Steering effects watches how the car is actually behaving compared to how it ought to be behaving, and turns the difference into three signals: understeer, oversteer and seat-of-pants.
This page is where you decide when each of those signals fires and how quickly it builds. What MAIRA then does with them is set up in several other places:
- The Grip-O-Meter overlay window (visual indicator)
- Force feedback at the wheel — both extra force and vibration — through the FFB graph on the Racing Wheel page
- Pedal vibration (the frequency shaping is on this page, the pedal slot it plays in is on the Pedals page)
- Sounds
- The G Tensioner, which follows the seat-of-pants signal — it uses the seat-of-pants thresholds below, but works whether or not the seat-of-pants effect itself is switched on
Changed in 2.1: the wheel force and wheel vibration settings for these three effects used to live on this page. They are now modules in the FFB graph — Understeer force, Oversteer force, Seat-of-pants force, Understeer vibration, Oversteer vibration and Seat-of-pants vibration. Add the ones you want to your graph on the Racing wheel page and tune them there; their strengths are now set in Nm at the wheel rather than as a percentage. The Enabled switch and the thresholds on this page still decide when those modules do anything at all.
Calibration file
MAIRA automatically loads the calibration file for the car you are driving – there is nothing to select or configure. When the iRacing simulator loads, MAIRA finds the first calibration file matching the current car and loads it. When a calibration file is loaded, its data is drawn on the calibration graph.
The files are loaded from your Documents\MAIRA\Calibration folder
If there is no calibration file for the current car, a “Calibration file is not yet available for this car.” message is displayed at the top of the calibration graph. If a file is there but MAIRA cannot make sense of it – most often because it was written by an older version – you get “Configuration file is invalid!” instead.
The calibration file is only needed for the understeer and oversteer effects, and for the skid/slip indicator of the Grip-O-Meter overlay — these all stay at zero until a calibration file is loaded. The seat-of-pants effect does not use calibration files. As a reminder, the understeer and oversteer sections show the same “not yet available” warning in orange while no file is loaded.
The calibration graph reads left to right as steering wheel angle, and bottom to top as yaw rate. It shows several colored lines when a calibration file is loaded –
- Black line = the raw data recorded when the file was made
- Cyan line = the expected yaw rate for each steering wheel position. It is drawn brighter across the range of steering angles that were actually measured, and darker outside that range where MAIRA has had to extrapolate – so a dark stretch is a part of the curve to trust a little less.
- Yellow line = your minimum threshold setting
- Red line = your maximum threshold setting
The threshold lines are only drawn for effects that are enabled. Understeer draws its pair below the expected yaw rate curve (the car is turning less than it should), oversteer draws its pair above it (the car is turning more than it should), so with both effects on you see the expected curve sitting inside a band.
The calibration graph also displays a live dot indicating the current position of the steering wheel vs. the current yaw rate of your car. Watching where that dot sits relative to the yellow and red lines is the quickest way to understand what your thresholds are doing.
Understeer / Oversteer / Seat-of-pants
The three steering effects each get their own block on this page, and the blocks have the same shape –
- Enabled / thresholds (plus an Algorithm choice, for seat-of-pants only)
- Pedal vibration effect
The wheel force and wheel vibration each effect can produce are set up as FFB graph modules on the Racing wheel page instead – see the note at the top of this page.
Enable / thresholds
Enabled
Turns the effect on/off. The rest of the settings for the steering effect are hidden if the effect is disabled.
This is the master switch for the whole effect. With it off the signal stays at zero, so the matching FFB graph modules, pedal vibration, sound and Grip-O-Meter needle all go quiet too, no matter how they are set up. The one exception is the G Tensioner, which reads the seat-of-pants signal ahead of this switch.
It is not recommended to enable oversteer and seat-of-pants at the same time. Use one or the other.
Default: OFF
Minimum threshold
For understeer and oversteer, this is the amount of deviation, from the expected car performance, before the effect will start playing. It is measured in degrees per second of yaw rate.
For seat-of-pants, this is the minimum lateral velocity, or lateral acceleration, or ratio of velocities, before the effect will start playing. The units follow whichever algorithm you picked.
Default: 0.05°/s for understeer, 0.00°/s for oversteer, 0.00 for seat-of-pants
Maximum threshold
For understeer and oversteer, this is the amount of deviation, from the expected car performance, where the effect will be at maximum.
