Looks like someone got pissed off at the biased youtube reviews:
http://youtube.com/profile_videos?user=fanatek
http://youtube.com/profile_videos?user=fanatek
I think he is overreacting a bit. 
That's equally useless, I'm not really sure how good a video is at reviewing a wheel anyway they always seem to pick a side
and wax lyrical about it. The criticisms in that video are true, with the exception of the noise, he obviously really boosted the sound in that video to make it sound that noisy.
The centering problem might actually be quite bad if it is caused by the belts slipping because the "potentiometer" (looks like an optical sensor) is mounted on the motor. If the belt slips the sensor is then mismatched with the wheel position which can only be fixed by recalibration. I'd guess the slip gets worse with more use because the teeth of the sprockets wear causing more slip as time goes by...
Another thing is that flimsy shiter mounting system. It is obviously a cost thing, having 2 shifters with their own mounting systems would have probably added to the total cost of the unit. The system with two pipes allow it to twist a lot. Probably would have been easier to use some L-shaped or square shaped beam instead of those two pipes. The worst thing is that the shape of the shifters certainly won't make it easy to use any kind of better mounting system.
---
Imho, there isn't a sim on the market that would be on par with 1000€ equipment. It is like buying cybernetic visual systems to play counterstrike (or buying Calvin Klein underwear when you go to see your paid mistress, or buy a Ferrari engine for your VW beetle project). For me it is not the cost, paying that 1000 something for an excellent wheel/pedals/shifter is not too much. Obviously I'd prefer to build my own, but then again, why bother. I have a non-FF MS wheel with modded pedals and imho it is just enough for any "sim" of today.
Another thing is that flimsy shiter mounting system. It is obviously a cost thing, having 2 shifters with their own mounting systems would have probably added to the total cost of the unit. The system with two pipes allow it to twist a lot. Probably would have been easier to use some L-shaped or square shaped beam instead of those two pipes. The worst thing is that the shape of the shifters certainly won't make it easy to use any kind of better mounting system.
---
Imho, there isn't a sim on the market that would be on par with 1000€ equipment. It is like buying cybernetic visual systems to play counterstrike (or buying Calvin Klein underwear when you go to see your paid mistress, or buy a Ferrari engine for your VW beetle project). For me it is not the cost, paying that 1000 something for an excellent wheel/pedals/shifter is not too much. Obviously I'd prefer to build my own, but then again, why bother. I have a non-FF MS wheel with modded pedals and imho it is just enough for any "sim" of today.
I think I recall him, he was one of the people from the LFS team that went "Screw you guys, I'm going to TDU".
EDIT: Aha - Obsolete Power
My last impressions before I get a chance to try proper drivers:
Wheel kinda feels to me like DFP, but it turns smooth thanks to the belt. On the other hand it can spin well too, so it has something from G25 level.
Also to make the wheel spin fast(but still not as fast as g25) I have to set force in wheel to 100%(max) and in lfs to at least 50-55. With G25 my force is set to 105%(max is 200 right?) and in lfs to 40 and it spins faster and makes less resistance while turning than 911 wheel, much less resistance. Differen't kind of resistance too.. In a way more real than 911 wheel, but on the other hand without super smooth feel of 911.
About the pedals, I like the throttle it is very comfortable, clutch is okay too. The brake pedal - I still can't get used to it. The travel is way too short, 2-2,5 cm? Fanatec had nice idea for brake, but it didn't work out well imo.
The bad thing is hovewer.. With G25 I want to keep on coming back to LFS, drive more and more.. With 911 wheel I just don't. I'm trying hard to enjoy this wheel a lot, but I can't yet. Maybe If I didn't have G25 my opinion would be different right now. Maybe the new drivers will make 911 wheel change a lot to the +.. We will see.
Wheel kinda feels to me like DFP, but it turns smooth thanks to the belt. On the other hand it can spin well too, so it has something from G25 level.
Also to make the wheel spin fast(but still not as fast as g25) I have to set force in wheel to 100%(max) and in lfs to at least 50-55. With G25 my force is set to 105%(max is 200 right?) and in lfs to 40 and it spins faster and makes less resistance while turning than 911 wheel, much less resistance. Differen't kind of resistance too.. In a way more real than 911 wheel, but on the other hand without super smooth feel of 911.
About the pedals, I like the throttle it is very comfortable, clutch is okay too. The brake pedal - I still can't get used to it. The travel is way too short, 2-2,5 cm? Fanatec had nice idea for brake, but it didn't work out well imo.
