Do you use a wheel? (tl;dr included)

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Do you use a wheel?


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RikkiGT-R

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As titled, do you use a wheel?

I have for a few years now, but recently I went back to complete Gran Turismo 4 again and found out I was faster (on that game) with a control pad - despite specifically sourcing a DFGT for it, which I quickly shelved. Facepalm.

Anyway, I booted up Forza 7 today for the first time in months and tried to play it with a controller since my G920 is packed away. I refuse to change from hardcore and so it's a little fiddly at the minute. I've discovered that I can drift like a hero with control pad, but actual racing is proving trickier. I'd genuinely like to sell all my wheels mainly for space reasons, I'm also well aware a lot of top racers use control pads so it's not beyond me (just need to get the hang of it again) and it's not entirely unrealistic to stick with that peripheral, but I'm curious what the regulars here mainly use to see what company I'm in...

tl;dr - do you use a wheel?
 
I use a wheel for FM7, but a controller for FH3/4. I like a wheel when I'm trying to be super hardcore realistic git gud son, but I like a controller when I'm just screwing around, having fun and pretending that I'm a drift king. I am not a drift king.

I've been enjoying the controller even more since buying myself an Xbox controller, even though I've been playing with Playstation controllers since I was a nipper and thought I liked them better. The XB1 controller is really good.

I think playing on controller is fine outside of the top tier of hardcore anorak sims (where you put yourself at a legitimate disadvantage by doing so). Games like Forza and Gran Turismo have the right amount of assistance for controller that you can both be as fast as a wheel player and it still takes significant skill to do so.

If a controller is convenient for you and you still enjoy playing the game, I'd say roll with it. Don't let other people's opinions dictate how you have fun. :cheers:
 
Just bought a wheel, after nearly 6 month of controller play.
I'm not yet as fast with the wheel, but I do less mistakes, and enjoy the feeling much more.
Still use controller only for drifting ( I suck at drifting)
 
Set my G920 up again to try. Settings are all up the whazoo with this update so I'm better on controller by default now :lol:

Much work ahead.
 
I was raised on a controller. I have been using a controller now for 30 + years. I borrowed a wheel from my nephew, but once I got to the logistical issue with clamping it or tying it down, I realized why I never got one in the first place. I've just gotten so used to a controller, that it's a pain in the butt to try something new. I have seen some of you guys set ups and its quite admirable. Really, the only issue I have concerning this game is doing like 100 laps at Daytona oval, and the constant flicking of my left thump on the left joystick (to adjust in the turns). At my age, arthritis is starting to become an issue but, old dogs don't learn new tricks. So that goes for me. Ha hah ha. I realize I'm the only who voted No. Good luck to all you other guys.
 
I was raised on a controller. I have been using a controller now for 30 + years. I borrowed a wheel from my nephew, but once I got to the logistical issue with clamping it or tying it down, I realized why I never got one in the first place. I've just gotten so used to a controller, that it's a pain in the butt to try something new. I have seen some of you guys set ups and its quite admirable. Really, the only issue I have concerning this game is doing like 100 laps at Daytona oval, and the constant flicking of my left thump on the left joystick (to adjust in the turns). At my age, arthritis is starting to become an issue but, old dogs don't learn new tricks. So that goes for me. Ha hah ha. I realize I'm the only who voted No. Good luck to all you other guys.
First thing i learned is that to love wheel, you need a good wheel and a good wheel stand
I had a wheel without FFB and a crappy homemade support on my couch... I Never fully adopted it.

Now with ffb ans ajustable commercial stand, it's a different story
 
I use the high end pad, what ever it’s called. I spend my sim gear money on flight controls. I’ll be making a career change soon as I’m done with school next December and a big pay raise is coming with it, maybe then I can justify having a racing sim pit as well.
 
I was raised on a controller. I have been using a controller now for 30 + years. I borrowed a wheel from my nephew, but once I got to the logistical issue with clamping it or tying it down.

This is my issue as well. I fiddled around earlier and finally got the wheel feeling natural again, but I honestly have to do so much moving around to use my wheel - fold/roll the mat up, pull the wheel stand over to the TV, drag the office chair in and get it set centrally, plug stuff in, calibrate etc etc…
A royal pain in the ass.

When I'm using control pad - turn on Xbox. That is all.

