This is the simpit, I'm your host, Sean Cole, and today I'm here to hopefully make you faster or at least make your life a little bit easier, especially if you're a new Simracer. There are times when you're sim racing where you swear your controls are just not working correctly. Maybe it's a flickering throttle pedal or a flickering or dragging brake pedal when you're going full speed. These things are annoying and they can be robbing you of speed and there are simple ways to cure these problems regardless of the type of pedal set that you use. And our remedy for that is called short calibration. What does it mean? What does it do? How can that help me and how do I do it to my Sim? Short calibration is basically a method of creating dead zones on or equipment for various different reasons. Short calibration prevents throttle flicker at full throw or full range of motion on your gas pedal. Short calibration can also prevent dragging a brakes, especially for those who tend to rest their feet on their pedals even when not being used. And since all Sims seem to have slightly different methods of calibration or controlling our range of motion, we are going to have to use a different method to achieve this goal in each of our different Sims. So here are my big three Sims and how I achieve that goal. When I calibrate my pedals and I racing, here's what I do. For the gas, I press the gas all the way down and make a mental note of that distance of my foot and also the number that I racing sees. I then hit the reset button and then slowly press the gas until I am 98 to 99% of that distance or that number and then release the pedal. This creates a slight dead zone at the top or full throttle, not requiring me to hold the pedal on the pedal stop too firmly to achieve full throttle. For my brake, I do kind of the opposite, but I don't actually have to hit the reset button. Those on standard or potentiometer type pedals, it still comes down to distance or full range of the pedal. And my recommendation is when pressing full brake, don't press to the point of flexing the pedal. You just want to reach that bump stop very slightly and then release the pedal. For people on load cells or hydraulic pedals, it's a little more complicated. My pedal can take a lot more pressure than I want to actually have to use in-game. So when I press on my pedal, I'm not pressing to the full range of travel. I'm pressing to the distance that I want to have to press while breaking in-game and there is a big difference. And then when releasing the pedal and it doesn't matter whether you're talking about potentiometer, load cell or hydraulic, I will leave my foot resting on the pedal just enough to see it flickering. That way I know when I'm doing my left foot braking style and I'm resting my foot on the brake while on the gas that I'm not going to see that flicker. As soon as I see a little flicker, I'll hit done with the brake pedal. When it comes to the clutch, it's really the same process as the gas. However, I want that full range point to mimic a real car clutch point. If you can press your foot all the way to the floor to engage the clutch in a real car, you probably need a new clutch or at least an adjustment. In the case of sim racing, I want that clutch to release maybe halfway, maybe two-thirds of the distance through its range is the point that I want it to activate fully in the game. So I'll press my clutch to about 65% release it all the way and then hit done. And that gives us pedals set for a quick reacting clutch, a brake that I don't have to press to the end of a full range of travel to achieve full braking. The ability to rest my foot on the brake without affecting my driving and the ability to go to full throttle without having to really press on that end stop too hard. You just don't want to have to do that. It'll wear you out over time. For a set of course, a competition, things are a little bit different. ACC uses Windows Calibration to determine the throw or the length of travel for all of your pedals. So as soon as you map it, it sees Windows Calibration. So we can still adjust things to our liking. When in the mapping screen, to the right of each pedals assignment window, there's a drop down area. Here I can create a dead zone from Windows Calibration manually and it's even better. You can visually see what is going on with each pedal by the colors displayed in ACC. Light Gray is the pedals range in-game. Dark Gray is the amount you are limiting that travel. Red is your actual pedal movement and dark red is how much your actual pedal movement goes into the dead zones. Starting with the gas, we can adjust the full throw by dialing in a maximum and minimum limit for each pedal. Much like I did in I Racing, I want to create a dead zone at the top or maximum limit one or two percent lower than default. On the brake pedal, I am dialing in a maximum limit that allows me to press the brakes to the distance or strength that I want to press. As I keep pressing the brake and lowering that maximum limit until I'm happy. To be able to rest my foot on the pedal, I also add one or two percent of the minimum limit to prevent accidental brake drag. And then finally, with the clutch, I am lowering that maximum range until I'm getting into the dark red to mimic my car's clutch about 65%. And then of course, R-Factor 2, just to be unique, had to have its own method of achieving this goal, but it is very similar. Now when you're on the mapping or the controls tab on R-Factor 2, you can map your pedals and then you can actually see all of your pedals movement on the screen. Again, visually, it is showing us exactly what is going on. Each pedal has a box. This box has four sides, each representing the pedals movement. The left and right hand sides represent the full pedal travel as Windows sees it. And the top and bottom represents the game's minimum and maximum range. When the color hits the top, we're at full game range. And where it hits the top left or right shows where that is within Windows calibration, very similar to a set of Corsa. You can actually set each pedal's minimum and maximum by pressing the pedal to the desired position and then hitting the set minimum or maximum button. I follow the same mentality as the two other sims. I press my gas pedal to about 98 or 99% and then I hit set maximum for the throttle pedal. For the brake, I'll press the pedal as hard as I want to press it in sim and then set maximum. And then I want to rest my foot on the pedal until I see a hint of color showing and then set the minimum. And then finally, with the clutch, I'll press it to match my car's release point or about two thirds of the way in and set that maximum here as well. You can see a common theme between all three of these sims and how we're trying to achieve our goal. They all do it slightly different, but it's always the same mentality. Creating a little dead zone to prevent us from having to really push that throttle too far, preventing a little dead zone from preventing us from having to press the brake too far and the ability to create a little dead zone at the beginning of the brake pedal so that we can rest our foot if you're a left footed breaker, especially. And then of course, getting the clutch anywhere in the ballpark are the way a real clutch works in a real car. So I hope this has made your driving easier or better or maybe even made you a little bit faster or taught you something today. And you can take any of these practices to any other sim out there. We're basically creating the same type of scenario or doing the same type of practices to achieve the same goals regardless of our sim. So I hope you've enjoyed this video. If you want to see more videos like this one, be sure to subscribe to the channel, let us know in our comments if you like what we're doing, and of course tune in for more. That's going to do it for this one. This is The Sim Pit. I'm Sean Cole and I'll see you on the track.