The bad thing is hovewer.. With G25 I want to keep on coming back to LFS, drive more and more.. With 911 wheel I just don't. I'm trying hard to enjoy this wheel a lot, but I can't yet. Maybe If I didn't have G25 my opinion would be different right now. Maybe the new drivers will make 911 wheel change a lot to the +.. We will see.
Looking more closely at those pics it is using a pair of timing (toothed) belts so you're right it shouldn't be slipping. Something does cause a slipping like sound when you hold it against resistance so I'm not sure if that's the motor or some kind of overload slipping system. The DFP doesn't make a noise when you hold it against resistance though for a few seconds until the motor becomes audible (presumably because it's getting too hot due to drawing so much current).
It wouldn't be hard to make a mount for the shifter. I did consider making a mount myself although I don't think I'll have time.
You can be almost as fast with a mouse as a high end wheel and I'm sure a motion simulator would actually slow most racers down. It's all about the experience of doing it though, satisfying controls make a huge difference, although I agree with you that the more you spend the comparatively smaller difference to your experience you get and a £200 G25/911 wheel will not give twenty time better experience than a £10 MS wheel from ebay. Having said that though a £100000 sports car won't be 20 times more fun than a £5000 hot hatch on the road and you can buy something that's faster round a track for a twentieth of the price yet there's still a market for them.
EDIT - I quickly made my shifter mount on the computer, may make it if I have the time, shouldn't take more than half an hour. It should be easy for anybody to make, only tricky bits would be a weld (you could cut one side of the angle down and pop rivet it if you can't weld) and finding the angle and sheet in sufficiently small quantities.
I've uploaded a video showing the issues I've been having with the pedals.
I have the same problem but twice extreme.
I drive on a straight and it goes Stop-Go-Stop-go_stop-Go within 5 seconds.
I'm not using pedals in wireless mode but still have problem with throttle. I thought it was because cable is connected in a place, which is close to the throttle.
AFAIK the cable is simply a power cable and the wheel input is always sent from the pedals. It's disappointing there's no cable connection if the wireless doesn't work very well it seems to affect rF much worse than LFS, I don't know if that signifies it's possibly a driver priority issue, I couldn't see any process that I should boost though so I'm not sure.
It says here that the USB drive is an extra for the Nordsleife edition: http://gear.ign.com/articles/824/824550p1.html
No idea how that affects the price (maybe it is limited edition
)
No idea how that affects the price (maybe it is limited edition
)As mentioned in my email to all testers that if such problems with RF connection occur, please let me know as we can fix that.
There is a problem on some units which we can probably solve by replacing the dongle.
Just let me know by email and you will receive a new RF dongle.
There is a problem on some units which we can probably solve by replacing the dongle.
Just let me know by email and you will receive a new RF dongle.
And the market doesn't need a G25 clone.
But um, are most of you really embarrassed about your wheels? Simulating is better than pretending, so I'd think something that looks hardcore and mechanical would be less geeky that something that pretends to "an expensive car you wish you had but don't, so I have this wheel instead".
Embarrased ??? About a wheel ???.
Why in earth should I be embarrased about the Porsche Wheel. I feel its a honour to be a tester and trying out the wheel. Sorry I dont quite follow you on this 1.
I was just responding to ajp71 who said:
I'm not embarrassed about my wheel at all. In fact I always encourage my guests to try it out.
Well for some reason i seem kinda strange for driving cars on PC in my class... Maybe you americans are mroe tolerant to doing things virtually.
On topic, after a session of LFS, the wheel offcentred to the right everytime, it ended up somewhere from 5 to 10° to the right. And i couldn't get it into 5th smoothly sometimes, as i said before. Otherwise it was fun. I was all sucky, but still In a month or so i think i would've gotten used to this. I can understeer now. Stopping the understeer is a problem and it ussually rockets me the other way, out of the corner and into a wall in SO.
On topic, after a session of LFS, the wheel offcentred to the right everytime, it ended up somewhere from 5 to 10° to the right. And i couldn't get it into 5th smoothly sometimes, as i said before. Otherwise it was fun. I was all sucky, but still
In a month or so i think i would've gotten used to this. I can understeer now. Stopping the understeer is a problem and it ussually rockets me the other way, out of the corner and into a wall in SO.I've conducted the Niel's tests with interesting results.
Sorry I can only film at 10 fps and without sound on my camera so I thought just Fraps grabbed footage would be more useful. I'd like to point out I'm using a Frex GP adapter with my DFP. The only affect that should have on FF over the standard DFP is possibly slower performance due to greater rotational mass.
