Power Steering?

I can't help but notice the higher trim levels of some old cars, cars that should come with power steering, or modern car configs, especially comfort ones. Do not come with the power steering option pre-equipped. I find this rather odd and am reporting it as I'm unsure if this was intended or an oversight.

 

To emphasize this, there are zero stock configurations with power steering equipped. Safe mode does not fix this.

 

i assume it was because of some handling issue the beam devs may have had with it earlier, so it was left it as a perhaps forgotten test option
using an ffb wheel, it removes almost all feel at any speeds, probably why it’s not automatically implemented

 

Which would only be true if the devs ignored realism in favor of feel, which is not the case. Real modern cars can have numb as shit steering you cant feel anything in, and the beam equivalent vehicles should feel the same as well.

 

Lets also not forget stuff like the Gavril Grand Marshal.. which is based on a panther body platform. Which should have epic pinky finger power steering.

To make matters more laughable. The T-Series doesn't even have power steering by default. A Semi without power steering, that's bonkers.

 

The 80's Panthers were like that, can confirm. However, once they introduced the variable assistance power steering, it's actually pretty heavy.

I really only notice the effects of power steering at low speeds which is nice as it stops the wheel's FFB from jerking or jittering. I wish it could be turned on in the menu to have it automatically equipped in appropriate cars.

The Bluebuck has some epically vague power steering which is realistic. The rest of the cars tighten up as you speed up. I really don't notice a huge difference at speed.

Edit-Should mention I don't use the out of the box FFB settings.

 

Drive a FWD passima with at least 140hp.. You'll notice it all the time.

Either the old one..

Or just the modern one with the V6 equipped.

 

If the devs do what you've described, it would defeat the purpose of power steering. Power steering IRL is to improve handling by making the steering wheel less heavy, to make maneuver easier. If power steering deliberately make steering feel numb then it'll be less safe than w/o power steering. In vehicle simulation games there's no such a thing like "steering wheel too heavy" because FFB can be tuned both ingame and in controller settings.

 

That doesn't change the fact that power steering in a 170hp fwd is going to feel better being almost numb because the torque steer doesn't help you, neither does the wheel jittering over bumps with this drivetrain.

It dulls that stuff without actually turning down FFB as a whole which wouldn't really make sense.

It literally makes FWD 100% more drivable to me... And irl you wouldn't be likely to wanna drive a V6 FWD without it.

It also makes countersteering and throwing a Grand Marshal around at low speeds feel more smooth, the car has so little feeling and requires so much input anyway that I'm not so sure the feeling is helping in that car much anyway, at least when driving between 200-300hp.

Yes I do prefer driving a 200BX without it. As the car is light and reactive with RWD, so it benefits from the lack of smoothing.

But it still seems odd that the majority of cars that should have power steering simply don't have it in the config. The more I play and the better I get the more strange this has become to me.

Jumping in a semi and being greeted with a lack of power steering is and will always be... Odd.



You're also not gonna tell me that the LeGran wouldn't have downright useless power steering from the 1980s when it was kind of primitive and America was really trying to present that "Luxery" feel.
--- Post updated ---
I'd been trying to figure out why I hated driving FWD so much... And it wasn't until I realized by not putting power steering on anything... And not thinking to adjust that in my own configs or the beam configs..

That it was making me have a much harder time then I should because it actively makes driving at pretty much any speed more difficult.

A combination of preferring sub 180hp and having power steering certainly seems to improve things. But it's also odd because the modern French hatchback/crossover platform doesn't have power steering yet feels a lot less chaotic in the hands even with more horsepower and no assistance.

Why would I choose to just drop the Force Feedback % on the tuning menu when adding the much needed power steering doesn't make the wheel feel weightless and makes it so much easier to handle at the limit.

 

I cannot stress enough how much more realistic the game feels with power steering installed on all the appropriate models. It makes a huge improvement and makes everything feel so real. I can barely tell the difference between my irl cars and their similar counterparts ingame when equipped with power steering. It should be standard on most ingame cars.

