I will be unwinding this as well until the movement is smooth, but it has enough resistance NOT to move by resting the hand on it in any reasonable way.

The throttle should be mounted on your left side and low, low, low. I pulled out a lower desk drawer and put some stuff there, and then put the throttle on that to get a decently low height. Any higher and the lower arm will brush against the buttons on the base easily (leading to oops moments) and it's not comfortable to try to reach upwards and hang on to that thing all the time.

The thumb trigger (red fire button) on the stick cannot be reached when the stick is pulled back if the angle of the elbow is too high. I had some luck in being able to put the stick close to my right thigh side in my reclined TV/Makeshiftpilot seat/chair, where it's just about optimal.

EDIT 33: Keep in mind that alt tabbing in IL-2 at any point will mess up the force feedback. Usually some kind of default self-centering is imposed that doesn't go away on it's own. The only way to fix this is to end the flight and "refly", which resets the force feedback. This can be used to alt tab and mess with the force feedback sliders outside the game for example.

[Chivas]

Quote: Chivas
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If your used to hitting your target quickly I would avoid the G940 at-least until new drivers come out. The constant changes in force around the center and thru the x and y axis make targeting more difficult than it should be.
If your like most people and can't hit what your shooting at anyway, the G940 is a nice overall system. Actually you can hit your target with the G940, but it takes a few seconds longer than with a more constant pressure stick...just long enough for his wingman to get in position to shoot you down.


Quote: MikkOwl------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The vibration effects of the weapons firing is adjustable, though even at high settings I dont think it interferes with the accuracy. When taking unloaded shots (correctly trimmed, don't need to apply force to the stick) it is as easy as any other high end stick these days I would gamble. But definitely, when pulling G's + being untripped and experiencing buffeting, it is more difficult to hit. Part of it is the immersion, I think. It's more apparently stressful and urgent what kind of stresses you are putting on your plane with the feedback you are getting. More tense moment one might say.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Again I'm not talking force feedback motor effects. The electric motors are also used to provide stick centering. The G940 centering motors don't cut in for some degrees of movement around the center. The stick is very floppy around the center until the motors cut in to provide resistance at what ever level you set. The stick is still very precise as there is no movement deadzone, just a return to center force deadzone that is far too large.

[MikkOwl]

not [..] force feedback motor effects. The electric motors are also used to provide stick centering. The G940 centering motors don't cut in for some degrees of movement around the center. The stick is very floppy around the center until the motors cut in to provide resistance at what ever level you set. The stick is still very precise as there is no movement deadzone, just a return to center force deadzone that is far too large.

It is correct that the zone is too large in the current/old games. I posted some of my experiments measuring the differences in the zones depending on settings in the previous post. In IL-2 (and some ancient test programs) the zone is maybe 5x5 cm or so and certainly feels unnaturally large. But the stick seems to be able to provide a center more similar to maybe 2x2cm, and at any angle. It's just that this ability is not used by IL-2 or even the force feedback test programs using the old Force feedback API.

For unloaded steady shots, this force zone does not matter. While maneuvering however, it is harder than otherwise. Especially that it comes on so suddenly after a relatively large force free area.

[ruxtmp]

MIkkOwl
Do you have large jumps of throttle percent in IL2 when using the throttle? I cannot seem to get any better than 3-4% resolution. Basically moving the throttle changes the IL2 throttle in 3-4% increments. It is worse (+/- 8%) when going from one direction to another (ie low to high).

I am very close to returning the unit as it is not very sensitive in any axis with the throttle being the worst. My unmodded Cougar had better resolution and repeatability than the G940. I am hoping it is a driver issue but reading some forums it appears that the actual hardware may be the cause, I leave that to Logitech. For now I have reverted back to my X52 while I wait for info on returning the unit for a refund or exchanging it if it is truely faulty.

[MikkOwl]

Regarding the throttle accuracy in IL-2:
I'm not sure it jumps 4% when only going in one direction. I will make note of this within a few hours when I launch it again. Actually screw that, I'll go check right now (edit confi.ini, change nohudlog=1 to 0. Test test. Check DxTweak2 for some more hardcore numbers).

Findings:

IL-2's full range of possible throttle positions is 0% to 120% - 120 or 121 steps.

The G940 potentiometers, when calibrated, has an output that allows for 130 to 150 different positions. There's a few millimeters between each 'position', and one must move extremely slow and careful to move it that little.

In game, the throttle setting (in numbers on the hud) as well as the physical throttle stick rendered in 3D, moved in 2% increments. every 5th or 8th step or something like that was a 1% increment.

Other axises, like the R1 and R2 on the throttle, has a wider number of possible positions. The Saitek Quadrant levers have 256 possible positions, and they track accurately in DxTweak2. Testing the most accurate of them, the Saitek Quadrant levers, showed that it would still frequently move in 2% steps, but that 1% steps occured more frequently.

Binding the stick itself, with sensitivity to the lowest (Meaning that big movement produces the least output), and moving it near the center, was the only way to get IL-2 to reliably move in 1% increments.

My conclusion is that there is something wonky about the way IL-2 reads the axis positions. IL-2 has a max of 121 positions and yet when it reads an axis with 256 positions (more than two per 'position') it does not translate accurately. The G940 throttle axises, with 130-150 positions, is more than one throttle position for each of the 121 possible throttle positions in IL-2.

----------

The reversing direction bug makes it jump 4% of the throttle in IL-2 for the G940. As I mentioned before, I saw that LogitechMark stated that the Logitech/Wingman team knew about this bug (firmware I think) and they are working to fix it in the next software update.

----------

For myself, 2% motion of IL-2 throttle is how it has always been like no matter the hardware (more or less). I turn off the unimmersive HUD log so I don't see those numbers when flying. Instead I look at the throttle position in the cockpit (it sometimes has markings indicating what use a position has), and I read the instruments. Speed, RPM, prop pitch settings.

As you mention getting double the size of the 'steps' in IL-2, I recommend calibrating the throttle unit, then checking out the readings from DxTweak2. Check the "RAW" readings in the lowest and the highest positions of the throttle, and then subtract the lower reading from the higher. The number you get is the number of positions each throttle axis can be registered as being in. Compare that to the numbers I posted above.