The Sigma motion system has 7 motion layers that you can fine tune in the software:

1 - Heave

This layer captures up and down movement of the vehicle or craft.

In the section title of this layer, we have the total available travel allocated to the heave layer along with and Advanced Tuning option that opens an advanced heave tuning window. Beside this Advanced Tuning option is the Defaults option which resets the settings back to system defaults.

We have 5 sliders here, one toggle button and an Advanced Tuning option that opens a separate window with an additional toggle selection and 5 more sliders.

The Intensity slider is the first slider on the top left and ranges from 0.0 to 10.0 or has 100 points of adjustment. Intensity is the amplitude of the motion layer, like changing the size of a wave in the ocean. The higher the intensity the more movement given in the same amount of time. A setting 1.5 is equivalent to 15% of the systems total heave potential. And a setting of 9.5 is 95% of the systems heave potential. The default setting is 5.0.

The Smoothing slider on the top right side of the Heave area also has 100 points of adjustment from 0.0 to 10.0. The smoothing slider in the Heave area, like in other areas smooths out the ramp up and ramp down curves of the heave layer. Making the movement less jerky and sharp, and more rounded. It also smooths our smaller heave movements if they are too overwhelming. The default setting is 1.5.

Below the Intensity slider on the left is the Elevation slider which also has 100 points of adjustment and changes the feel of elevation changes of the vehicle. It holds the heave elevations slightly longer before returning the heave layer to middle stroke position. The changes in elevation such as a vehicle or craft going down a hill or dropping down a jump can be enhanced with this slider. The default setting here is 4.3.

The Enhanced Elevation slider, to the right of the Elevation slider also has 100 points of adjustment and further allows the change of elevation. The default setting here is 5.0.

Below these 4 sliders is the "Enhanced free-fall and landing impacts" toggle switch. When enabled it allows you to feel more of the sudden drop of landing impacts.

Below the "Enhanced free-fall and landing impacts", toggle switch is the Allocation slider. This allocation slider is represented in inches and determines how much of the available stroke is used for the Heave motion layer. This is a fundamental hardware motion layer and when adjusted it does temporarily restart the motion algorithms. So, expect a temporary pause in motion as the system resets this motion layer.

Below the "Enhanced free-fall and landing impacts" toggle is the Allocation slider that is represented in inches of travel. This adjusts the amount of actuator travel reserved to the heave motion layer. Adjusting this slider also automatically adjusts the available amount of travel for the Global Pitch and Roll slider.

The Advanced Tuning option is found between the Heave title and the Defaults rest option. Click on Advanced Tuning shows the following dialog box with a defaults option on the top left that restores all settings to defaults and a toggle to enable, "Control of position and acceleration time parameters." When toggled, the first slider or Position Time and the third slider Acceleration Time, become enabled.


Position Time is the first slider, and it ranges from 0.25 to 2.0 seconds. This slider increases the amount of time given for heave to go back to center or middle position to prepare for the next motion position. This would give a better feel of heave with some tradeoffs. For this reason, we recommend changing the next slider or the "Elevation - Velocity Time (sec)" slider first.

The Elevation - Velocity Time slider increases the amount of time spent in a heave motion. The default setting here is 1.00 sec but the slider ranges from 0.25 sec to 2.00 sec. Increasing this slider allows for certain elevation motions to be better represented with more time allocated for their reconstruction. This layer is increased at the expense of washing out or not feeling other elevation layers that may change over time.

Right below is the Acceleration Time (sec) slider that ranges from 0.10 to 0.50 seconds at 0.05 increments. The default recommended settings are 0.10 seconds, but you can increase this layer to enable longer sustained heave accelerations. This give you a more authentic heave feel at the expense of running out of travel or saturating the motion layer where no more travel is available for heave.

Below these slider settings is the Motor Max Speed area where you can allocate more speed to the heave layer by adjusting the Heave Percent slider from 45% to 70%. This is at the compromise of taking speed away from other motion layers.

Below this slider is the Pitch & Roll Percent where you can allocate more motor speed to the pitch and roll layer from 30% to 55%. Although you can add more than 100% of total motor speed, the system will still dynamically allocate the available motor speed between the two layers.

We recommend you use the default settings and if need be, only change one slider or a couple sliders at a time. Certain settings will be more noticeable in particular games and vary between various systems. For example, the DK6+ will be more affected by heave settings than a DK2 system which has 3 time less travel and less motor torque available.

2 - Global Pitch & Roll

 

Below the heave settings in the software is the Global Pitch & Roll intensity slider. Similar to the Heave slider it increases the amplitude or the strength of the pitch and roll globally for all the layers below. The default for this slider 10.0 and increments in 0.1 units from 0.0 to 10.0. Above the slider is the total amount of inches of travel allocated for the pitch and roll motion layer. and in parentheses the percentage used by the layers above relative to the travel allocated.

