FFB Racing Wheels - share your personal story

[TylerDurden4321]

It's not a rare thing to find people being curious about Force Feedback Wheels:

- "I want to try one of those FFB wheels for Forza/GT/DiRT Rally, which one should I get?"
- "Is it enough to mount it to a desk / how to make the pedals stick to the floor?"
- "Will it make me slower?"
- "it feels xyz, what am I doing wrong?"

...and I've replied to a lot of those over the last few years, but rarely do hear back from people about their experience.

One story from a guy I did hear back from:
The most hyped guy I've ever seen was during the console launch of DiRT Rally. He was getting a wheelstand, a Thrustmaster T150 and PS VR for the game and was blown away by old rally clips people were sharing and comparing to DiRT Rally leading up to launch - super excited. I probably answered 5 or 6 private message questions from him in good detail to help him. Then heard nothing back for a while and thought that he was probably enjoying the game with his new kit.
A few days later he just wrote 2-3 sentences saying that he can't control it, it doesn't feel good and he was doing much better with a controller. Also the stuff was expensive and he's now sending it all back while he still can.

That made me really wonder what everyone's experience was after getting their wheels.

I'd love to hear your stories and telling it might help others in their buying decisions. Some things you might want to mention (but don't have to of course):

• When was it?
• For what game?
• Anything in particular that tipped you over?
• What hardware did you get?
• How was it at first?
• Did you keep it?
• How often were you using it?
• What games were/are you playing with your gear on what platform?
• How is your experience now?
• Have you upgraded?

You can also post, if you just tried it once visiting a friend or in a store. That would be interesting as well!

 

[TylerDurden4321]

My own story:

I bought one of these in... not sure, maybe 1999?

I remember playing mostly really badly suited crap with the wheel like the NFS games (NFS Porsche Unleashed was my favorite), but the effects were gimicky and tacked-on at best. It didn't get all that much use.


With the Xbox One launch in 2013 I fell deeply in love with Forza Motorsport 5, because of the amazing graphics, the perfect 60fps, the beautifully rendered cockpits and the grip levels of something like a modern hot hatch felt much closer to what I knew from real-life driving than in any other game before (spoilers: they actually were mostly BS, great marketing about their new tire model though).
At some point I got annoyed with not being able to take certain corners at speeds that seemed possible, but the controllers speed-sensitive-steering didn't let me turn in enough [=>at 50mph a controller stick input of 100% is more turn-in of the front wheels than at 100mph]. The logical solution was to get a racing wheel that lets me turn in as much as I want. My last experience with FFB racing wheels was pretty crappy on a very cheap wheel though, so this time I thought "get a really GOOD wheel now, if you then don't like it, you at least know it's not because you cheaped out on it". Sooo... I bought a Thrustmaster T500 that doesn't even work with Forza. I played GT6 with it on PS3 as well as stuff like GRID 2, Shift 2 and DiRT 3 with it. I didn't love it, but it was fine. Shortly after I really missed Forza 5 (they just had released the laserscanned Nordschleife then), but playing it with a controller felt like such a big step backwards that I just bought a Thrustmaster TX just for use on Xbox as well.

How did it feel to me? Like a helper device that told me through the FFB how much steering input is ok before you'd get over- or understeer. It was more immersive in the sense that you had more control (no speed-sensitive-steering and easier smoother inputs) and you were actually holding a wheel in your hands, but it never came to my mind that it felt like driving a real car. About and 100h later I was better with a wheel than I was with a controller. When Project CARS 1 was out, I tuned the FFB to feel more like what I knew from FM5 (=>more SoP)
Only after playing RaceRoom Racing Experience on PC and shortly after Assetto Corsa, I started to understand that FFB can feel somewhat like driving a real car, which really got me hooked on PC racing sims. The first few hours with Assetto Corsa were like a revelatory experience, because the cars behaved so natural over the limit and my reactions to the FFB were mostly instinctive. It was harder, but also much easier to catch a slide in Assetto Corsa in a BMW M1 - just a fantastic experience.