 

Heck... Even against most sim racers stock advice.. In BeamNG I actually found I can get more out of the exact feel and response in the car by tweaking caster.

Further min-maxing my configurations in this game... I now use the alignment telemetry debug app to further access things and tweak more subtly until a car feels more right then I thought possible to myself.

The amount I can push cars in beam never fails to amaze me as this game progresses. It's taught me so much between this and my friends along side me.

 

If you have ever driven a real vehicle you would understand what power steering is for, which is mostly low speed steering effort. At high speed a lack of power steering does not decrease vehicle handling, due to suspension geometry. PS is almost exclusively for attempting to turn the wheels while the wheels are not rotating relative to the ground, causing excessive friction and making steering very difficult.

 

power steering is just a part that you can add to your car to make the steering lighter. it's only a FFB effect, and its only purpose is to make driving easier for people that use FFB (direct drive in particular) steering wheels.

 

If it was like that, wouldn't older cars have it? Even if power steering wasn't equipped on them realistically, if it is actually just an accessory/part that about preference, all cars would have it right? I know it isn't realistic for a 50s car to have it, but its to make it easier.

 

all the beamng cars have some sort of power steering option, it's only there as a FFB effect

 

The Miramar, Burnside, Piccolina, Bolide, Bluebuck, and Pigeon do not have power steering options. It is not just a steering force reducer, it also dampens the feedback like a real power steering system would. It is not there to reduce the strength for direct drive wheels as that is what the strength sliders are for in the controls.

 

I could be wrong, vehicles I have driven do have power steering, I can hear engine RPM fluctuation when turning the wheel at standstill, since idk how to temporately disable the power steering I'm unable to feel the difference w/ or w/o PS. However, according to the vehicles I have driven, the steering wheels are the heavyest when at standstill or high speed(the same as vehicles w/o PS, PS only reduce steering force "globally")and lightest at low speeds. Maybe power steering in that vehicle is less realistic than the "adaptive" power steering in BeamNG(steering wheel gets progressively heavy with speed).

 

It's probably feeling heavier at speed because it's likely an adaptive power steering system which means the power steering gets reduced at speed, allowing the nature of the suspension geometry and the momentum of the car, rotation of the wheels to make steering easier. Providing a sportier feel that power steering originally didn't really do in the 80s, where it was one setting. Always mega boosted, meaning the wheel would feel mega light weight pretty much all the time and have a pretty major lack of feel.

Think like the 1975-1982 Mercury Grand Marquis - Panther body. American cars from this era had non-adaptive power steering, so it was as if it was just all out at a constant maximum at all times, rather then backing off when it's less needed, like when moving at a moderate or faster rate of speed.

Pretty sure by the late 1980s through to the 1990s adaptive power steering became basically standard, or common place.

 

Honestly, i feel like if this game was to be more realistic they should give power steering to the cars that would have it in real life. Like a family suv should have power steering by default which imo adds to the realism, and keep the race cars or cars that normally wouldn't have power steering irl to have bu default no power steering. Having it as it is now (all cars by default no ps) is like having all cars as sequential gearboxes which should be only for race cars.
- based take

 

I also find it very odd that absolutely nothing has power steering, especially given BeamNG's focus on realism. I have a Logitech G920 (fully geared FFB, for those unaware) and using power steering is a much nicer driving experience, in my opinion. BeamNG's force feedback doesn't feel awesome at low speeds, and it really doesn't feel awesome if you're really whipping the wheel around (it feels very rough, but this might just be a Logitech thing, not a BeamNG thing). I don't feel like having no power steering provides any more significant "feel" when driving. The power steering makes things much smoother, more realistic (for the many models that should have it) and just better-feeling overall.

From my experience, BeamNG's force feedback isn't awesome as a whole. I think games like ATS and ETS2 do a very nice job of providing decent force while not feeling too rough with a geared wheel. It would be nice to see Beam try to replicate that.