I'm at a crossroads now. I actually don't want to use my wheel for the above reasons, the control pad is just so handy and I've used the same thing since Gran Turismo One 20 years ago so it's not alien to me. I just feel that by using pad I'm kinda missing out on an experience (that I paid a lot of money for), but ugh... the hassle of it all :yuck:

I'm currently waiting on delivery of an Xbox 360, I plan on playing through Forza Motorsport 3 & 4 again soon, and both games will be played using the pad since I have no wheel for that console. That will probably see me get back into pad use full time.
 
I have always been able to just screw the wheel onto my office desk and go, whichever desk. The pedal set always stays under the desk. From working to ready to play takes about a minute. No the seating position isn't the most immersive for sure, but it's so convenient I don't mind too much.
 
I think playing on controller is fine outside of the top tier of hardcore anorak sims (where you put yourself at a legitimate disadvantage by doing so)

Could you elaborate on this?
 
I'm primarily a wheel user. For Forza 5 and Forza 6, I had to use a controller because I saw absolutely no reason to get a new wheel when my Fanatec CSR still worked flawlessly. I was overjoyed when I got my PC built, and after migrating to gaming on it, I dont touch Forza unless I am using a wheel.

I will admit, back before I got my first Xbox compatible FFB wheel, I was pretty damn good with a controller. Back then, FM2 was what I played. And I held my own. But wanting to take racing up a notch, I got a Microsoft WRW. I immediately got slower cause now I had to deal with forces that the controller users didnt. And I swear FM2 felt like the cars were tanks of water, cause the cars seemed to want to continue sliding well after I slowed and corrected them.

Eventually I got up to speed with the wheel, but got the urge to take it up another notch, so some time after FM3 released, I got my current wheel, a Fanatec CSR. Again, I took a hit because now I had to learn a newer and more capable wheel. It took a month to get my chops back, but I never felt one with the wheel in FM4. It took playing Race Pro to really feel connected with the wheel.

When Microsoft stuck their heads in the sand and released the Xbone (how no one at Microsoft seen that name, I don't know. Especially when a common moniker for the Xbox 360 was XB360... XBox ONE... Really? They didn't see that?) and artificially outdated wheels and fight sticks, I had to play FM5 & FM6 with the controller. I didnt really get into those two games, and was about to take a pass on FM7 until a friend recommended it, and it got confirmed for Play Anywhere with a decent selection of native wheel support. So I got it.

I only showed my son the ropes on game pad, but other than that; i never played Forza 7 with a controller.

If Forza 7 was the only racing title I had, I wouldn't own a wheel due to it's pretty poor performance with it. The update is better, but it's still far off from where it should be. Thank goodness for more racing titles than Forza. Right now R3E is where I spend most of my track time... I guess that came from my enjoyment of Race Pro? LOL
 
This is my issue as well. I fiddled around earlier and finally got the wheel feeling natural again, but I honestly have to do so much moving around to use my wheel - fold/roll the mat up, pull the wheel stand over to the TV, drag the office chair in and get it set centrally, plug stuff in, calibrate etc etc…
A royal pain in the ass.

When I'm using control pad - turn on Xbox. That is all.

I'm at a crossroads now. I actually don't want to use my wheel for the above reasons, the control pad is just so handy and I've used the same thing since Gran Turismo One 20 years ago so it's not alien to me. I just feel that by using pad I'm kinda missing out on an experience (that I paid a lot of money for), but ugh... the hassle of it all :yuck:

I'm currently waiting on delivery of an Xbox 360, I plan on playing through Forza Motorsport 3 & 4 again soon, and both games will be played using the pad since I have no wheel for that console. That will probably see me get back into pad use full time.

Hi,
Your setup needs to take practicality, I know I'm lazzy and won't go in the hassle you decribe, so:
I seat on my couch (It's not perfect but good enough), My stand and wheel are not folded and stored under my stairs (you know that triangular space you can never use :))
So I just grab my stand with the wheel on it, drop it in front of my couch, connect it to power and Xbox and I'm good to go :)
 
Yeah, so after spending last night and this afternoon playing around on control pad I have decided to sell my wheel(s).
Took a little while to get back into the swing of things but I'm almost back to my wheel speed on the pad, and the sheer convenience of lifting the pad rather than moving the living room around to use the wheel has me sold...

