Steering wheels: which is the most realistic in feel

[rabbit1986]

Hello,

As a big GT fan (I've had GT1,2,4,5,6) I'm considering a steering wheel with a playseat.

Not sure whether it would be useful buying one of these, I borrowed a Logitech G25 of one of my friends.
This left me a bit doubting ...

- I really loved the way you can control the throttle, steer into corners, ... It all seemed more the real deal. I loved the way you can heel 'n toe, ...

- What really did not convince me was the behaviour of the steering wheel in a slip situation. When my car hits a curbstone, it slips a bit, but at that moment it's impossible for me to recover the car as the steering wheel is turning and turning in all directions... What a complete joke.
In the middle of a race, this can be utterly frustrating. You lost the car, game over.

I've already done a few trackdays with my cars in real life (Nurburgring, Mettet, ...) and I have never experienced such behaviour. When my car slips: I can still recover it (or we can at least try). The wheel does not change directions, like the tyres do. The G25 does.

Is this typical for g25/g27?
Are there better steering wheels? In terms of feel, realism?

When already spending my 300 euros on a steering wheel, I better buy something that I really like.

 

[LogiForce]

Hello,

As a big GT fan (I've had GT1,2,4,5,6) I'm considering a steering wheel with a playseat.

Not sure whether it would be useful buying one of these, I borrowed a Logitech G25 of one of my friends.
This left me a bit doubting ...

- I really loved the way you can control the throttle, steer into corners, ... It all seemed more the real deal. I loved the way you can heel 'n toe, ...

- What really did not convince me was the behaviour of the steering wheel in a slip situation. When my car hits a curbstone, it slips a bit, but at that moment it's impossible for me to recover the car as the steering wheel is turning and turning in all directions... What a complete joke.
In the middle of a race, this can be utterly frustrating. You lost the car, game over.

I've already done a few trackdays with my cars in real life (Nurburgring, Mettet, ...) and I have never experienced such behaviour. When my car slips: I can still recover it (or we can at least try). The wheel does not change directions, like the tyres do. The G25 does.

Is this typical for g25/g27?
Are there better steering wheels? In terms of feel, realism?

When already spending my 300 euros on a steering wheel, I better buy something that I really like.

Get a Thrustmaster T500. It's the official GT5/6 wheel. It has improved FFB done by PD and actually behaves more properly than a G25/27 (with the old FFB behavior).
Momentarily it is the best wheel to use with GT5 and 6. It's better than a Fanatec offering in this case, as they still rely on the FFB algorithm of the G25/27.

So yeah, actually the T500 is your only choice if you want better FFB in GT. Plus the T500 will most likely work with the PS4, which means GT7 and Project CARS are games you might want to have a go at at some point.

Also about losing a car. I found that most if not all games often tend to have far too little grip resulting in bad re-gripping behavior during a spin. Also the cars tend to not change direction fast enough and actually understeer much too quickly. Cornering just doesn't feel as stable as in real life to me, in all games.

 

[frivoloushobby]

@LogiForce I'm looking into alternative wheels in the likely scenario that my G27 will never be supported on PS4. Can you speak to any of the T500's reliability? Right now, I'm leaning towards purchasing the T500 when pCARS is released... unfortunately PS4 owners don't have a lot of wheels to choose from at the moment.

 

[LogiForce]

@LogiForce I'm looking into alternative wheels in the likely scenario that my G27 will never be supported on PS4. Can you speak to any of the T500's reliability? Right now, I'm leaning towards purchasing the T500 when pCARS is released... unfortunately PS4 owners don't have a lot of wheels to choose from at the moment.

The T500 is reliable. I only had an issue where the bearing of the original fan wore out. I replaced this with a high quality fan from Noctua, which was as much work and as simple as replacing a fan in your PC. So pretty much plug and play. Besides, replacing it with the Noctua fan caused the wheel to be almost silent and cool better as well.
The FFB motor or electronics have never let me down nor did the rest of the device. So apart from the fan its as reliable as a G25/27 in my opinion.

So yeah, if your looking for a reliable wheel that will surely get GT7 support (wouldn't know why not?) and something you can play driveclub and possibly pCARS with... the T500 is the way to go.

The reason why I say possible to play pCARS with is because I don't know what will be supported or not yet. But driveclub would support the T500, so I think other games will too.

 

[frivoloushobby]

^Thanks... all good to know. I can't imagine pCARS not supporting the T500. But, you're correct right now pCARS has not announced any legitimate info on wheel support.