Since then I privately started to read all sorts of racing tech and physics related stuff on the net and from my Uni's library and even modded the Assetto Corsa physics of the car my dad drove when I was little (I had the 3D model from a mod that had everything, without exception everything, wrong about the physics and the 3D model probably stolen from FM4). [Shout outs to Niels Heusinkveld's YouTube videos, which were the first to help me understand what you actually feel on a real car's steering wheel and what you should feel in a game/sim]

After the first details about Gran Turismo Sport were shown, I went back to play some more GT6. 2 1/2 years earlier I left the game with all license challenges golds except for the very last challenge, for which I was far off the pace. Now I did a slow-drive track walk of the track (Ascari, don't have that track in any other game) to think about every corner, then beat the gold-time with a gap of almost 2 seconds on my 2nd lap. Platinumed the game and also beat the Senna challenges, which are much harder than everything else in that game imo. It was astounding how much better I must have gotten without even realizing it.

My current favorite sim is Automobilista (with Assetto Corsa a close second) and I'm playing with a Fanatec CSW v2.5 and CSL Elite pedals with the load-cell brake upgrade and a Thrustmaster TH8A shifter.

 

[inner-G]

I had a DFGT for PS3/PC. Used it for GT mostly, and the odd PC racer. It worked good, and I used it whenever I played GT (few times a year, not daily or anything)

Once PS4 came out, it didn't work with the new games so I sold it. Looked into getting a g29 or whatever for Windows for FH4 but apparently the wheel support kind of sucks.

 

[Zafir]

To be fair about Dirt Rally. I remember not really liking how the T150 felt in it, I don't think the game properly supported it when I tried it(this would have been during early access probably), may have been the same for them.

Either way I got one because Argos(retailer in the UK) miss-priced the T150 for only £45(it's normally over £100). Was a steal at that price. The wheel stand pro I got for it cost more. xD

I still have it, and I do enjoy it for most games that support it. It's kind of a pain to get out and use due to space issues though, so I can't say I use it as much as I would have liked.

I did play Forza Horizon 4 with it last week. It took me a lot of time to actually get it to work properly because for some reason the default settings for the T150 in the game had the clutch bound as acceleration pedal and vice versa. I don't even have a clutch on my model, it's the two pedal version so I loaded into the game and couldn't accelerate at all, lol. I ended up making a custom configuration for it basically. After a lot of faffing with that, and then the other wheel settings, I did get it to a state where I found it enjoyable fortunately.

 

[TylerDurden4321]

I had a DFGT for PS3/PC. Used it for GT mostly, and the odd PC racer. It worked good, and I used it whenever I played GT (few times a year, not daily or anything)

Once PS4 came out, it didn't work with the new games so I sold it. Looked into getting a g29 or whatever for Windows for FH4 but apparently the wheel support kind of sucks.

Click to shrink...

I know, you sold it. But there is a DIY solution to get old Logitech wheels working on PS4. Or you can just buy it for ~30 bucks from the GIMX project store. Alternatively CronusMAX has solutions to get every wheel working on PS4 (though I only heard good things about older Logitech and current gen Fanatec wheels working with CronusMAX).

 

[inner-G]

I know, you sold it. But there is a DIY solution to get old Logitech wheels working on PS4. Or you can just buy it for ~30 bucks from the GIMX project store. Alternatively CronusMAX has solutions to get every wheel working on PS4 (though I only heard good things about older Logitech and current gen Fanatec wheels working with CronusMAX).

Click to shrink...

Yeah I'm not trying to have even more wires and boxes hooked up. Wheels are already too cumbersome. At the time, I think you had to run the usb thru a laptop then to the PS4.

Plus as games have more menus and features, I like having a real keyboard, like for the menus in Forza when I want to name a blueprint race or something

 

[marvelharvey]

My wheel saga began with a Thrustmaster Formula Something wheel. It looked something like this, but with 'Formula' in place of 'Nascar'

Why did I spend an excruciating £49.99 on a peripheral? Grand Prix Legends in '98. A joystick had done me well through Indy 500, Indycar, Indycar 2, Stunt Car, Geoff Crammond's Formula 1 Grand Prix and Grand Prix 2, but GPL was a whole different beast. With a single stick to control left/right/acceleration and braking, it took me over an hour to drive a single lap of Silverstone with veering into a hedgerow and promptly dying. Despite my many 200mph decapitations, I was in love with this new driving sim and needed to find a way to separate the controls onto different axes.

Upon finding the Thrustmaster Formula Wheel, I was shocked by the price. "Why should I spend £49.99 on a game that cost £39.99? Ridiculous" Oh if the younger me knew what he'd eventually become. A few more decapitations later and I was back in the shop, cash in hand, ready to splurge.

