Input Lab

How to use the Input Lab

Pick the device you actually play with, then use it. In keyboard mode just drive with the keys; in controller or wheel mode, press something on the device first — browsers deliberately hide a game device until it has been used, so a connected pad nobody has touched genuinely does not exist yet as far as any web page is concerned.

Keyboard input testing

Watch the distinct-values counter while you steer. It will reach three and stop: full left, centre, full right. That is not a fault in the keyboard or in this page — it is the reason a keyboard is harder to be smooth with in a racing game, stated as a measurement rather than as an opinion.

Controller input testing

The number to look at first is the resting drift, because it is reported in the same units the game’s deadzone settings use. A stick that rests at four per cent will keep pulling input focus away from your keyboard, and it is the one case where a centre deadzone is the right answer rather than a habit. Take your hands off the device entirely for a few seconds before reading it.

Understanding deadzones

This game exposes an inside and an outside deadzone on five separate axes — steering, acceleration, deceleration, clutch and handbrake. Inside is how far the control moves before anything happens; outside is how much of the far end stops being read. The inside value has one honest purpose, which is to ignore a control that reports movement at rest. Setting it by taste costs precision in the middle of the range, where almost all of the driving happens.

Understanding steering input

A wheel and a stick both report a continuous position, but they do not report the same thing: a stick returns to centre by spring and a wheel is turned back by you, which is why the game’s centring and damping controls exist for one and not the other. The reach figure above tells you how much of the available travel you actually used — a number that frequently surprises people whose wheel is set to a rotation far wider than they turn.