So I just laid down $100 on a MS Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 joystick. I got it home and fired up one of my current favorite games, Mafia : The City of Lost Heaven, hoping to feel that Thompson gun rattling in my hands as I slew hoards of Capone-style gangsters. Um, no. The game has FF options, though. I noticed that there was no option for gun sensitivity, but there was one for car crashes. I got in a car, got up to a decent speed and wrecked, but felt nothing. Damn.
It has some pretty cool example effects in the Sidewinder control panel that do work, though. Well, maybe it’s just an issue with Mafia. Microsoft has a compatability list of the top 100 games on their site, but not only is the list not FF-specific (it lists the games that work with any of the Sidewinder joysticks), it’s also at least a year old.
Anyone know of some good games that use FF to their advantage?
I bought one of those because I thought it would make flying Flight Sim a lot more realistic. The prime effect it had was to shake in my hand when the nosegear touched down. Says I, “What, I paid good money to get the shimmy taken out of the nosewheel of my airplane, and now I’m paying money to get it put back in by my gaming joystick?”
I didn’t find a single game that actually used the force feedback. What I wanted in the plane was for the controls to tighten up as the speed increases, like a real plane does. In a car game, I’d want the feedback to tell me when I’m at the limits of adhesion of the tires, and not just rattle around when I crash.
I bought one of those because I thought it would make flying Flight Sim a lot more realistic. The prime effect it had was to shake in my hand when the nosegear touched down. Says I, “What, I paid good money to get the shimmy taken out of the nosewheel of my airplane, and now I’m paying money to get it put back in by my gaming joystick?”
I didn’t find a single game that actually used the force feedback. What I wanted in the plane was for the controls to tighten up as the speed increases, like a real plane does. In a car game, I’d want the feedback to tell me when I’m at the limits of adhesion of the tires, and not just rattle around when I crash.
I bought one of those because I thought it would make flying Flight Sim a lot more realistic. The prime effect it had was to shake in my hand when the nosegear touched down. Says I, “What, I paid good money to get the shimmy taken out of the nosewheel of my airplane, and now I’m paying money to get it put back in by my gaming joystick?”
I didn’t find a single game that actually used the force feedback. What I wanted in the plane was for the controls to tighten up as the speed increases, like a real plane does. In a car game, I’d want the feedback to tell me when I’m at the limits of adhesion of the tires, and not just rattle around when I crash.
Hie thee to the bargain bin and pick up Crimson Skies – it makes good use of force feedback.
Sam, try flying in wind (I’m assuming MS Flight Simulator 2002) – it’s subtle, but the resistance on the stick in different directions changes with wind, IIRC.
What a coincidence, I just bought the same joystick yesterday, having accumulated a number of games that allegedly make use of the force feedback feature. Probably the best one is Combat Flight Simulator 2. The stick will push back as you push the plane to its limits. You can feel the guns firing and every bullet that hits you. The stick becomes limp and unresponsive as your flight controls get shot out. X-Wing Alliance is also quite good as is Descent: Freespace (and probably Freespace 2). Disappointingly, I can’t get Independence War to work with the stick properly. Either there’s no centering, which makes the ship extremely hard to control, or else there is centering but no feedback effects.
I downloaded the demo to Crimson Skies, and can attest that the force feedback effects are nice, though it’s no CFS2.
Another vote for Crimson Skies. It made a world of difference in that game; I normally hate flight simulators (even unrealistic ones), but with the setting and the voice and the force feedback, I was hooked. I even went out and bought a FF joystick for that game after playing it at work.
Being a bit bored and blessed with a high-speed connection (yay Road Runner!), I went off in search of demos. If you’re a fan of the mecha genre (giant walking, fighting robots), then MechWarrior 3 and 4 support force feedback quite well, aside from being good games in and of themselves. The stick waggles back and forth at the appropriate speed as the robot walks. This is synchronized to both sight and sound. The different robots have a different feel to them as well as the different weapons.
I’d also like to revise my opinion of I-War. The feedback effects are actually quite good. If you’re hit, you can actually feel the direction that the hit came from. It’s just that the stick is much looser than I like and there seems to be no way to stiffen it. I partially solved the problem by increasing the size of the dead zone. The stick is still loose, but at least the ship doesn’t pitch and roll all over the place.
I got this joystick in April for my birthday from the wife and kiddies, although my son uses it far more than I 
CFS2 is very, very sweet with that joystick.