However, even after 3 years of driving a road car and 12 years of karting, this wheel control felt alien to me and I crashed more than ever before. Many many many laps of persistence later though and I was broadsiding around Silverstone like a pro, competing with others for fastest laps. I'm not going to lie, I basically drove the Ferrari around Siliverstone for thousands upon thousands of laps, climbing the leader-board. I barely touched any other track or car.

And then suddenly, I was no longer sim racing, but behind wheels or real race cars; an Alfa 33, a Formula First and even a Radical. Real life sure has some great FFB.

Money ran out though, a common affliction of real life racers, and it was back to sim racing. The Thrustmaster was long in the tooth and I needed something new for 2004. At £99.99, the Driving Force GT was double the price of the old wheel, but it had to be done... and I went straight back to Grand Prix Legends, which had received all kinds of cosmetic improvements over the years.

When I finally found myself driving in rFactor 2 was though, the flappy DFGT pedals suddenly left much to be desired and I purchased the Fanatec Clubsport Pedals V2.

Now there was an imbalance, with my pedals far outclassing the feel of my DFGT, so roll on the Thrustmaster T500 RS

Then, despite me still enjoying my T500, I felt like that wasn't enough, and plunged for a Fanatec Clubsport Wheel v2.5

And then the Clubsport wheels seemed inferior (despite being from the same series) and I went for the Heusinkveld Pro pedals.

And then my desk/chair combo wasn't sturdy enough, so bought an Obutto Revolution rig.

And then a Fanatec shifter.

And then I was heavily into iRacing and needed a button box to control all the various aspects of the car. So, off to Derek Speares' website...

And then I got into VR and bought a Samsung Odyssey headset.

And then in VR, I couldn't reliably find my button box, so purchased a Fanatec McLaren GT3 wheel, for the extra dials.

Here we are in the present, where I finally seem to have everything I desire in terms of a rig. Hopefully this feeling of satisfaction lasts until 2020, because, oh my, have I spent a lot of money on this hobby in the past 5 years. My wallet needs a rest.

To think how I first balked at that £49.99 price tag.

 

[Caesar III]

Haha Harveys Story is great.

I rarely rented my brothers cheap Logitech wheel with ffb - dunno the exact model though.

Three months ago I bought a g29 because that small itch struck me again. Too bad I rarely have the time to dedicate it to playing. Late in the evening is too late and the wheel makes too much noise when my small one is sleeping. 11pm+ I don't want to anymore :(
Besides euro truck or something chilling. That's kinda cool this late in the day.

I don't have a shifter and a chair/mount right now because with gamepad i always play with autoshifting *shrug* but I guess this will be the next investment. Would be good to house the hotas I have as well. The the set is complete to play since VR is served via a Lenovo Explorer <3

 

[thesaint08]

I know, you sold it. But there is a DIY solution to get old Logitech wheels working on PS4. Or you can just buy it for ~30 bucks from the GIMX project store. Alternatively CronusMAX has solutions to get every wheel working on PS4 (though I only heard good things about older Logitech and current gen Fanatec wheels working with CronusMAX).

Click to shrink...

I have always liked racing games. I bought my first wheel, which is a DFGT for my PS3 a few months after GT5 came out.
I also got a wheelstand pro to go with it.

Due to the mess of wires, I didn't use it that much, but enjoyed it when I did. My lasting memory though, is trying a really powerful car(maybe a Lambo), and it was undriveable. Admittedly, I have never driven one in real life, but it couldn't be as hard as the wheel made it.

When the PS4 came out(my first launch day console) and I couldn't use my DFGT I was really pissed, and haven'tbought a single driving game. My DFGT was put in the spare room, and more recently in the loft.

 

[TylerDurden4321]

My wheel saga began with a Thrustmaster Formula Something wheel. It looked something like this, but with 'Formula' in place of 'Nascar'

Why did I spend an excruciating £49.99 on a peripheral? Grand Prix Legends in '98. A joystick had done me well through Indy 500, Indycar, Indycar 2, Stunt Car, Geoff Crammond's Formula 1 Grand Prix and Grand Prix 2, but GPL was a whole different beast. With a single stick to control left/right/acceleration and braking, it took me over an hour to drive a single lap of Silverstone with veering into a hedgerow and promptly dying. Despite my many 200mph decapitations, I was in love with this new driving sim and needed to find a way to separate the controls onto different axes.

