Hello,
I'm afraid this may be hopeless, as Guitammer's tech support wasn't able to figure it out, but Guitammer recommended I give this forum a try. I was able to get my BK2 working through Simhub in rFactor2 by not turning on my Sony WH-H910N wireless headphones before opening rFactor2. In fact, it not only worked, but it worked brilliantly, accurately replicating the vibrations I feel in a real car when going over curbing, shifting, and just the vibration of the engine through the chassis at idle. In other words, it behaved as I would have expected based on my selections in Simhub's Effects Profile. But of course this was without any sound. So I downloaded Voicemeeter, and the BK2 promptly stopped working. So on Guitammer's suggestion, I replaced Voicemeter as my computer's sound output with my headphones (listed as high definition speakers in my computer's sound settings page), and now my speakers work, but the Buttkicker still doesn't, when I open rFactor2 using my desktop icon. But I discovered that when I open rFactor2 through Simhub, the BK2 works - sort of. It does vibrate the chassis, but the vibrations no longer follow the inputs from the car per my Effects Profile settings. The vibration is now very jarring, to the point of being borderline painful - it feels like someone strapped a jackhammer to my sim rig.
That was yesterday. Today, the Buttkicker doesn't work at all. We had a power outage this afternoon, but everything rebooted fine, and rFactor2 works normally. I tried powering off the Buttkicker's amplifier and powering it back on, but that didn't help. So, my frustration level is about an 11 on a scale of 10. Any help would be tremendously appreciated. Thanks.
Update: During today's power outage, the Buttkicker's power amplifier did turn off - the power light was on, but it was red, when it's supposed to be green. So I pressed the power button, and the light is now green. So I opened rFactor2 using my desktop icon, without turning on my headphones, and the Buttkicker seems to be back to working correctly - I'm getting the expected strong vibrations when driving over curbing, and much less strong ones from the engine through the chassis. But as soon as I turn the head phones on, the Buttkicker stops working, so there's still some sort of conflict between the Buttkicker and the headphones, but I believe that's a relatively common problem, so hopefully someone here has a solution I can apply. Thanks.
OK, this thing is a mess. I fired up RF2 again, and at first, things seemed to be suddenly working. But I quickly found it's back in the mode of just a strong, one-dimensional vibration that isn't responding to the car's inputs. On top of that, it's cutting in and out randomly. Could someone please explain:
1. What should I have selected for my computer's sound settings output?
2. Should I be using Voicemeeter, or not? Guitammer is ambiguous about this - their documentation says I should use it, but their tech support guy said I shouldn't have to use it along with Simhub.
3. If I do need Voicemeeter to allow use of the headphones with the Buttkicker, exactly what should I have selected under the A1 and A2 pulldown menus?
I can't be the first person in the history of sim racing to try to run a Buttkicker through Simhub in rFactor2. I have an all-Fanatec setup, which I would think should simplify things. Thanks.
Hi !
Concerning buttkickers you have two directions, but they should not be mixed, the "game sound" direction where you feed your shakers with game sound, this kind of setup requires an advanced sound mixer (like voicemeeter) in order to "mirror" the sound to both sound cards.
The second method is how simhub works, it will generate sounds specifically for bass shakers ,in this setup game sound output and bass shakers output must be totally independent and so any mixing software must be removed from the equation.
I feel like you are facing two symptoms, you are trying to do both ways at the same time. Using a mixing software will make the sound outputs busy and prevent simhub to connect directly to the sound card dedicated to bass shakers
The second issue (jackhammer effect) is probably due to too many effects enabled at the same time in shakeit. Bass shakers have a limited bandwidth and you can't feed it with too many effects as they are extremely emphazed.start by disabling them all and enable them one by one select the gain you feel right for your setup after one of two laps, then enable the next one.
On a single bass shakers you need to keep reasonable and the following effects is a good balance.
- Road vibrations
- road rumble
- wheel slip or wheel lock
- Gear
When you will get something nice with the previous ones you can try to add a permanent effect like engine vibrations.
About starting rf2 from simhub or from your desktop links it should not have any effects (simhub asks steam to start it in fact, it doesn't starts it directly.) Could it possible that you have two copies of the game and using the desktop shortcut doesn't starts the same ? Simhub uses a plugin to extract telemetry, could you check in game settings that this plugin(rF2SharedMemoryMapPlugin ) is correctly visible and enabled when you start from your desktop icon ?
Thanks for the reply. So it sounds like I should take Voicemeeter out of the picture (I think I'll go ahead and uninstall it). But then what steps do I have to take to get the sound from the headphones and the vibrations from the Buttkicker both working? The fact that both weren't working through Simhub was the reason I downloaded Voicemeeter in the first place.
Regarding your comment about the rF2SharedMemoryMapPlugin, how exactly do I check for that (sorry, as per my screen name, I'm not very knowledgeable about computer software or firmware). If you're not sure, I can check with the rF2 forum. Thanks.
concerning the buttckickers you simply need two distinct outputs, one for the buttkicker, one for the headphones. Then inside simhub you need to enable the expected output (do not enable here your headphones output) 
To check that you simply need to go inside the game settings/plugins : 
Thanks again for the response. I do have the rF2SharedMemoryMapPlugin set to "On", and I appear to have my Sound Output in Simhub set exactly as you're showing it. However, I appear to have a much bigger problem. In the middle of a session in RF2 last night, my car suddenly started responding very sluggishly to inputs, particularly to the throttle, so I exited RF2, and found that my wheel base, a Fanatec DD1, is no longer appearing in the Fanatec Wheel Property page. I tried powering it off and back on, but that hasn't helped. The troubleshooting guide in the manual didn't provide any guidance, nor has a google search, so I posted a thread on the Fanatec forum, but haven't heard back yet. So, for the time being, I'm totally dead in the water, unable to continue troubleshooting my problems with the Buttkicker.
By the way, would you mind sharing how you are able to post edited images (screen captures) in this forum? I've googled this several times over the years, and there seem to be many methods, all of which seem pretty complicated and cumbersome. But it would be very helpful to be able to do that so I can (assuming I get my wheel base working in the near future) show what I'm seeing. Thanks.
Arf 🙁 sorry to hear that, let's hope it gets solved,
Personnally for quick captures/edits I use greenshot : https://getgreenshot.org/ there might be other better options, but it's the one I got used to :D, print screen to capture -> click on open in editor, do whatever you want in the editor, then depending of the forum , select copy to clipboard, or upload to imgur (on the module I'm using to power simhub's forum "upload to imgur" works well, it will copy a link a direct link to the picture in the clipboard).