My results were pretty close to Niel's G25 results, if anything the 911 wheel was beaten by the DFP at 300 degrees and with higher angles it seemed comparatively better, but not good enough to really be able to say it was good feedback. It seems that all 3 of the modern 900 degree contenders have very similar responsiveness and speed in real situations. To find a more accurate comparison you'd have to find a more scientific test and try a lot more wheel angles between 300-600 degrees.
I'm not saying by any means that the G25 and 911 wheel don't have the capacity to be a lot quicker than the DFP they just don't seem to actually use it. The 911 wheel seemed particularly disastrous at managing to pull out of donuts on rF. Overall though I think it's the way the 911 wheel delivers the FF in a much smoother less notchy manner than the DFP that makes it feel better. This also emphasised my earlier comments about the 911 wheel performing much more strongly with the smoothed out LFS feedback rather than the more raw rF Real Feel output.
Generally the whole 'it's not a game' and 'it's Live for Speed, not Need for Speed' speech is best avoided in front of friends, parents and girlfriends (not that the latter applies to many of those who want a 'hardcore mechanical' toy dominating their room).
EDIT - sorry video didn't export properly will put it up as soon as it's finished.
Sorry I can only film at 10 fps and without sound on my camera so I thought just Fraps grabbed footage would be more useful. I'd like to point out I'm using a Frex GP adapter with my DFP. The only affect that should have on FF over the standard DFP is possibly slower performance due to greater rotational mass.
My results were pretty close to Niel's G25 results, if anything the 911 wheel was beaten by the DFP at 300 degrees and with higher angles it seemed comparatively better, but not good enough to really be able to say it was good feedback. It seems that all 3 of the modern 900 degree contenders have very similar responsiveness and speed in real situations. To find a more accurate comparison you'd have to find a more scientific test and try a lot more wheel angles between 300-600 degrees.
I'm not saying by any means that the G25 and 911 wheel don't have the capacity to be a lot quicker than the DFP they just don't seem to actually use it. The 911 wheel seemed particularly disastrous at managing to pull out of donuts on rF. Overall though I think it's the way the 911 wheel delivers the FF in a much smoother less notchy manner than the DFP that makes it feel better. This also emphasised my earlier comments about the 911 wheel performing much more strongly with the smoothed out LFS feedback rather than the more raw rF Real Feel output.
Generally the whole 'it's not a game' and 'it's Live for Speed, not Need for Speed' speech is best avoided in front of friends, parents and girlfriends (not that the latter applies to many of those who want a 'hardcore mechanical' toy dominating their room
).EDIT - sorry video didn't export properly will put it up as soon as it's finished.
nice test but i cant really agree with your verdict on the results
first of all the 911 wheel turned a lot faster than the dfp (to be expected considering how slow the dfp is)
and secondly it was able to pull out of a donut at 900° which the dfp was completely unable to and iirc the g25 didnt manage to do that either
first of all the 911 wheel turned a lot faster than the dfp (to be expected considering how slow the dfp is)
and secondly it was able to pull out of a donut at 900° which the dfp was completely unable to and iirc the g25 didnt manage to do that either
Nice Vid. I wonder how you set the wheel up in rFactor. For some reason I cant get it right in rFactor. The wheel doesnt center very well. In center it feels like it wanna go left or right. When holding it in center on the straight it gives resistance.
Somwhere in the FFB options you have an "invert force feed back" or such, making it the opposite than it is now should help
Set the strength to a negative number?
No offense but it looks a bit of test that is more based on feel than numbers . Were the speeds equal in the start of every drift test with same gear and similar driver inputs? And wouldn't it be easier to just measure the "speed" and the steering lag of each wheel and compare the numbers?
. Were the speeds equal in the start of every drift test with same gear and similar driver inputs? And wouldn't it be easier to just measure the "speed" and the steering lag of each wheel and compare the numbers?There is a small FF program out that you can use for speed measurments if you have a microphone. You basically have a slider that you put full left, making the wheel turn full left, then click the most right of the slider, making the wheel turn right with full force.
With any sort of a microphone and audio software, you can check how long the noise lasts. This gives you time, and when you know it turns 900 degrees, you know the degrees per second.
I'll see if I can find it, would be interesting to have the DFP / 911 and G25 numbers. When you record 5 'lock to lock' runs in each direction and take the average time, it should be pretty much a valid measurment. Will upload later!
With any sort of a microphone and audio software, you can check how long the noise lasts. This gives you time, and when you know it turns 900 degrees, you know the degrees per second.
I'll see if I can find it, would be interesting to have the DFP / 911 and G25 numbers. When you record 5 'lock to lock' runs in each direction and take the average time, it should be pretty much a valid measurment. Will upload later!
Fanatec 911 Turbo Wheel - First Impressions
(676 posts, started )
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG