Logitech G923 Strange noises

@twitchnkfcMaroco Great! Especially for capturing the TF noise with the wheel centered.

I'm assuming that's TF because you mentioned it not being there before last week's patch. If that's correct, reducing the in-game slider for the Effects audio should also attenuate that?

Just so that no one spins this around, I am not ok with this workaround. I want my Trueforce effects resolved on their own, without interfering with my audio mix – just like in all major titles that have worked the TF feature in. Hope it gets fixed soon. And properly.

To shed more light on how this whole FFB/Trueforce thing works with these gear-driven Logitech wheels, there are two helpful teardowns out there

• Will, from Boosted Media
• Barry, from Sim Racing Garage

The G923 has an updated and more capable motor circuitry, but apart from that it is the same wheel as the G29/G920. Will goes in detail about those differences in his teardown. You can see that in the top half of the picture below. 

Right click on the image and Open on a new tab to see in the full resolution.

Both wheels produce the FFB the same. Those two silver cylinders are the motors and they all have a pinion gear at the top end, which you cannot see here. When they turn, they turn another gear, bigger, behind that steel cover. Those gears move that cogged track (yellow arrow) sideways, as shown in Barry's video. That track will turn the steering shaft (red arrow) in turn, or resist its movement. So whenever the steering wheel turns itself, or you turn it, it's all about the cogged steering column turning on the cogged horizontal track with the aid or the resistance produced by those two silver motors.

So where's the Trueforce mechanism? Well, there's none 🙂

Trueforce are all about subtle vibrations derived either from the game physics or the game audio – in the case of F1, the latter. Those vibrations are made by the very same assembly: it's the same silver motors spinning on that same cogged track which in turn makes the steering wheel rapidly oscillate left and right, mimicking the vibrations you'd get through the wheel, dashboard and floor of the car depending on what's going on with the engine and the tyres. 

Just that.

Any rattle or grinding or whining sound we hear from these wheels come from those motors and cogs. There are no other moving parts.

So that annoying and worrying sound you're getting when going straight, @twitchnkfcMaroco? Well, apparently it's just annoying, we can scrap the "worrying" part. 

There is still an issue, naturally. And it stems from the keyword I italicized above: subtle. As of now, Trueforce audio effects are cranked up to max, and there's no proper way to make them subtle. Until a better solution turns up (pun intended), we'll need to make do by working around the problem and turning those audio effects down in the game – the actual audio ones, in the Audio Settings of F1 23. 

I may have gotten some of the details wrong, but I believe that's the gist of it.

I encourage anyone still worried about it to contact Logitech with these two user-submitted videos (Maroco's above and @Santial2885 on page 18)  and ask them to confirm that the wheel is still working in a, well, deprived state of normalcy, and still far from risking damage. But that was what I got from them earlier, and all these videos still line up with the "yeah, that's the noisy Logitech wheel indeed" fame that these wheels have always carried in the simracing scene.

With this... brash implementation of Trueforce, and with the rework that the FFB got in F1 23, it's probably the first time that most of us get to experience this fame in first hand. That probably adds to the general sense of uneasiness, specially if F1 is one's main title. This franchise was never known for its crème de la crème FFB in the business after all, and F1 23 represents quite the pivotal point in this regard – again, it's both Trueforce debut on consoles and a reworked FFB on the same year.

But it should not put our hardware at peril, just our patience and goodwill towards EA.