TouchSense Electronics for Wheels

Arcade and Simulation Wheel Control Board

For arcade driving games and simulators, it’s all about realism — and especially the feel of the wheel on the road. Force feedback in the steering wheel transmits the feel of the road and the off-road, large and small obstacles, and vibration, torque, and turning radius.

Immersion’s TouchSense® Electronics for Wheels integrates with off-the-shelf active arcade steering wheels using Immersion gaming drivers that create the force feedback effects. This combination opens the door to fast and efficient development of powerful and realistic force-feedback vibration effects using the Immersion Studio® for Gaming Software Development Kit. These tools make it easy to design a virtually limitless series of effects, even for simple single-axis devices such as steering wheels.

Touch Sense Electronics for Wheels provides several benefits over host-based force feedback processing:

• Easy to implement, effects-based API
• Low communications overhead, detached from force control loop
• Dedicated embedded force processor (up to 1 KHz loop rate)
• Simultaneous effects (for example, cornering forces and road vibrations)
• Smooth, realistic, and robust gameplay
• Low overall implementation cost
• Compatible with industry leading devices

Force Feedback Wheel Control Board Specifications:

• Analog (potentiometer) and digital (encoder) input support
• Inputs for steering, brake, throttle, and clutch
• Automatic calibration and ranging of potentiometer and encoder inputs, with optional default centering spring on feedback axes
• Optimized for the Happ Controls Active Steering Wheel (#50-0102-08) and others
• Support for up to 16 digital buttons
• Amplifiers capable of providing up to 125W per motor
• Optional force-disable switch
• Requires 12-24V power supply; amperage is application dependent
• USB DirectX drivers available for the following operating systems: Windows 98SE, Windows ME, Windows 2000, and Windows XP (DirectX 7.0 or later required)