SimXperience AccuForce Pro Steering System Review

Original Article (May 2015): https://selah.ca/simxperience-accuforce-pro-steering-system/

I’ve recently received my SimXperience AccuForce Pro and have been enjoying it for the past week. I’ve only owned one other force feedback wheel, a Logitech G27, and this is, of course, leaps and bounds beyond a G27. There is ample power and tuning options to provide the flexibility sim racers really want to ensure the best and most realistic experience while driving.

I’ll be posting my initial thoughts, my driving and tuning experiences, and providing tips and tricks for various facets of the wheel, it’s tuning software, and for the various sim titles I play.

I’ll be writing this post in parts and updating new sections as I have time and learn new things about the wheel!

Enjoy!

I’ve organized this post under certain headings. If you’re interested in something specific, scan down the headings.

Unboxing

I pre-ordered the AccuForce in January 2015 and received it in May 2015. Believe me, it was well worth the wait. Once shipped it took about 5 days to deliver from the US mid-west to Ontario, Canada.

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  The box the AccuForce was shipped in. Weights 35lbs. Cost $80 to ship to Ontario, Canada, and will cost $300-$400 in cross-border duties and brokerage shipped from the US.

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  The suede wheel with button box and quick release mechanism. A very nice looking and feeling wheel.

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  Cables and controller box

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  AccuForce base. Solid, heavy, powerful, well-made.

Setup

There’s nothing particularly difficult about assembling the wheel itself. It was a little awkward to handle the 35lbs base while I put in the bolts through the wheel mount on my Obutto R3volution, however. Really, though, it took a few attempts but I got it right quite quickly.

The next steps were connecting the base to the controller box and connecting the controller box to the computer. There’s only one cable coming from the base to the controller box and two usb cables going to the pc. There’s a power cord from the controller box as well. You don’t need both usb cables, by the way, unless you intend to connect usb devices on the wheel hub itself which, if you don’t intend to change anything, you won’t really need to do that.

The Quick Start Guide will be your friend here. It’s a little sparse and could use some more visuals but it does tell you what you need to do.

See the Documents / Requirements tab on the SimXperience website for more documentation.

The last thing they’ll tell you to do is install the Sim Commander software. That was straight forward and it works quite well for what it does.

Can’t update the firmware when Sim Commander starts?

Apparently it’s common problem for Sim Commander to wait forever trying to update the firmware on your wheel when it first starts up. The solution is simply to turn the power off and on again on the controller box. Once I did that the firmware updated in about 10 seconds.

First Impressions

If you’re like me you’ll likely be too impatient at the time to realize what Sim Commander is for and just launch yourself into your favourite sim and tweak your force feedback settings like you always do. That’s what I did for my first experience with the wheel and, honestly, there’s not a lot wrong with that. It felt very strong and I realized immediately the potential it would have once tuned. I had left my previous G27 force strength setting in place and noticed right off the bat the iRacing force meter was showing tonnes of clipping. So I went in and tweaked that until I saw it wasn’t clipping anymore.

Pro Tip: iRacing and other sims don’t really know exactly how much force your wheel can handle or what it’s currently delivering so that’s why Sim Commander’s ability to show exact wheel forces will come in handy.

All this in-game tweaking, however is really not the best approach for the AccuForce way of doing things. Sim Commander comes with plugins for lots of sims and for some it can enable you to rely on the AccuForce’s force feedback handling rather than tweaking all of that in the game. Things like force strength, understeer, smoothing, damping, etc. Games usually provide a lot of options like that but you can also do that in Sim Commander and usually you can tune it better in Sim Commander than in the game.

Once you get into Sim Commander you’ll start to realize the potential of all the tuning options they provide but right out of the box SimXperience has setup a “Default” Wheel Mode. These wheels modes are simply labels for collections of settings applied to the wheel. Things like strength, smoothing, damping, oscillation control, etc.

First Driving Experience

The first thing you’ll probably notice is the incredible strength of the wheel. Coming from a G27 which has about 2nm of force (which is probably being generous) to the AccuForce at 13nm you really, really notice the difference. It is actually hard to turn the wheel at full strength in comparison to a weaker wheel like the G27.

I consider myself a strong and fit individual but there’s no way I’ll be running AccuForce at 100% strength. I might find myself tweaking more strength to get more information out but definitely not using 100% just for brute strength in general steering forces. It’s very strong and it will tire you out.

Update 2016-03-08: I’ve added strike-through to the text above because, per my Closing Thoughts section (written after 6 months of use), I now feel that you get used to the strength of the wheel over time and that it no longer feels strong enough. You wish there were more strength to bring out more detail.

