The drivers don't work on vista at all, so the pedals would be stuck on combined, that is if microsoft put any support at all for that wheel in vista.

Quote from Riders Motion :

I'm located in Quebec, so if you're from Ontario it's still a good drive!

Unfortunately, I don't have a vehicle right now, or I would. I can't exactly drive a motorcycle in the winter. Not worth the risk of hitting ice.

I had my fingers crossed you where in toronto.

I run a 3.2ghz P4 prescott HT and an ATI Radeon HD2600 and I get a caped and stable 60fps ALL the time, no matter whats on screen.

And this is at 1280x1024 with 4xAA and 8xAF with all the high res packs installed.

I know that the DFGT is quiet, but like I said, I don't know if it's quieter than the G25, it might be though. Logitech did say they used what they learned from the G25 when they made the DFGT.

Considering the age of the DFP, I consider it's noise level to be reasonable for a wheel of that time. but now they make them much quieter.

You can not put the car in reverse while it is going forward, it will just make a nasty noise. If you do get it into reverse, all it will do is shift-lock when you pull out the clutch.

It's actualy very hard to damage the gearbox from making a mestake, most of the time gearbox failures come from faulty parts or stress in the materials used to make them. I have seen gears frag inside a transmission, but it only happend once, and it was caused by a defective gear.

The G25 is quieter than the black MOMO. I'm not sure by how much, but I know its atleast bareable.

Even on modern vehicles, ABS will increase brake distance when compared to threshhold braking.

From longest to shortest brake distance it goes:
-Locked wheels
-ABS
-Threshhold

I know this for a fact because I've driven a vehicle with modern ABS and I hated how it would increase the brake distance when it kicked in.

If the ABS in LFS gives you an advantage right now, it should be adjusted so that it doesn't. Considering the age of the cars it should pulse the brakes from On to almost completely off, and do it about 4-5 times a second. I actualy timed the pulses on an old car before, to see how fast it worked. I did this on an old mercury 4 door. This car also had an old version of traction control.

where in canada are you? If you are near me I could just pick it up.

Now that you put all the numbers down thats not too bad.

You should never get cliping. If you do it's either because the volume is to high, or the equalizer is set up wrong. You want level sound most of the time, not loud sound.

I just took another look at the numbers you put in the first post. 14ohms on a system designed for 4, thats going to be quite a drop.

The only time you have to worry about complicated speaker boxes is if the speaker itself is very large, then the enclosure has to be designed, and not just built. For small speakers, you don't need to make an elaborate enclosure.

Most of the good small speaker boxes I see have no ports or tubes unless the speaker is bigger than 13 inches, any smaller and the speaker is either completely enclosed or the box has an open back. Open back speakers woulden't be good for a computer speaker system though. As far as High end goes, yes, a good high end speaker will have an elaborate enclosure, but just thinking about making one is insane, and you don't need to to get good sound.

The only reason you see alot of the stereo systems with fancy speaker enclosures is for pure looks, I'v built better sounding enclosures that where nothing more than a wooden box with holes drilled for the speakers, and sometimes the odd hole for reducing the resistance of the air mass in the box. Like I said, only high end will have proper working ports or tubes.

If you do drill a hole , make sure its at the very bottom of the box, and leave at least an inch of wood around the hole for the driver.

But like I said, thats going to be a big drop, even with the increased response you still might not get great sound.

Last edited by DragonCommando, Sat, 13 Dec 2008 08:09.

The best speaker boxes I've seen are the simplest ones, they are square, or rectangular.

All you need to do is use the right joints for the top and bottom, and make sure to dato the back plate in. Just cut 45º angles for the joints, make a rectangle out of wood, then nail or screw a front plate on.

If you want to deal with the resonant frequency, just mount the speakers with some rubber gasket material or cloth between the speaker flange and the front plate. If you want to completely remove the harmonics of the box, insulate it with foam, a 1/2-1 inch layer should be good.

I've built my own speaker boxes before, and they worked well. And I do sound setup for audio systems so I happen to know what I'm doing and talking about.

It's very quiet, I'd almost say it makes less noise than the G25, but it's been so long since I used a G25 I can't remember the noise level.

But as I said, its quiet, I hardly even notice the sound when the wheel turns fast. But thats in game, just the sound of the wheel itself in a quiet room is realy noticable. But not more so than other FFB wheels.

Last edited by DragonCommando, Sat, 13 Dec 2008 08:03.

Lets start off by making it clear that this wheel does infact work on PC, Using the support for the Driving Force Pro. All of the buttons that where present on the Driving force pro work, none of the PS3 exclusive buttons do however, but thats only a small loss.

Since this is a short review I'm going to break it into two sections, Wheel, and peddals.


Wheel:

The wheel has all of the features of the DFP, plus added "paddle shifters". I say that in quotes because they arn't quite paddles, more like levered buttons, but they do the job well.

The stick shift is on its own two buttons, which can be looked at as either a pro or a con. In LFS this means you have to go into options and change it depending on the car if you want to use what the car uses.

The force feedback is smooth and fast, it's actualy faster than the G25's. This means that you can actualy let go of the steering wheel in a slide and it will caster steer almost like a real car. This is very dependent on the settings though, and finding the right settings seems to be very easy with this wheel.

Just like the G25 though, if you set the FFB too high it will actualy kill off all of the realistic effects and you end up with a wheel that just thrashes in your hands. It will also cause the wheel to heat up, and the number one killer of electronics is heat.


The pedals:

When I first saw the pedals I thaught they looked alot like the Microsoft sidewinder precision pedals, but they are infact almost identical to the DFP's pedals. Externaly they look the same, but I don't know about internaly.

The absence of a clutch isn't too bad for me because I have an auxilary pedal clutch. But for anyone who doesn't, you might want to build your own. Or buy a seperate pedal set.