Upon finding the Thrustmaster Formula Wheel, I was shocked by the price. "Why should I spend £49.99 on a game that cost £39.99? Ridiculous" Oh if the younger me knew what he'd eventually become. A few more decapitations later and I was back in the shop, cash in hand, ready to splurge.

However, even after 3 years of driving a road car and 12 years of karting, this wheel control felt alien to me and I crashed more than ever before. Many many many laps of persistence later though and I was broadsiding around Silverstone like a pro, competing with others for fastest laps. I'm not going to lie, I basically drove the Ferrari around Siliverstone for thousands upon thousands of laps, climbing the leader-board. I barely touched any other track or car.

And then suddenly, I was no longer sim racing, but behind wheels or real race cars; an Alfa 33, a Formula First and even a Radical. Real life sure has some great FFB.

Money ran out though, a common affliction of real life racers, and it was back to sim racing. The Thrustmaster was long in the tooth and I needed something new for 2004. At £99.99, the Driving Force GT was double the price of the old wheel, but it had to be done... and I went straight back to Grand Prix Legends, which had received all kinds of cosmetic improvements over the years.

When I finally found myself driving in rFactor 2 was though, the flappy DFGT pedals suddenly left much to be desired and I purchased the Fanatec Clubsport Pedals V2.

Now there was an imbalance, with my pedals far outclassing the feel of my DFGT, so roll on the Thrustmaster T500 RS

Then, despite me still enjoying my T500, I felt like that wasn't enough, and plunged for a Fanatec Clubsport Wheel v2.5

And then the Clubsport wheels seemed inferior (despite being from the same series) and I went for the Heusinkveld Pro pedals.

And then my desk/chair combo wasn't sturdy enough, so bought an Obutto Revolution rig.

And then a Fanatec shifter.

And then I was heavily into iRacing and needed a button box to control all the various aspects of the car. So, off to Derek Speares' website...

And then I got into VR and bought a Samsung Odyssey headset.

And then in VR, I couldn't reliably find my button box, so purchased a Fanatec McLaren GT3 wheel, for the extra dials.

Here we are in the present, where I finally seem to have everything I desire in terms of a rig. Hopefully this feeling of satisfaction lasts until 2020, because, oh my, have I spent a lot of money on this hobby in the past 5 years. My wallet needs a rest.

To think how I first balked at that £49.99 price tag.

Click to shrink...

Your wheel story not tied to your racing game development job? Wasn't expecting that. I'm also wondering (a) if you used one of those adapters to make the Clubsport Pedals work with the T500, (b) if and how you sold all that stuff, just having sold the last piece of my old kit myself and (c) if you never played console games with your wheels.

Thank you so much for your story!

Three months ago I bought a g29 because that small itch struck me again. Too bad I rarely have the time to dedicate it to playing. Late in the evening is too late and the wheel makes too much noise when my small one is sleeping. 11pm+ I don't want to anymore :(
Besides euro truck or something chilling. That's kinda cool this late in the day.

I don't have a shifter and a chair/mount right now because with gamepad i always play with autoshifting *shrug* but I guess this will be the next investment. Would be good to house the hotas I have as well. The the set is complete to play since VR is served via a Lenovo Explorer <3

Click to shrink...

I've seen people cut one of these anti-rumble/anti-noise rubber mats that you can buy for washing machines and clamp their wheels onto that to make it silent. I'd imagine it muddies the FFB a lot, but probably reduces the noise through desk, floor and walls a lot. About the shifter, I got annoyed with euro truck wanting two separate buttons to switch the H-Pattern - one from low gear to high gear config and another button to switch it back, I already don't have enough buttons on my wheel as it is. That's why I'm playing that with sequential gears as well.

I have always liked racing games. I bought my first wheel, which is a DFGT for my PS3 a few months after GT5 came out.
I also got a wheelstand pro to go with it.

Due to the mess of wires, I didn't use it that much, but enjoyed it when I did. My lasting memory though, is trying a really powerful car(maybe a Lambo), and it was undriveable. Admittedly, I have never driven one in real life, but it couldn't be as hard as the wheel made it.

When the PS4 came out(my first launch day console) and I couldn't use my DFGT I was really pissed, and haven'tbought a single driving game. My DFGT was put in the spare room, and more recently in the loft.

Click to shrink...

