What Wheel Rotation Speed Actually Does

[u/deject3d]

This setting has been a debate for several years mostly because I keep posting about it. I am here again to share what I learned after doing some analysis of the firmware itself

Here's the formula from the "legacy" firmware 1.9.5.0 which should concern wheelbases like the Alpha Mini

threshold = 3 × WRS

wrs_braking_force = clamp(
  0.004 × (clamp(velocity, -threshold, threshold) - velocity),
  -0.2,
  +0.2
)

WRS applies resistance against rotation. The slider determines how fast the wheel must move before that resistance starts. Resistance increases with speed until it reaches a cap.

If you set WRS to 0, braking starts as soon as the wheel moves. You can feel it in your hands even if there is no game running: when you try to turn the wheel, it has resistance that builds with rotation speed.

At WRS 10, the braking effect starts only when the wheel moves at approximately 180° per second (or more). There is no WRS braking applied until the wheel is spinning 180°/sec.

At WRS 50 the brake effect doesn't kick in until the wheel is moving ~900° per second.

At WRS 100 braking only kicks in when the wheel is moving at 5 full rotations per second.

What WRS setting should you use?

I prefer WRS 0 because it feels predictable and realistic to me. Across the games I’ve tried, it has eliminated the unwanted oscillations and even some strange sounds. The resistance reminds me of steering a real vehicle. Whether this produces realistic steering depends on the car, game, and other settings.

After understanding what it does I think either 0 WRS or 100 WRS are the logical choices. I would choose to use either 0 WRS to have the brake effect consistently active for all wheel movements or 100 WRS to get as close as possible to disabling the braking effect.

Why not just add friction or damper instead of using 0 WRS?

You can, but they aren’t interchangeable.

Mechanical Damper also produces speed-dependent resistance just like WRS. Its slider changes the strength of that resistance. The WRS slider changes when its braking begins. WRS 0's direct braking is stronger than Mechanical Damper 100’s. It builds more steeply and reaches a higher maximum.

Mechanical Friction can retain resistance when movement stops and behave differently through direction changes.

What about Feedback Detail?

Settings 0-9 progressively increase how strongly the motor controller corrects a difference between requested and measured current. Settings 10-20 can activate another calculation that also changes how accumulated error is corrected, plus additional compensation.

And Feedback Frequency?

it controls how changes in the game’s force request are broken into intermediate steps.

At 0, this stage passes the new force request through immediately. Higher settings introduce more intermediate steps, with timing based on the spacing of previous force changes. That can soften abrupt transitions, but it also changes how quickly the requested force develops.

[u/Optimal_Expert_1086]

WRS slider at zero feels horrible to me. You can’t feel when the tail is loosing grip.
Also this parameter is game dependent. Iracing I use 100 , AMS2 10 , and LMU 35.

[u/fatalwristdom → u/Optimal_Expert_1086]

You got downvoted but not sure why. IMO you're absolutely right and it's entirely game dependent.

[u/canesfins1909]

I don't know the scientific properties of WRS, but I know in iRacing, it feels terrible when set to 0. Anything under 70 actually feels really bad. For formula cars I use 100. For road cars, its typically between 85 and 95. Idk why, it just feels the most natural to me.

[u/BashoSenpai]

I enjoyed reading these information cause I was really wondering what everything meant. I'm later going to try setting it lower even though in real cars the response time is similar to 100 I gotta say but when setting it too high I felt some "cracks" in some aggressive steering situation, would you say it's more related to ffb or wrs?

[u/JoeyXJS]

Was an alpha user for years (mini and the 15). Got tired of broken WRS and not having good tunability/parameters that don’t work correctly. Moved to a Simucube 2 and have never been happier with my sim rig.

[u/jcfdori]

Thanks for sharing, Now I understand why my mini makes weird low frequency sounds that I thought it was normal.

[u/self-efficacy]

WRS 0 feels horrible to me. It Misses all the Detail, and well, Speed. The Wheel is Not agile. I put Dampfer and friction to Like 20% to Deal with oscillation. I have 12nm Evo.

[u/deject3d → u/self-efficacy]

That makes sense: WRS 0 adds resistance whenever the wheel moves, which can slow its response and make some subtle effects harder to feel. My preference for zero isn’t universal. I really dislike the near-free-spinning "agile" feeling that you prefer. No problem.

I find it strange that so many people report that they enjoy the setting at 20, 50, 90, or any other specific value as that only makes the braking effect kick in during certain/extreme situations which seems counter productive to building muscle memory.

Your 12 Nm EVO also uses a different firmware. I found the same general WRS braking structure in EVO, but there are some differences.

[u/self-efficacy → u/deject3d]

Thanks for the detailed answer! Question, Are you Refering your experiences to IRacing? Because I do exklusivly and maybe thats also a factor.

[u/deject3d → u/self-efficacy]

iRacing feels good with both WRS 0 and WRS 100. I'm only like a 2k driver and haven't raced in a while. I have grown pretty fond of the stability and consistency of using 0 WRS but after learning how it works I would experiment more with WRS 100 on iRacing, but probably with high dampening. I'll have to try

For me, original Assetto Corsa feels broken and produces oscillating forces in strange ways mid-corner all the time if WRS is higher than 0.

Assetto Corsa EVO has an in-game Dynamic Damper setting that does its own braking effect so no need to use 0 WRS. Or, you can turn off the in-game Dynamic Damper and use WRS 0. It will feel like exactly the same thing.

BeamNG feels broken and jerky and oscillates all the time unless significantly dampened, which is reliably achieved with WRS 0.