I use @AlienDeathRay as a barometer when doing rivals, I usually set times around him; sometimes a little less, sometimes a little more depending on the event. Posted a few times earlier today on control pad that squeaked past him and even managed to overtake @-Fred- at Nürburgring in one event so I'm fairly happy giving up the wheel for good.
 
Yeah, so after spending last night and this afternoon playing around on control pad I have decided to sell my wheel(s).
Took a little while to get back into the swing of things but I'm almost back to my wheel speed on the pad, and the sheer convenience of lifting the pad rather than moving the living room around to use the wheel has me sold...

I use @AlienDeathRay as a barometer when doing rivals, I usually set times around him; sometimes a little less, sometimes a little more depending on the event. Posted a few times earlier today on control pad that squeaked past him and even managed to overtake @-Fred- at Nürburgring in one event so I'm fairly happy giving up the wheel for good.
Yep, everyone's taste is different :) have fun
 
First wheel I ever used wan on the OG xbox with PGR 2, we only had one wheel so we would take turns playing split screen. That got put away at some point and collected dust until it was donated to a charity store. Years later, I started playing fm2, loved that it was like NFS but more realistic physics. Played with a controller mostly and learned how to drift, then I bought myself a Microsoft wireless racing wheel. Leaned how to use it on my lap and was OK with it. When fm3 released I played it on a controller to start with, because I remember having to learn how to clutch and throttle blip with multiple fingers. Didn't take long for me to dust the wheel off, set up a table and started improving my wheel skills further, I went on to being one of the top 10 RWD drifters on the leaderboards (still hold WR on that game but they are buried by cheaters).

I enjoyed that Alot, being a cheap wheel with not very good FFB I wasn't bad, but at some point I started to try tune my cars to use the FB and self rotate like they do in the real world. This led to me buying a fanatec gt2 setup, my first 900 degree wheel with clutch and h-pattern.

It took me all of about 20 mins on FM3 having no experience on this kind of wheel before that something wasn't quite right. The game had a serious input mapping bug when you went to countersteer a drift with 900 degrees. Was hugely disappointed, reported it on the forums with a few others and was basically told by other members at the time that there was no issue. So I found a workaround with a glitch in the fanatec firmware (as 2 wheel profiles were used by the game, 270 and 900, 270 had some speed sensitivity and linearity mapping modifiers where 900 was raw input) that allowed me to use 900 but with the game thinking it was 270, so it had bad linearity and speed sensitivity but if you were drifting the input was linear. It was a trade off but it was the best you could do at the time.

Then FM4 came along and boasted simulation steering mode that would remove all steering filters, I thought you beauty they listened and fixed it. But no, the countersteer input mapping was still messed up. It wasn't until inside sim racing reported the issue that it actually got attention from the devs and it was fixed in a patch, but only for simulation steering, for some bizarre reason they left it in the normal steering mode.

So I spent a long time playing FM4 on my gt2 constantly switching between normal and sim steering because neither of them felt right to me. Normal was too heavily assisted and sim just felt way too twitchy and unpredictable at times. It was around this time I stated focusing on FFB and vehicle physics, and I started to complain about how the FFB, but back then wheel users in forza were very small in numbers, and I was kinda shot down in my theories at the time. My gt2 wheel died and I replaced it with a t500 and played on my PC a fair bit, mostly LFS and Rfactor, but I eventually got myself a CSR Elite because I was missing forza. I began to do crazy modifications to my wheel (bigger, stronger motors, quick release custom made wheel rims, slip ring mods, air cooling etc) and it was the best you could get on FM4.

When fm5 came out I bought into the BS PR about all the new wheel and FFB features that were capable on the xbox one. I didn't get a wheel until about six months after the game released (Thrustmaster TX) and absolutely hated it. I didn't enjoy the wheel at all, it was nothing like the t500 and I was spoiled by all my mods to my csr elite (and the first TX i received was DOA). But most importantly I was so enraged at the BS marketing of the xbox one and FM5 because my setup for FM4 blew it away, and the FFB was not improved.

I probably only played FM5 for a couple hours in total compared to thousands on FM4.

FM6 came and boasted new FFB built from the ground up, I thought you beauty they've finally done it... Wrong, they rebuilt the same FFB but added spring and Damper setting that where not adjustable for the user, they were always set at maximum. What a disaster, I played FM6 more than I did 5, but man it was a chore.

