I'm finding it more managable with RWD cars now, with a mouse I tended to correct slides without thinking, with the steering wheel it just requires a little more thought. The feedback is great, I did have a cheap wheel in the past which had supposed "force feedback" but really all it did was rumble at random intervals, this wheel really does respond to every patch of the track, picking up dips and bumps I hadn't noticed were there with a mouse.

My aim now is to beat my past times on BL GP...

I'm doing slightly better now, 1.38 round BL GP in the XFG which is near my noobish best 1.37 on mouse. But I really can't get the rear wheel drive cars to work well, the XRT which was my favourite car in demo is now a nightmare to handle, regular skids on the first corner which I can't correct. It may be the wheel or me over compensating in some way. I've got it set as 270 degrees no compensation in the setup

But when the tail starts to slide I can't correct it, I try and straighten up and it enters a full skid which if I take my hand off the wheel results in the wheel wrenching back and forth.

Steering is on the correct axis from what I can see, turning it left turns the car left, turning it right, turns the car right..

I do note that the steering is very light at parking speeds and pretty heavy at high speed, I would have thought it should be the other way round...

Well the wheel has showed up and I've bought an S2 liscence. First impressions are good, I'm not seeing an improvement in times but I am finding that I can brake and accelerate slightly better thanks to the pedals and the force feedback effects are great, if a little terrifying.. I'll need to learn how to control skids with the wheel though, with the mouse I could normally correct a bit of oversteer/drifting fairly easily, with the wheel the force feedback whips me away from the skid (as opposed to turning into the skid and then correcting the line) which makes it worse and causes spectacular crashes.. which then cause things to fall off my desk.

Aside from the force feedback skid problem the only issues I'm having are learning the tracks, finding a decent seating position so that the pedals are used properly and some wobble from the wheel at high speeds. Oh and my girly arms are aching..

On an entirely different topic, in the Options -> Player menu what does "Brake help" actually do. Are we talking ABS, that controls your braking to prevent wheel lock up/makes braking more effective, or are we talking something that puts the brakes on for you when you approach a corner a little too fast or start to skid (sort of like ESP)? Or Neither?

Is it likely to improve or harm lap times?

Well I went with the Sidewinder, apparantly it hadn't had much use, I don't mind if it has to be honest. I did check around for prices on other wheels but they really were all pretty expensive, or being sold by people with pretty poor feedback. Could have bought a Momo for about £55-60, but it'd have been refurb and possibly the wrong pedal version..

S2 liscence coming soon.

They sure aren't cheap :/ Hm, well I've put in a bid for 11.50 on an MS Sidewinder on ebay, £10 postage takes it to £21.50 and it's got a gameport connector so it'll need to be screwed onto the soundcard, but that's life..

I've been playing demo for a while now and whilst I think I can do better than many first time players my lap times are nowhere near the really fast guys. I'm currently using a mouse and keyboard and can get times around 1.28 tops in the XRT and 1.38 in the XFG with downloaded setups, but I can't seem to get any better.

I've been trying to order this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/o ... NV9EM/026-1140145-9990833
for weeks from Amazon, but have had no luck (none in stock). Should I just give up on it? I really don't want to spend much on a wheel, but if it'd improve my lap times then that'd be great. I'm not sure if the steering would improve with a wheel, but I suspect throttle/brake control would be much better, since using a keyboard results in either full throttle or full braking..