Understanding Motion Cues

Motion cues are the heart of DR Sim Manager’s motion processing. Each cue reads specific telemetry data from the game and produces movement on one or more axes. This page explains every available cue, how they interact, and the key concepts behind motion tuning.

What Is a Motion Cue?

A motion cue is a processing stage in your motion profile. It takes in telemetry data (accelerations, rotations, speeds, surface types, etc.) and outputs motion commands on the six platform axes: surge (fore/aft), sway (left/right), heave (up/down), pitch (tilt forward/backward), roll (tilt left/right), and yaw (rotate left/right).

Your profile contains a stack of cues. Each cue processes independently, and their outputs are combined to produce the final platform motion. This modular approach lets you build up your motion experience one layer at a time — start with the Primary Cue for core motion, then add effects like vibration, or bass shaker haptics as desired.

Key Concepts

Before diving into individual cues, it’s important to understand three concepts that appear throughout the cue system.

Gain

Gain is a multiplier that controls motion intensity on a per-axis basis. Lower values reduce the motion; higher values amplify it. Every cue that produces platform motion has gain controls.

Gain is your primary tuning tool — adjust it to find the right balance between immersion and comfort for each axis.

Smoothness (Low-Pass Filter)

Smoothness controls how much the motion output is filtered to remove rapid changes. Higher smoothness values produce gentler, more dampened movement. Lower values allow more direct, immediate response.

Under the hood, smoothness applies a low-pass filter — it lets slow, sustained forces through while softening fast transients. This is useful for reducing harshness without losing the overall sense of motion.

Washout (High-Pass Filter)

Washout controls how quickly the platform returns to its center position after being displaced. Higher washout values return to center faster; lower values return more slowly (or not at all with washout set to zero).

Washout uses a high-pass filter — it lets rapid changes through while gradually removing sustained offsets. This is critical because motion platforms have limited travel. Without washout, sustained G-forces (like a long corner) would push the platform to its mechanical limit and hold it there, leaving no room for additional motion.

How Smoothness and Washout Interact

Smoothness removes fast, spiky motion → makes things feel gentler
Washout removes slow, sustained motion → keeps the platform centered

Together, they define a “sweet spot” of motion frequencies that pass through to the platform. Too much smoothness and the motion feels sluggish. Too much washout and sustained forces feel cut short. The Motion Tuning Guide provides a step-by-step workflow for finding the right balance.

The Cue Stack

Cues process in the following conceptual order. Earlier cues establish the base motion, and later cues refine or add effects on top.

Primary Cue

The Primary Cue is the foundation of all motion. It converts vehicle accelerations and rotations into platform movement across all six axes. Every profile starts with a Primary Cue.

The Primary Cue processes different telemetry depending on the game type:

Driving games: Uses lateral acceleration (sway), longitudinal acceleration (surge), vertical acceleration (heave), and rotational rates for pitch, roll, and yaw
Flight games: Uses flight dynamics data including gravity components and angular velocities

Each axis has independent Gain, Smoothness, and Washout controls. You can also Isolate individual axes — temporarily muting all other axes so you can tune one at a time.

See Primary Cue for full control details.

Ground Cue

The Ground Cue provides a separate motion profile optimized for ground operations in flight simulations — taxi, takeoff roll, and landing rollout. It blends with the Primary Cue based on altitude: below a configurable ground altitude the Ground Cue dominates, above a configurable air altitude the Primary Cue takes over, and in between the two blend smoothly.

This lets you tune aggressive, detailed ground feel (runway bumps, brake response) independently from in-flight motion without either interfering with the other.

The Ground Cue is only active for flight games. It has the same per-axis controls as the Primary Cue and can optionally link its settings to the Primary Cue for convenience.

See Ground Cue for full control details.

Variant Cue

The Variant Cue lets you create different gain profiles for different vehicles within the same game. For example, you might want lower motion intensity for a heavy GT car and higher intensity for a nimble formula car.

When Auto Switch is enabled, the Variant Cue detects vehicle changes in the game and automatically applies the matching gain profile. If no profile exists for the current vehicle, one is created automatically.

You can also enable or disable specific axes per variant — for example, disabling pitch in a driving game where it adds unwanted noise.

See Variant Cue for full control details.

Advanced Yaw Cue

The Advanced Yaw Cue provides three enhancements to yaw motion:

Deadzone: Eliminates small, jittery yaw movements when traveling straight
Mix Roll: Blends a portion of roll motion into the yaw axis for a more natural cornering sensation (tilt coordination)
Unlimited Yaw: For simulators with continuous rotation (slip ring) hardware, enables the platform to track the vehicle’s actual heading continuously rather than returning to center

See Advanced Yaw Cue for full control details.

Vibration Cue

The Vibration Cue extracts high-frequency content from the telemetry and adds it as small, rapid platform movements. This captures fine detail that the Primary Cue’s smoothing would otherwise remove — road surface texture, curb strikes, engine vibration, and aerodynamic buffeting.

It uses a high-pass filter to isolate only the fast-changing components of telemetry, then applies them as subtle motion on top of the existing platform output. Each axis has independent intensity control.

See Vibration Cue for full control details.

Offset Cue

The Offset Cue serves two purposes:

Position Offsets: Shift the platform’s neutral (home) position on any axis. Useful for correcting mounting misalignments or adding a default tilt (e.g., slight nose-up in a flight sim).
Center of Rotation (CoR) Offsets: Adjust where the platform rotates around relative to your seated position. By default, platforms rotate around their mechanical center (typically below you). CoR offsets add compensating translational movements during rotation so it feels like you’re rotating around your head instead of your feet — dramatically improving realism on platforms with short actuator travel.