 

[rabbit1986]

Thank you for the info. I find it very useful.
I'll try to test the Thrustmaster somewhere, and hopefully that is a lot better.
It's indeed worth considering if it's supported by the PS4 too.

 

[LogiForce]

Thank you for the info. I find it very useful.
I'll try to test the Thrustmaster somewhere, and hopefully that is a lot better.
It's indeed worth considering if it's supported by the PS4 too.

Yes, especially since Logitech stepped out of the console market. So they won't be making drivers for the PS4 most likely, unless there is a change of heart from the company's executives.
This also means that Fanatec will have to make their own now for the PS4 instead of riding on the Logitech driver, as they have been doing with the PS3.
In the end game developers can only add those wheels to their PS4 games that have PS4 drivers provided by their manufacturers.

Btw... for confirmation sake that the T500 will work on PS4:

 

[Cote Dazur]

Hello,

As a big GT fan (I've had GT1,2,4,5,6) I'm considering a steering wheel with a playseat.

Not sure whether it would be useful buying one of these, I borrowed a Logitech G25 of one of my friends.
This left me a bit doubting ...

- I really loved the way you can control the throttle, steer into corners, ... It all seemed more the real deal. I loved the way you can heel 'n toe, ...

- What really did not convince me was the behaviour of the steering wheel in a slip situation. When my car hits a curbstone, it slips a bit, but at that moment it's impossible for me to recover the car as the steering wheel is turning and turning in all directions... What a complete joke.
In the middle of a race, this can be utterly frustrating. You lost the car, game over.

I've already done a few trackdays with my cars in real life (Nurburgring, Mettet, ...) and I have never experienced such behaviour. When my car slips: I can still recover it (or we can at least try). The wheel does not change directions, like the tyres do. The G25 does.

Is this typical for g25/g27?
Are there better steering wheels? In terms of feel, realism?

When already spending my 300 euros on a steering wheel, I better buy something that I really like.

The G27 is a good wheel, since you have track experience and are looking for a more realistic experience, I suggest that instead of trying to get out of GT something that it cannot do, you should use a more accurate SIM. GT only pretends to be a simulator, it is highly entertaining, but not as realistic as the better SIMs .
My 2 cents.

 

[RacerXX]

No matter how good the sim's FFB, or the wheel linearity, speed, drag, and force they all have inherent limitations due to the way FFB is conceptualized. Bodnar's old white paper covered this fairly well.

As a racer, you do what you have to do to get the job done. So you just learn that curb behavior and follow a strategy each time for corners where the curbs are an issue. Of course you are still left with any immersion deficits.

 

[oqvist]

the only way a FFB wheel can create vibrations is turning left and right fast yes so that is how ffb wheel works. What can create more of a problem is that you have to deal with ffb lag if you don´t have direct drive ffb wheels like the leo bodnar for example. You may have noticed that it takes a while before you feel the kerb effects and they are not 1 to 1.

Many PC sims let you adjust the ffb and tone down these effects. I don´t really have a problem with it I often tune my ffb wheels so the ffb motor clips on the kerbs because I don´t care to much about these effects anyway. I can still control the car just fine generally.

ffb in wheel in itself is perhaps not always that realistic. It´s there to compensate for having no G-forces or butt feel. Bass shakers do a lot to increase the feel. I can´t use them though because I have neighbours

 

[LogiForce]

No matter how good the sim's FFB, or the wheel linearity, speed, drag, and force they all have inherent limitations due to the way FFB is conceptualized. Bodnar's old white paper covered this fairly well.

As a racer, you do what you have to do to get the job done. So you just learn that curb behavior and follow a strategy each time for corners where the curbs are an issue. Of course you are still left with any immersion deficits.

Curb behavior has nothing to do with the concept of FFB hardware itself, but more with the way the tyre model works and how the FFB system for the game is coded up, as well as how the FFB system is hooked up to the tyres. This is something pCARS development has showed me at least.

All a wheel has got to do is.
1. not lag
2. Be as fast as possible (high rpm)
3. Stop and change direction as fast as possible
3. Have a low drag design
4. Easily overcome any drag (like the weight of the users arms) and simply not stall
5. Have as much torque as possible so as to get as close to real life torque figures for the sake of realism

Of course FFB 2.0 would be a position and torque based FFB system. This way you could basically directly drive a servo motor and always have it point at the center of steering. The torque levels send to the wheel would than be used to accurately reproduce wheel weight and other FFB effects like road noise, curb effects, etc.