For seat-of-pants, this is the lateral velocity, or lateral acceleration, or ratio of velocities, where the effect will be at maximum.
The two knobs cannot cross each other. Push the minimum above the maximum and the maximum moves up with it; pull the maximum below the minimum and the minimum comes down.
Default: 0.15°/s for understeer, 0.50°/s for oversteer, 10.00 for seat-of-pants
When tuning the effect for your driving style, it is recommended to map both the minimum and maximum threshold – / + buttons to the same knob on your steering wheel. This way, you can turn the knob up and down, while test driving the car, until the effect is active exactly when you want it to be.
All of these settings can be saved per car and per track. Right-click a setting’s name to choose how – see Tuning Profiles. Thresholds are worth tuning per car, because what counts as “too much yaw” is not the same in a Miata as it is in a GT3.
Algorithm
For the seat-of-pants steering effect only, there are three algorithms to choose from:
- Lateral acceleration (Ay) — thresholds are in g
- Lateral velocity (Vy) — thresholds are in m/s
- Ratio of velocities (Vy/Vx) — thresholds have no units
Lateral velocity (Vy) is what the original version of MAIRA used. Ratio of velocities (Vy/Vx) is the default now, because it establishes a relationship between the forward velocity of the car vs. the lateral velocity of the car – so the same threshold means something similar at 60 mph and at 150 mph.
Changing the algorithm changes what the threshold numbers mean, so expect to re-tune the two thresholds after you switch.
Default: Ratio of velocities (Vy/Vx)
Threshold tuning
To tune the thresholds for the car you are driving, it is recommended that you take your car out on the Centripetal Circuit track and drive in circles. It will help to map some inputs to the – and + threshold buttons, so you can change the setting on the fly while driving. Better yet, map the – and + buttons for both the minimum and maximum thresholds to the same knob, so when you turn it, the minimum and maximum thresholds both go up and down by the same amount.
Here’s a handy table –
| Experience | What To Do |
| Cues trigger too late | Lower both thresholds |
| Cues trigger too early or often | Raise both thresholds |
| Effect ramps up too quickly | Increase the maximum threshold |
| Effect ramps up too slowly | Decrease the maximum threshold |
Pedal vibration effect
Each effect has its own frequency shaping for pedal haptics. These knobs only decide how the vibration sounds; whether you feel it at all depends on giving the effect a slot on a pedal over on the Pedals page.
The percentages below are positions inside the global frequency range set on the Pedals page, which is why each one also shows the frequency it currently works out to.
Minimum frequency
The frequency to vibrate the pedal at, when the effect first crosses the minimum threshold.
Default: 10% (5 Hz)
Maximum frequency
The frequency to vibrate the pedal at, when at or above the steering effects maximum threshold.
Default: 100% (50 Hz)
Curve
Shapes how the frequency travels from the minimum to the maximum as the effect builds. OFF is a straight line; positive values hold near the minimum for longer, negative values rush to the maximum sooner.
Default: OFF
Private messages
Send private chat messages to the driver
When enabled, MAIRA sends you private iRacing chat messages during your session, such as a confirmation whenever a setting changes.
Default: ON
Enable input mapped setting update messages
When enabled, MAIRA shows a private chat message whenever you change a setting using a mapped input (for example, turning a knob on your steering wheel), so you can see the new value without looking away from the track.
Default: ON
Calibration
This section is how the calibration files themselves are made. It only appears in development builds of MAIRA, so you will not see it in the version you installed – the finished calibration files ship with the app instead.
It drives the car itself, through the vJoy virtual joystick, round and round the Centripetal Circuit track at a series of steering angles, recording the yaw rate the car settles at for each one. That is the expected yaw rate curve every calibration file is built from. If you are anywhere other than Centripetal Circuit it says so and does nothing.
Grip-O-Meter
The Grip-O-Meter is a small overlay window driven by the steering effects above. It shows a skid/slip indicator (based on under/oversteer deviation) and a seat-of-pants ball (based on the seat-of-pants effect). The skid/slip indicator stays centered until a calibration file is loaded for the current car.
The Grip-O-Meter overlay is now enabled and configured on the Overlays page, along with MAIRA’s other overlay windows.
Previous page: Racing Wheel
Next page: Pedals