Then FM6 Apex dropped on PC and I gave that a try. And what do ya know, they added the adjustable spring and Damper settings! FM6 Apex felt great, the best forza I had played on a wheel, until you pushed the tyres past peak slip and you lost all FFB. It was good fun but it was missing all the things that made forza great, customisation, tuning, painting, multiplayer etc.

So my passion for forza was still not satisfied.

Come FM7, first full FM on PC, I had high hopes, talks about a new wheel guy updating wheel suppprt/FFB. I had issues in the demo, and somehow we managed to get developer interaction on the forums and he started helping us understand how it all worked, I got some new settings and tried again, and it was decent, the best forza has ever been for wheel users, but I was still unsatisfied. It just didn't feel right to me.

So, when tree data out feature released I got working with the guy who created EmuWheel (who has helped hundres if not thousands of wheel users on PC fixing issues and adding support were the developers couldn't or wouldn't) and start to help out calculating our own FFB from scratch. We did Alot of research and testing of a few different methods at first, then we settled on what we considered tree best possible approach with what we had access too. At the very start we were not sure what we could achieve as we both had never done anything like it before, but I believed in my vision of could be possible and when we first started testing early versions of what we have now I was blown away at how good forza felt on my wheel.

Now T10 are starting to take this stuff seriously too, with the recent FFB update they have improved the ffb from what it was but it still has some issues, not everyone seems to be affected by them but there seems to be large numbers that are. While I don't spend Alot of time on T10s FFB because I've been using our own FFB for quite a while, I have never had as much fun playing forza on a wheel as I do now.

It's been a decade of playing forza on a wheel for me and I wouldn't play tree game any other way.

I Love forza, FFB and steering wheels and just wish that everyone could enjoy the game on a wheel the way it should be.
 
I use @AlienDeathRay as a barometer when doing rivals, I usually set times around him; sometimes a little less, sometimes a little more depending on the event. Posted a few times earlier today on control pad that squeaked past him and even managed to overtake @-Fred- at Nürburgring in one event so I'm fairly happy giving up the wheel for good.

OH! Well that explains all the Rival Challenge messages I keep getting from you! :lol: There has been like half a dozen or more from you! Keep up the good racing!
 
OH! Well that explains all the Rival Challenge messages I keep getting from you! :lol: There has been like half a dozen or more from you! Keep up the good racing!

You seem to be the default rival for most events, and I know it'll be a decent challenge to overtake you so I accept it. The ones I really struggle (to overtake you) with are usually American Muscle cars, which I just... plain suck at :lol:
 
IMG_20181217_161530.jpg

Been on wheels for so many years I don't even remember where the throttle is on the pad.
I race with a few that are very quick, and run pad only.
 
I see I'm late and you sold your g920.

I wanted to give yous ome advise. I jave always been a pad player, and three years ago decided to purchase a wheel, a t300.

The first six months of transition from pad to wheel were hellish to say the least, but also fun as I learnt how to drive better and eventually getting faster than with the controller. The thought of throwing my wheel out of the window (selling it) also crossed my mind countless times for six months.

I assure you this is probably the actual bad habit you may be having when using a wheel for racing, regardless it is a sim or a bit more arcady one like Forza. You will probably get feud up when I say this (I did too when I was told the same hehe), but you have to believe me, and it is that you are probably turning the wheel too much (now rage on : - D)

The secret to drive sim and simcade games like a champ, even at drifting, is turning the wheel as little as possible, and only turning more when the situation is requiered, combined with the finest throttle inputs at the right times you can apply. Also, for slick racing on GT cars, the trail braking technique will be very useful.

You have to get used to turn with the thotle when you are using factory street cars. And with GT cars on slicks it's very similar too, but of course always trying to avoid sliding around too much. All of this turning the wheel as little as you can.

Try this if you still haven't actually sold your wheel, but remember there's always many months of transition and frustration waiting for a pad player that jumps in to a wheel peripheral.
 
@fernandito - I think you've misunderstood me here. I'm fine with the wheel, been using it for years now and have even held a Hardcore World Record (Hypercars @ Le Mans) for a few weeks.

The point of this thread was to find out if *most* people use a wheel, or if I went back to pad I would be in good company. Just because the wheel is a pain in the ass to set up each time I use it. But I'm gonna stick with my wheel for now, because I can't catch @AlienDeathRay otherwise... and I can't tell you how much that annoys me :irked: :lol:
 
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