To the right of the title is a Defaults option that resets all the layers to their defaults.

This slider changes the intensities and allocations of all the pitch and roll layers:

Pitch - acceleration, deceleration and shifting
Turning Roll - lateral acceleration
Environment - the real vehicle pitch and roll 
Inclinations - sustained pitch and roll, such as going down hills or staying on banks

3 - Pitch

To the right of the pitch later title is a degrees of rotation allocated to pitch and again a Defaults option to the right of that to reset this section back to its factory defaults.

Right below the title you have the option to separate out the control of acceleration and deceleration individually. So that the you can have a different amplitude or intensity for the pitch forward, such as when braking vs. pitch backwards, such as when accelerating.

The smoothing slider, below the acceleration slider and just left of the deceleration slider, allows you to curve off the peaks of the intensity and rounds off the intensity of the motion layer.

The third slider on the left is the Gear Shift slider, which changes the intensity or how pronounced the gear shifts are. Like the other intensity sliders in this section, it varied from 0.0 to 10.0 and also has a smoothing slider that rounds off the intensity of the layer.

4 - Turning Roll

This layer generates responsive roll during lateral acceleration, which occurs during turning and traction loss. The roll generated from this layers is added on top of the roll generated from the Environment layer.

Turning roll only has two sliders, Intensity or the amplitude of the roll and Smoothing

5 - Environment

The environment motion settings are directly below the pitch motion layer settings. This is motion layer is the true vehicle pitch and roll. It combines changes in road inclinations (such as driving down hills or through banks) It also combines road surface suspension dynamics, accelerations, decelerations, gear shifts and turning.

The intensity of the environment layer varies from 0.0 to 10.0 as does the smoothing slider to the right of the intensity slider.

Beside the environment title you have degrees of available environment motion and a defaults option just to the right of that to reset this particular section back to our recommended defaults.

Directly below the environment intensity slider is the inclinations slider that holds the pitch and roll of the environment motion layer. For aircraft, his layer allows for sustained pitch and roll of the aircraft. This layer also affects the overall percentage of allocation for pitch and roll layers. The slider settings vary from 0.01 degrees to 4.00 degrees. To the right of the title and degrees is again the Defaults option to restore the inclination slider back to its original recommended settings.

6 - Vibrations

These layers analyze game data for vibration waves and sends them to the controller for accurate real-time playback. As soon as half a wave is detected, it is sent immediately to the controller to minimize delay. Each half-wave is produced by the game and accurately played by the controller. This authentic approach means that there are no effects played.

This section has 3 sliders, on the top left Medium Intensity vibrations, then to the right of it Medium Sensitivity. On the next line High Intensity slider and then High Sensitivity slider. all the sliders range from 0.0 to 10.0.

The Medium Intensity slider captures frequencies from 6.67 to 10 Hz from pitch, roll and heave. This includes impacts like bumps, dips, jumps, landings, curbs, walls, objects, road textures and air turbulence with landings for aircraft. The Medium Sensitivity slider to the right of this determines the amount of waves that will go through the system. Setting this slider lower blocks more waves and setting the slider higher allows more waves to come through.

The High Intensity slider captures high frequencies of 10 to 90 Hz from pitch, roll and heave. This also things like rumble strips, road textures, bumps, dips, curbs, walls, objects, turbulence, and landings for aircraft.

This section of the software also has an Advanced Tuning option just right of the Vibrations settings title. Once the Advanced Tuning window is open you have six sliders. Three top sliders for Medium Vibration Intensity, Sensitivity and Boost and three bottom sliders for High Vibration intensity, sensitivity and boost. The intensity and sensitivity sliders in this pop-up windows are the same as in the previous main settings page.

However, there is also a Boost slider for both the Medium and High Vibrations that allows you to further increase the amplitude of the wave to each detected vibration. The scale of the boost sliders ranges from 0.0 to 10.0. They are the third and sixth slider in the column of sliders.

7 - Engine Vibrations

We have a more detailed article on our Engine Vibration motion layer here: True Haptics - Vibrations Under the Hood

This section has two sliders side by side. Intensity slider that ranges from 0.0 to 100.0 and a distribution slider from 100/0 to 0/100. The intensity slider increases the amplitude or the strength of the engine vibration layer. Depending on the setup, some will find that either the engine vibration is too strong or too weak for their liking. This setting can depend on many factors including seat padding, floor padding and overall structural rigidity or the material type of the simulator chassis. Typically, tubular metal welded chassis transmit vibrations better due to their rigidity. Sigma also recommends a well fitted bucket seat to better transmit engine vibrations back to the driver.

The Distribution slider, just right of the Intensity slider allows the engine vibrations to be moved from the front of the chassis to the back. This helps mimic the origins of the vibration for front engine, mid-engine or rear engine setups.

--- Updated Feb 25, 2026 by P.S.