GT5 and GT6 had some real horrible rotational inertia for older mid and rear engine cars, that's probably the reason. If GT5 is all you remember from FFB, then playing some Assetto Corsa with your wheel, would probably feel amazing to you, they have older Lambos too (some need DLC though). I don't know your PC situation, but I just build a Ryzen 3 2200G office PC for my dad without a graphic car and that could Assetto Corsa at 60fps in 720p. So you really don't need a good PC by today's standards to try it. Might be worth the little adventure.
To get it working with PS4, the GIMX is the cheapest adapter and you'd be supporting an open source project: https://blog.gimx.fr/product/gimx-adapter/

 

[marvelharvey]

Your wheel story not tied to your racing game development job? Wasn't expecting that. I'm also wondering (a) if you used one of those adapters to make the Clubsport Pedals work with the T500, (b) if and how you sold all that stuff, just having sold the last piece of my old kit myself and (c) if you never played console games with your wheels.

Click to shrink...

Sadly none of the racing titles I've worked on were sim enough to need a steering wheel. Although there was one other chap who was into GPL and used a PS2 controller... brave brave man.

a)The CSP just plugged straight into my computer via a USB cable. No adaptor was necessary.
b) I sold all my stuff through a Japanese eBay-like app called Merukari.
c) Might have played GT5 Prologue demo with the DFGT at a friend's home... the Eiger circuit in a Ferrari I think? My memory is a little fuzzy. I don't believe I enjoyed the driving though. Gran Turismo shouldn't be played with a wheel anyway, as it really shows the game's limitations.

 

[Dr Steve Brule]

I got a Logitech G27 a couple years ago and used it for maybe 10 hours, but the way it attached to the desk felt flimsy and the pedals didn't feel good to press since sitting in an office desk chair doesn't put you in the same posture as sitting in a car. Not having space for the extra seat hardware I recently sold it on Craigslist at a $100 loss.

 

[marvelharvey]

I got a Logitech G27 a couple years ago and used it for maybe 10 hours, but the way it attached to the desk felt flimsy and the pedals didn't feel good to press since sitting in an office desk chair doesn't put you in the same posture as sitting in a car. Not having space for the extra seat hardware I recently sold it on Craigslist at a $100 loss.

Click to shrink...

Shame to hear that. It was only relatively recently when I realised the importance of a sturdy rig. Not everyone has the money, space or understanding partner who will put up with such a metal monstrosity.

 

[Burny]

Shame to hear that. It was only relatively recently when I realised the importance of a sturdy rig. Not everyone has the money, space or understanding partner who will put up with such a metal monstrosity.

Click to shrink...

There are ways... E.g. a stowable cockpit for flight sims and one for racing Sims. There's another one disguised as Ottoman.

Unfortunately, they're all pretty dedicated DIY solutions, require additional investment in terms of money and especially time and still take up space one might not have. Albeit they're less of an eyesore than a T-slot profile rig with an elaborate three monitor configuration requiring nearly a separate room/garage or otherwise tell a tale of unusual life priorities in the center of the living room.

Edit: My story is: cheap G27, no place to put it comfortably (flimsy desk attachment), pissed about all the plugging back in and the stowing away between uses. Same story about flight sim hardware. It's in the process of escalating into a dedicated sim chest build with a foldable car (back-) seat, which will sit in a living room corner and is OK with the SO:

 

[TylerDurden4321]

[...]
c) Might have played GT5 Prologue demo with the DFGT at a friend's home... the Eiger circuit in a Ferrari I think? My memory is a little fuzzy. I don't believe I enjoyed the driving though. Gran Turismo shouldn't be played with a wheel anyway, as it really shows the game's limitations.

Click to shrink...

Uuuh xD controversial opinion here.

 

[ty_hot]

I have a G29 + shifter, using with my PS4. Tried it with GT Sport and Dirty Rally. I really like it but I don't have space to leave it always connected so usually I need to prepare for a weekend to set it up, because it isn't really fast to take it out and back into the box...

Dirt Rally feels better (ffb), but that might be because it's in the dirt so you feel it more lol. It is good too in GT Sports but I don't really drive Ferrari's around at 300km/h often to say that it feels realistic. I don't regret buying the G29, I just regret not having where to hook it up - and I think the playseat and other wheel stands are extremely overpriced (because they are big and heavy, it's hard to buy it online used as well...).