See Offset Cue for full control details.

Wave Generator Cue

The Wave Generator produces a continuous, repeating waveform on a selected axis. It’s primarily a testing and calibration tool — use it to verify hardware response, check range of motion, or create controlled conditions for tuning other cues.

You can select the axis, frequency, amplitude, and waveform shape (sine or triangle). The waveform runs independently of game telemetry, so it works without a game connected.

See Wave Generator Cue for full control details.

Safety and Limiting Cues

These cues protect you and your hardware by constraining the motion output.

Speed Limits Cue

The Speed Limits Cue restricts how fast each axis can move, regardless of what the other cues are requesting. If a cue commands a sudden large movement, the Speed Limits Cue slows it down to a comfortable maximum rate. The platform still reaches the target position — it just takes a bit longer.

This is primarily a safety feature. Set it to the fastest speed you’re comfortable with, then leave it alone.

See Speed Limits Cue for full control details.

Travel Limits Cue

The Travel Limits Cue restricts how far each axis can move from center. It applies soft limiting by default — as the platform approaches the boundary, motion is gradually compressed rather than hitting a hard stop. This prevents jarring impacts at the end of travel.

Travel Limits works in conjunction with the physical limits defined in your Sim Config. The more restrictive of the two is always used.

See Travel Limits Cue for full control details.

Safety Limit (Spike Filter)

The Safety Limit monitors acceleration on every axis and intervenes when it exceeds configurable thresholds. It acts per-axis — if heave spikes, only heave is filtered while all other axes continue normally. This protects against telemetry glitches, in-game crashes, and sudden respawns that could otherwise cause uncomfortably fast platform movements.

The Safety Limit engages instantly and releases smoothly once acceleration returns to normal. Thresholds are configured in Settings > Safety.

See Spike Filtering for a detailed explanation.

Crash Cue

The Crash Cue detects major vehicle impacts (collisions, aircraft crashes) by monitoring telemetry for sudden extreme events. When a crash is detected, it can briefly pause or dampen motion output to protect both the user and the equipment. This is separate from the per-axis spike filter — crash detection responds to catastrophic game events rather than individual axis spikes.

Peripheral Cues

These cues drive specialized hardware beyond the main motion platform.

Bass Shaker Cue

The Bass Shaker Cue generates audio-frequency haptic effects through tactile transducers (bass shakers) mounted to your rig. It produces low-frequency vibrations that simulate specific events: engine rumble, gear shifts, road texture, tire slip, aerodynamic buffeting, and more.

Effects are organized by vehicle type, with separate sets for driving and flight games. Each effect has independent intensity control and a test button for verifying transducer response. Effects are spatially positioned, so if you have multiple transducers, each one emphasizes the events closest to its physical location.

See Bass Shaker Cue for the full list of effects and tuning tips.

Belt Tensioner Cue

The Belt Tensioner Cue drives seat belt tensioning hardware to simulate G-forces through physical pressure on your body. It processes vehicle accelerations across sway (lateral), surge (longitudinal), and heave (vertical) and converts them into left and right belt outputs.

For example, during hard braking both belts tighten. During a left turn, the right belt tightens more than the left. An adjustable offset keeps light baseline tension so the belts always feel “live.”

See Belt Tensioner Cue for full control details.

Wind Simulator Cue

The Wind Simulator Cue controls fan hardware to simulate wind on the driver or pilot. Wind intensity scales with vehicle speed. Optional settings allow yaw rate to shift wind between left and right fans for a directional effect during cornering, and canopy position to modulate wind output in open-cockpit aircraft.

See Wind Simulator Cue for full control details.

Input Cues

These cues let you drive motion from physical input devices rather than game telemetry.

Joystick Input Cue

The Joystick Input Cue lets you bind axes from a joystick, gamepad, or other controller directly to your simulator’s motion axes, wind fans, or belt tensioners. Each binding maps one controller axis to one target axis with independent travel %, smoothness, and washout controls. In addition to the six standard motion axes, you can target Wind Left, Wind Right, Belt Left, and Belt Right.

The Joystick Input Cue processes independently from any active game source. Its output stacks additively on top of all other cues, so you can use it alongside normal game-driven motion or on its own — for testing, demonstrations, or adding manual motion effects. Joystick input continues responding if game telemetry pauses, disconnects, or becomes stale, while still respecting speed, safety, travel, crash, and pause protections.

See Joystick Input Cue for full control details.

Pause and Stale Handling

DRSM handles interruptions in game telemetry gracefully:

Pause Detection: When the game is paused, DRSM detects the absence of changing telemetry and smoothly parks the platform at its neutral position. When the game resumes, motion fades back in. This prevents the platform from holding an awkward position during pause screens or menus.
Stale Telemetry Detection: If telemetry data stops arriving entirely (game crash, disconnection, or process exit), DRSM detects the stale data and safely returns the platform to center. This ensures the platform never gets stuck in a displaced position when the game is no longer providing data.

Both features activate automatically and require no configuration.

Summary

Concept	What It Does
Gain	Multiplies motion intensity per axis
Smoothness	Low-pass filter — removes fast, spiky motion
Washout	High-pass filter — returns platform to center over time
Primary Cue	Core motion from vehicle physics
Additional Cues	Layer-on effects (vibration, ground, yaw, etc.)
Safety Cues	Protect against spikes, excessive speed, and over-travel
Peripheral Cues	Drive bass shakers, belt tensioners, and wind fans
Input Cues	Map physical controllers to motion axes

For a hands-on tuning workflow, see the Motion Tuning Guide.