Cheap Steering Wheel with "double vibration": no vibration in game

[avenger]

I got an old 2007 cheap steering wheel. It has just 180 deg rotation (actual 120 if you measure its dead zones), comes with brake+accel analog pedals and a (reasonbaly nice) 4+1 button "gearbox with handbrake".

Background

It is Brazillian's "Leadership Gamer Twin Turbo" steering wheel, model "1021". Other brands with the same hardware are also Brazillian Goldship (also modelled after 1021) and a Dialog Race Winner II, GW-301, from Russia. Both Brazillian brands are gone, but Russian one is still up, so I could eventually find drivers to the wheel (to enable vibration, Windows drivers allows its basic functionality to work) from Dialog.

The "gearbox" is pretty unique, but it shares buttons with the joystick, so it will overlap 5 of the 12 buttons on the wheel.

I couldn't get the IC number in its mainboard but my unit's mainboard model is named after "HY-872". The IC is covered in plastic, God knows why they do that.

For what I could find, it was a Chinese factory, some driver versions have indications the drivers and tools were built in China. No surprises here. And the company is most likely gone, as there was no drivers for newer Windows versions like 7. Last I could find was XP/2k.

Drivers support

The good news is that these drivers works on Windows 10, but that's as far as good goes, as their custom properties page is replaced by the windows' default one, which allows for checking all buttons, steering, etc. I could have one of the driver versions (named 5.1) show its custom page (with the "Effects" tab), but the thing freezes and closes when I try to check the "effects" thing. Bad indication.

"Force Feedback" support

But then, I see in windows registry that the drivers set up that OEMForceFeedback registry keys with different types of "supported" force feedback profiles (constant force, sine, triangle, etc). This suggests I could get some rumbling in that wheel, at least to "feel" when I rev the truck a lot, right? Well, I wish it worked.

To ensure this "force feedback" (FF) (well, the vibration is a kind of a force, right? and its vibration according to the game stuff is some kind of feedback, correct?) worked, I found a nice little tool from a person who implemented force feedback support to Flight Simulator, called ForceTest.exe. It's a single executable. You open it, it enumerates the supported features from registry, and allows us to play with different values in each kind of FF profile reported by the driver that the tool supports.

For my particular wheel, only Constant Force really worked, with some other like Periodic Force not really working, but influencing the "constant force" behavior, or rather, the overall feel in the hand -- actuation of the vibration motor.

The problem

So, I know at least to some extent, it should work in the game. In fact, even with windows default drivers, "Universal Controller" if I recall well, its basic functions works in the game: all 12 buttons, wheel gradual steering, brake and accel analog pedals, and, well, the "gearbox" buttons (which, again, just share buttons with the wheel).

But as far as FF is concerned, no juice, it won't work on my wheel at all. Not even a hint of it wanting to tremble, no matter how I push the sliders in the game.

This could be, since SCS dropped the "Constant Force" base of their force feedback engine, and in my tests basically the "Constant Force" profile was the only that reliably made my wheel quake.

The solution (that's what I don't have!)

Well, that's what I need help with. Has anybody made old, PS2-era, "dual vibration" wheels work with current ATS (or ETS2 fwiw)?

Maybe it's possible to fiddle with the .scs (modding) ForceFeedback settings to allow constant force and some level of enjoyment with this rumbly bumbly device?

The wheel is compatible with PS2 by the way, so its vibratting logic should apply to many other controllers of the kind; thus why I have hope some working solution could already be on the loose.

[xBCxRangers]

I can only say this, i play this thru Ge Force Now on a gaming console, and i never had rumble on my controllers. Never worked. The Steam Update a few days ago, now i get rumble. It may be a Steam issue.

[avenger]

Thanks, this suggests I may find something useful in the force feedback definition files!
I am trying some programs that handle force feedback and it could be my old wheel doesn't support the current technologies (Direct Input), and then I would require building the wheel drivers myself. Thankfully there's source code for some similar-ish game controller on the web, so if it come down to this I might just have what it takes to make this wheel compatible.