The next thing you’ll notice is road feel. Things that were subtle bumps from the wheel become much more aggressive and actually force your hands to move before you can resist the force (unless you’re being really disciplined about your steering).

You can also get other vibrational effects through the direct-drive motor like engine RPMs or brake and kerb vibrations. They come through with a stunning clarity through the wheel itself not like some sound or movement of the wheel but a really clear vibration through the wheel. It’s a whole step up from the G27.

One of the best features of the wheel is responsiveness. The wheel responds very quickly even when it has to deliver large amounts of force. This allows you to feel loss or gain of grip or to catch slides or to tweak your steering through cornering.

One of the most surprising things with a high powered wheel is how much more grip it makes you think you have – and it’s not a false feeling, either. It’s so good at what it does that it gives you so much more confidence in your grip level. I won’t say I’m faster because of the wheel but instead of hoping and praying and hoping I have the wheel angle right through a corner to end up at just the right place on the kerb exit now I know all the way through the corner. It’s an odd feeling sensing so much grip and yet knowing you’re not going through the corner much faster than you have before. It’s sort of mind-bending but it feels really, really good. You’ll like the feeling, trust me.

Because the AccuForce has so much more strength, and ability to deliver that strength clearly, you’ll appreciate the wider bands of forces you’ll feel when driving on the edge. For example, with a weaker wheel you might have to guess more with experience and wheel angle when you’re going to lose grip on a corner, but with the AccuForce it becomes less about experience and wheel angle and more about feeling what the car is doing through the various forces coming through the wheel. It’s not a scary kind of guessing game, it becomes more about confidence in your driving because you’re feeling the results of your inputs.

Sim Commander Software

Sim Commander has a lot of features and offers great tuning potential. I’d recommend this read over at MockRacer.com: AccuForce Settings For Dummies

Sim Commander Crashes, Freezes, etc.

Do not boot up with your AccuForce powered on. Only power on the AccuForce after you have logged into Windows. Some people have reported, myself included, that the machine either won’t boot up at all with the AF on or Sim Commander will crash/freeze after launching a game. Power cycling the AccuForce when this happens resolves the issue and I haven’t had a crash after having done that when I have had a crash and then power cycled.

Auto-Tuning with Sim Commander Software

It’s easier than you think and it actually does create a better experience than the old manual tuning way. Berney, of SimXperience, has written a post on testing some new profiles but in there he’s also explained in simple terms how to start a fresh profile and get a basic auto-tune from it:

1. Duplicate Profile: Duplicate an existing iRacing profile in Sim Commander: Open the Control Center, select a profile, then click the Duplicate button near the top of the window.
2. Reset Profile to Defaults: Reset the profile to defaults so you’re sure you’ve got a good base line: Open the Control Center, select a profile, click Output Mixer tab in the middle portion of the screen, click the Output Tuning Wizard button in the same area, select Reset To Defaults option, click Next, Click Next again, click Finish.
3. Reset Wheel Mode: Set your desired Wheel Mode in Output Mixer > AccuForce Steering Wheel > Device Settings. I use “High (Peaks Allowed)” Default or High (Update 2016-03-08: nothing higher as Berney from SimX says only Default and High were assured to be linear torque). You can use whatever you’re comfortable with. The important thing is that you do this before running laps or else it won’t correct if you change the Wheel Mode after.
4. Run Laps: Launch your game using Sim Commander with the overlay enabled and run a few laps at your favourite track. These laps will be recorded and you’ll pick the fastest in Sim Commander so it can tune your settings for that track and car.
5. Auto-Tune Profile: Open the Control Center, select a profile, click Output Mixer tab in the middle portion of the screen, click the Output Tuning Wizard button in the same area, select “Create effect settings from recorded lap telemetry” option, click Next, Click Next again, select your fastest lap at the track you just ran laps on, under the “Select a Template” heading choose “Intelligent Peaks” in the drop-down, click Next, click Finish.

Congratulations! If you’ve followed the above steps you have an automatically tuned profile for your track and car. What this really accomplishes, at this time, is modifying the Game Force Feedback “Max Vehicle Steering Force” setting to ensure minimal clipping of forces happens. That ensures you get the most informative force feedback feeling through the wheel even in the hardest cornering where force strengths may exceed the wheel’s capabilities.

Notes:

• Consider turning off some effects before running tuning laps. For example, I may usually drive with Engine RPM effects disabled. Disabling effects like this opens up some wheel strength to put into other effects and should enhance your experience.

Pro Tip: I highly recommend reading the post mentioned above as it contains some interesting tid bits and includes more details than my summary above.