Firmware
Built carefully.
Unleashed mode needs a modified version of the wheel's own app. Here's what it changes, how every build is checked, how you get it, and how to go back.
Read this first
Installing modified firmware on your wheel is at your own risk.
- It isn't made, tested or supported by Simagic, and it may void your warranty.
- A bug, an interrupted install or a difference in your hardware could stop the wheel from working correctly. In rare cases you might not be able to recover it yourself.
- We check every build (every change emulated against the stock firmware, then tested on a real wheel), but we can't test every wheel, base, revision and setup.
- It only changes the wheel's own app (lights, screen, buttons, USB). It doesn't change your base or force feedback. You can go back to Simagic's stock firmware with SimPro at any time: reinstall wheel app 1.3.11 from SimPro's firmware page with the original file in place (see "Back to stock" in the setup guide).
- Don't unplug or power off the wheel while it installs.
To the extent the law allows, the authors aren't liable for damage to your hardware or any other loss.
Six layers of safety
Only the wheel's own app
The bootloader, the flag page and the firmware update path are never touched. Your base and force feedback aren't involved.
Off until the PC turns it on
Every new behaviour waits for a magic word the plugin writes into the wheel's memory; at power-on memory is random, so the wheel starts as stock. The one exception, build 6's switch to USB (the PC can't reach a wheel on the base), is limited instead: base mode only, after 3 s, at most three restarts per power-on.
Emulated against stock
Every changed routine runs in an emulator from both images over every input and mode, including a negative control that must fail.
Byte-identical round trip
Each build is packaged, unpacked again and compared byte for byte before it's ever flashed.
One change per build
If something misbehaves on a wheel, only one thing changed.
Stock is one reinstall away
SimPro's own reinstall of wheel app 1.3.11 puts Simagic's firmware back.
Builds
Every light, any colour · the PC owns the screen tested
All 38 LEDs take their colour from the PC; the plugin can take over the screen and gives it back when it stops (1 s keepalive).
The dash button goes to the PC tested
In USB mode the dash button becomes controller button 40 and stops switching the wheel's own pages.
USB takes over from the base tested
A wheel that started on the base restarts into USB mode when a PC is on its cable (at most three times per power-on).
The wheel says which build it runs tested
On the plugin's question the wheel reports its build number, so no more "my wheel runs the patch" checkbox.
You choose the dash button and the upper paddles tested
The dash button and the two upper paddles are sent to buttons you pick in the plugin (the paddles send nothing over USB on a stock wheel). Only active in USB mode.
48 buttons: room for every control tested
The wheel reports 48 buttons instead of 40, so the dash button and the upper paddles get their own slots (41 to 43) and share nothing with an encoder or a roller. SimPro still connects and reads the wheel as before.
How you get it
We never hand out Simagic's firmware, patched or not, and nothing here includes the key that protects it. What we publish is only our changes: a few bytes of hooks and some code of our own, packed as a patch file, plus a tool that applies it to your own copy of the wheel app.
- The tool first checks that your copy is Simagic's original (by its checksum). If it isn't, it stops.
- It writes the patched file next to it and checks the result against the published checksum. If that doesn't match, it stops.
- You then install it through SimPro, exactly as you would a firmware update, after ticking the risk acknowledgement. Reinstalling the stock app (below) is always one step away.
Status: the patch files and this guide are being finalised and will be published here and on GitHub with the stable 0.5.0 release. Until then this page is information only, and the plugin works fully in standard mode, which needs no firmware at all.
Back to stock
- Check SimPro's copy of the wheel app is Simagic's original (after installing the modified one you put the original back, so it is).
- Wheel on USB, base on. In SimPro: Device, FX Pro, Firmware: reinstall wheel app 1.3.11.
- Wait until SimPro says it's done. If it hangs after the wheel enters boot mode, close SimPro, start it again and reinstall: it installs to a wheel that's already in boot mode.
- That's Simagic's own firmware again. The plugin's Wheel tab shows no patch build.
Reinstalling firmware always carries a small risk. Don't unplug or power off the wheel while it installs.