We are going off topic though with the above.
Also if you (OP) want the most realistic feel, get a SimSteering wheel from Leo Bodnar. It is a PC only wheel though and as expensive as a decent second hand car. Though games on the consumer market won't be dialed in (FFB wise) for such wheels as it doesn't get a profile (with wheel specific FFB optimalisations). So you don't necessarily get the most out of it all the time and it'll really depend on a game to game basis.
If you need something to work on console though and also the next/current gen PS4... T500 hands down. At least until something better is confirmed for PS4.

 

[grog]

All FFB wheels will fall short of "realistic" since the way in which force feedback works, but with that said how else would you want to play.

The fact that you didn't like it is normal, it takes about a month or more to get used to/up to speed.

Its kind of a bad time to buy a new wheel right now with the new consoles out, what you buy for PS3 might not work for PS4 if thats a concern.

 

[LogiForce]

All FFB wheels will fall short of "realistic" since the way in which force feedback works, but with that said how else would you want to play.

The fact that you didn't like it is normal, it takes about a month or more to get used to/up to speed.

Its kind of a bad time to buy a new wheel right now with the new consoles out, what you buy for PS3 might not work for PS4 if thats a concern.

As quoted above the T500 will work on PS4 according to the Driveclub developer. So that's a secure purchase and not a bad one either FFB wise.
In the end if you want better than that I personally would rather buy a cheap car and race it instead. As FFB effects in a game are often developed with low torque wheels in mind. So getting a high torque wheel doesn't guarantee a close match to realism. Its awesome if you have the money for a 3000 dollar Simsteering wheel, but if you match price vs level of realism... I don't know if its worth going far over the 500 dollar mark.

 

[RacerXX]

Curb behavior has nothing to do with the concept of FFB hardware itself, but more with the way the tyre model works and how the FFB system for the game is coded up, as well as how the FFB system is hooked up to the tyres. This is something pCARS development has showed me at least.

All a wheel has got to do is.
1. not lag
2. Be as fast as possible (high rpm)
3. Stop and change direction as fast as possible
3. Have a low drag design
4. Easily overcome any drag (like the weight of the users arms) and simply not stall
5. Have as much torque as possible so as to get as close to real life torque figures for the sake of realism

Of course FFB 2.0 would be a position and torque based FFB system. This way you could basically directly drive a servo motor and always have it point at the center of steering. The torque levels send to the wheel would than be used to accurately reproduce wheel weight and other FFB effects like road noise, curb effects, etc.


We are going off topic though with the above.
Also if you (OP) want the most realistic feel, get a SimSteering wheel from Leo Bodnar. It is a PC only wheel though and as expensive as a decent second hand car. Though games on the consumer market won't be dialed in (FFB wise) for such wheels as it doesn't get a profile (with wheel specific FFB optimalisations). So you don't necessarily get the most out of it all the time and it'll really depend on a game to game basis.
If you need something to work on console though and also the next/current gen PS4... T500 hands down. At least until something better is confirmed for PS4.

It sounds like we mostly agree. The center of steering thing is an oversimplication though in my view. Some real cars don't really have that when setup hard core. And other factors contribute.

Good to see some noting Wheel Speed (your 2) and Drag (your 3) but I look at it not as what the wheel can do By Itself, but what the wheel can stop disallowing your hands to do (driver intent not blocked). This adds immersion since you feel very connected and in control and you don't have to do very fake things like some suggest, such as cutting wheel travel way down artificially (yuck + side effects).

 

[Mayaman]

I'm just waiting for the SimX Accuforce wheel.

I'm thinking about getting a T500RS as a backup, there are just so many cool wheels and custom wheels for it. Along with the SimRaceHardware side panels its a great package.

 

[Ferrari458Italia]

Yes, especially since Logitech stepped out of the console market. So they won't be making drivers for the PS4 most likely, unless there is a change of heart from the company's executives.
This also means that Fanatec will have to make their own now for the PS4 instead of riding on the Logitech driver, as they have been doing with the PS3.
In the end game developers can only add those wheels to their PS4 games that have PS4 drivers provided by their manufacturers.

Btw... for confirmation sake that the T500 will work on PS4:

View attachment 155155

I wonder if we need to do some kind of an update for our T500 for it to support PS4?

 

[LogiForce]

I wonder if we need to do some kind of an update for our T500 for it to support PS4?

Nope. You just need to wait for Thrustmaster to supply drivers to game developers, and after those drivers get implemented into the PS4 games... go out and buy them at launch.
At least this is the case unless Thrustmaster comes with an update firmware wise. Though if that is the case, I am sure information about this will be widely available.

So yeah, for now we just need to wait on a game supporting the T500 and the devs of Driveclub are the first to confirm support to be implemented into the game.