Grand Prix 4 Steering lag and force feedback jitter [SOLVED]

So I'm starting a vanilla GP4 season and tried to practice for my opening race in Melbourne. Tried, because the game was almost unplayable.

On dry weather it was kinda OK but I still made some weird mistakes from time to time, mostly by spinning with too much throttle. Felt like there was a lag between the car stepping out and me feeling it on ff.

In wet it was 100% hopeless. I couldn't read the car at all and it would just snap all the time, I had a hard time completing even five laps without spinning! I was very confused because about a year earlier when I tried GP4 I thought that wet conditions are a lot easier than they were in GP3. Suddenly it was the other way around.

Also I had force feedback issues very similar to Zifox (https://www.grandprixgames.org/read.php?4,1154316) and those issues got worse in wet. In addition to the "jitteryness" it would sometimes just start pushing me left / right on a straight, I really had to wrestle the wheel to keep the car straight and sometimes failed and went into the grass 300kph. And my force feedback setting was on 40% (with 100% I couldn't even get out of the pits, the force feedback would just wabble like there was an earthquake or something.)

I tried all the tricks, updating drivers, firmware, re-installing the game, different force feedback settings. Lowering the ff strength below 50% helped but it didn't remove the problem.

So today, after a lot of trial / error and failing I was already giving up until I remembered what zifox told me about force feedback and Windows 7. He started having the jitters after upgrading to Windows 10. So I installed the game on my old Windows 7 PC and oh boy... the difference. Now I can actually steer the car with throttle in wet! Force feedback is 100% flawless, I can even set the strength up to 100% to get better feedback. It's a completely new game now as before I was considering using traction control to stay on the track!

I have a theory. On Windows 10 I seem to have a strange steering lag. It's visible on this video: [youtu.be] (you can even see one of those jitters at 35-38 seconds of the video, going under the bridge with Bridgestone advertisement, the wheel violently shakes from left to right)

You can see how the movement of the wheel on the monitor is lagging behind compared to the real wheel. This doesn't happen with Windows 7. I don't know how much that affects the driving itself but I do feel that this lag sometimes makes the force feedback confused of what's happening and what it's supposed to do. Then you get these weird jitters and pulls randomly, also sometimes delayed ff effects which makes reading the car and controlling the throttle insanely difficult.

It's (at least seemingly) not a performance issue since my processor occupancy is around 20%. Also I didn't have this problem about a year ago so it might have to do with some specific Windows 10 update. I'm using a Thrustmaster wheel and it was fine before. Zifox has a G27 so different brand, same problem, so I don't think it's wheel related at all. Also the GP4 installation on Windows 7 is exactly the same as in Windows 10 since I just copied the game folder there.

Does anyone know what might cause these problems and if there's a solution?

PWM aka Ted Meat



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 01/26/2023 11:05PM by PWM.

Hi Ted,
I have windows 10 and a logitech G27 and that does not happend.

Maybe its something to do because you use 3 screens?


2010 to 2021 Gp4 Track updates

> Maybe its something to do because you use 3
> screens?

I'm afraid not, I mostly play with single screen and still have the same problem. That tripple monitor stuff was just to make something fancy for the video

Problem (finally) solved. For me it was an FPS issue. Went from 60 fps to 30 fps and all my problems were gone. It also made the steering way better, the car stopped understeering, it entered the corners way more sharp and was way more predictable in all conditions. In Windows 7 I didn't have the jitter problem to begin with but lowering fps did improve the steering significantly. I guess the physics in the game are somewhat fps dependent?

I suggested this to Zifox, he tried it but it didn't work for him. So clearly it's not a solution for everyone but hopefully this helps someone.

(Btw Zifox has some great content on YouTube, check his channel at [www.youtube.com] ). Always hurts to admit things like these but he is a better driver than me. So actually I hate him ).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/27/2023 02:31PM by PWM.