The brake pedal has about three times the spring weight of the gas pedal, and is just slightly higher, I was actualy able to heel-toe quite well on this without modulating the brakes too much.

I was told these pedals where flimsy, but I find they are on par with the MS sidewinder's pedals. They should last a long time if you don't hammer on them alot.


In short I would recommend this wheel to anyone who doesn't want to pay the $300 for a G25. This wheel is made very well, and should last a long time if you don't abuse it.

As far as a score goes I'd give it the following:

-Wheel construction 9.0/10 (some metal would have been nice, and the pedals could be better)

-Force Feedback 10/10 (on par or better than G25)

-Features 7.0/10 (no clutch and no H-gate)

-Functionality 8.0/10 (because some of the buttons don't work on PC)

Over all I'd give this wheel an 8.0 out of 10.
A G25 gets 9.5 out of 10 for comparison.

If you don't want to shell out $300 for a G25, the Driving force GT is just as good as far as the wheel goes. The pedals are OK too. It may not have a shifter or a clutch peddal, but it's less than half the price.

Logitech used what they learned from the G25 in the DFGT so it's going to be even MORE reliable and its very quiet compared to some other FFB wheels.

Well I got my DFGT.

HOLY CRAP!

I've used the G25 in store once and I liked the feel, but this thing actualy feels better, It's more comfortable than any wheel I have ever used. It just fits in my hands like it was designed for me. And I've got long fingers so its very rare anything fits in my hands well.

I'm thinking of writing a short review for it, since not many people seem to have used one on PC.

No worries guys, I fixed the sounds, and I'm adding the Scirocco to the pack shortly after it's released.

As soon as it's out, I'm going to add it to my adjusted sound pack.
http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=1003467#post1003467

Can't wait to start driving it!

Edit: See first post, Files have changed.

Last edited by DragonCommando, Thu, 11 Dec 2008 17:55.

Well, I've opted to get a Driving force GT instead. It kind of makes the pole redundant, but I encourgage people to keep voting, I'd like to see what experiances people have had with the G25, because I may buy one later.

I've decided on the DFGT because all I need is a 900º wheel, everything else will be custom built using one of these http://www.leobodnar.com/products/BU0836X/

I've seen both in action, and the DFGT actualy has faster FFB than the G25
The DFGT pedals arn't up to my standards, even my MS Sidewinder pro pedals are better. So I'm going to build my own pedals, shifter, e-brake and switch board. I can have up to 8 axis and 32 buttons to play with.

Where I save for the wheel, I spend a little more on making an awsome shifter and pedal combo that blows the G25 units away.

Quote from Forbin :

With that kind of budget, all you're going to get is a TN panel. Despite the fact they're the fastest panel type, they're complete rubbish compared to even PVA, and especially IPS (nearly as fast as TN but far superior image quality). Likewise, IPS is rubbish compared to a nice CRT.

FINALY, someone with some brains!

I will hold onto my Philips 107T untill it dies because I refuse to switch over to flatpanels, sure its not as big and it's not widescreen, but it gets a much better picture than any current flatscreen. And you know what the best part is, I grabbed it out of a trash bin! someone threw it out because they got a flatscreen of inferior quality.

I would realy like to find a 27" CRT like I had before, but they are realy hard to come by these days. My old one went in the trash because someone broke the connecters in the back.

My large sony tv does the same thing, you have to move or tap it to get the line in to work, but this things almost ten years old, a new TV should never do that.

I would say get it exchanged anyway, its not worth living with that problem, because one day it just wont work at all. I'm just waiting till my TV dies so I have an excuse to get an HD one.

So nobody likes these sounds?

Guess its because I didn't rice them up

Do you have the appropreate crossover for connecting the tweeters and the speakers together? If not, it will never sound good.

The crossover seperates the frequencies going to the speakers and the tweeters, so the tweeter only gets high frequency input and the speaker only gets mid-low input.

Without this the tweeter will get low frequency inputs from the amplifier and will make a horrible buzzing noise every time you get bass sounds to the speakers.

You will need a seperate crossover for each speaker and tweeter set.

Speaker enclosures are ususaly just a wooden box with a hole drilled for each speaker, and then a metal or fabric cover over the front. They arn't actualy that complicated.

I've gone through every car in LFS and adjusted the sounds to be as realistic as possible.

I've done the following:

-Every cars sound was adjusted manualy

-Road cars have quiet interiors, meaning the engine sound is muffled and is at a much lower volume

-Road car turbos are almost inaudible just like real life stock turbos.

-GTR cars sound similar to road car variants, but have harsher sound because of agressive engine tuning and difference in exhaust, also not muffled as much due to lack of most of the interior.

-LX cars sound as close to Caterhams as I could possibly get them to with the default pulse clip.

-FZ50 is as close to sounding like a porsche 911 as I could get it to.

-Formula cars where adjusted extensively to sound like thier real life counterparts.

I used only the sliders to adjust things, the only new sound I added was the shifting sound in the road cars. That was sampled from NFS Porsche unleashed, because it sounded good.

Edit: Files changed, now you can put the files in your folder without overriding the originals, and you should be able to load them as a pack now.
This way you can switch between them when you want to. Many thanks to Bob Smith for telling me how to change the files all at once. As an extra note, please remember to download all three files, they only work if you download all three. Also, the road cars will have the volumes adjusted when the new car is released, I will be making a new thread with all of my custom stuff.

Last edited by DragonCommando, Wed, 24 Dec 2008 05:51.

That stroboscopic effect comes from frame rate, It happens on my screen all the time, even the tire treads look like they are spinning backwards sometimes.

All you need is a good graphics card that can render high framerates all the time and cap it at 60-70fps, that will give you the stroboscopic effect