So, I'm still plugging away on a solution to the AF2 frame cap issue. I won't get into everything I tried today, but I will explain a very optimistic and interesting result.  

     I wanted to see if Windows 11 acted any differently, at the same time starting clean and going step by step to see what exactly engages the issue. So I wiped my second PC and fired up Win 11. I only plugged in the bare minimum of devices and when I plugged in the AF2 wheel with no software loaded it was recognized as a "6 axis 48 Button game controller" very generic, but accurate. I was able to map the controls, and play the game without Sim Commander installed at all, at full frame rate. However, I could not get any FFB, it would control the game, but never any resistance of any kind. Even messing with the PID's etc, I could not get any FFB like this. However, this leads me to believe that the issue is not related to the interface, controller board or seemingly anything on the hardware side of things. to me, that's great news, it means "fixable". 

     Same exact setup, loaded SC4, did not enable any features during installation except wheel support, as soon as I did that the generic description went away, the proper description in it's place and the framerate issue returned right along with it. Of course, I was able to get FFB or pass it on to other devices, it didn't seem to matter what device was getting the FFB, as long as the AF2 was plugged in, with SC4 software/drivers loaded, frame rate issue existed. This was the same case no matter if I actually ran SC4 or not, just loading the software injects the issue. This pretty much tells me that someone who knows what they are doing should be able to trace the change needed in the SC4 driver or software to correct this. I believe it to be from the interaction with wdf01000.sys, but can't be 100% on that. 

Now, back to the 6 million people. That is how many people played FH5 in the first 3 days of the public release. One tenth of 1% of that player base (which will likely grow and grow) is 6,000 people. If you can sell a wheel to 0.001% of the lowest number of FH5 players you will sell 6,000 wheels. I personally think that is well worth the time to debug this issue. If it is not already, it will be by far the most popular racing title to ever be available on the PC, it seems like shooting yourself in both feet to not pursue that audience. Not to mention if you can get it to work with Xbox, the game FFB is plenty good enough now to play without SC4. 

my 35 cents.