The Thrustmaster T500RS Thread

[Booey]

Stop reading stuff all the time and try it out for yourself. The people that claim that the fidelity and FF is comparable with IRacing is fanboys and are totally wrong.

Nothing comes close to IRacing at the moment.

I was convinced of that when I was listening to Brad Keselowski on a radio show today. He said that he met Tony Stewart in iRacing and that's how he got his break into NASCAR.

Real racers use it to practice. They say it's not perfect, it does some things very well and some things not as well, but for mental preparation and practice it's really good.

Hopefully this also shows that we are now talking about incremental improvements - improvements by degrees and that you really cannot go wrong with either of the 2 top dog wheels in the prosumer space

I think this is pretty important and should be said again.
I've spent a lot of time reading about both the GT2 and the T500 and I've heard nothing but praise for both.
It really seems like either one is a great choice, and it's up to you to decide which of the features will sway you to one or the other.

 

[CoolColJ]

Even though each new T500 owner reports the wheel is awesome, there are still folks who without having tried the T500 are insisting it sucks?

This is how I have decided to score things for now. Now that I had a chance to at least try out the Clubsports.

The scale I am using is 0-100. I am suggesting that each time a bench mark wheel appears it aspires to be the 100/100 of the day.

I am bumping the Logitech Driving Force Pro at from its spot at 95/100 during its reign to 50/100 in todays terms.

This score is because back in the day when the G25 appeared it was a quantum leap up from the DFP and knocked it down quite a few places and still scores a solid 75/100 on my scale even if only using the paddles. The addition of the clutch and gear stick pushes the G25 to 80/100 as the immersion factor goes up significantly when you include the complexity of clutch shifting with a shifter.

The brings us to the current crop of prosumer wheels - the GT2/3 (with Clubsport Pedal setups.) I believe the GT3 had a very short time ate the top and may have been a 95 or even 98/100 a couple months back. I am currently rating the Fanatec package at 85/100 when using the G25 pedals and 90/100 only if you are including the Clubsport pedals. My shifter never arrived so I really cannot say if it is a detraction of addition to the experience. I will also say the only reason I am bumping the Fanatec to 90/100 is because of the pedals. The wheel is better than the G25, but not a quantum leap.

This leave us with the T500. I feel the T500 is a solid 95/100 even without a fancy load cell brake pedal and even without the shifter. The wheel is that much of an improvement.

Scores
DFP 50/100
G25 75/100
G25 + H shifter 80/100
GT2 + G25 Pedals85/100
GT2 + CSP 90/100
GT2 + CSP + H shifter ??????
T500 without shifter 95/100
T500 + H shifter ??????

The T500 is a fantastic piece of kit on its own and if the shifter does show up and is as good as the wheel/pedals are then for the current time this setup would be a 99/100 or 100/100 in the prosumer space - until Fanatec or Logitech or Act-Labs or even a new comer shows up and displaces the T500 from the top.

Hopefully this also shows that we are now talking about incremental improvements - improvements by degrees and that you really cannot go wrong with either of the 2 top dog wheels in the prosumer space - the next jump up will cost you significantly more money.

This evaluation is of course only my ignorant hick opinion, nothing more.

Nice 👍

Well I think I'm glad I ditched the G27 idea, and waited for this T500RS. The G27 is nerfed in GT5 anyway.
I don't think PD likes Logitech very much at this stage.

 

[hampus_dh]

I was convinced of that when I was listening to Brad Keselowski on a radio show today. He said that he met Tony Stewart in iRacing and that's how he got his break into NASCAR.

Real racers use it to practice. They say it's not perfect, it does some things very well and some things not as well, but for mental preparation and practice it's really good.

I agree, and one thing that many people who do not own IRacing doesn´t think about is the tracks. They are digital replicas of the real world track. Everything that´s there the day they scan is what´s in game. Every little skidmark, everything. Down to the millimetre, think about that for a second. Elevations are incomparable to homemade tracks. If you have driven Rfactor or any Simbin title and drive Brands Hatch, then drive it in IRacing and it´s like night and day. Turn 1 literally scared me the first time i approached it since i wasn´t used to the massive drop in elevation etc.

Let´s take GT5´s Nordschleife which is in many peoples opinion the best version out there. The turns might be right and the distance quite similar.

But to really make the best green hell you need laserscanning that is accurate down to the millimeter. Meaning all the small bumps etc is impossible for Kaz to implement in the game because it´s impossible to create an exact replica of a track based on a 24H race for example even though they go to great lengths to make tracks no doubt.

But to get a digital replica of a track, laser scanning is the only way.

Another interesting bit about Iracing is that when your watching a clip etc. And sometimes you see a wheel bounce up in the air just slightly from what appears no reason at all it´s because the car actually run on the pointcloud itself and not the track texture.

So even if IRacing can´t do every bump in textures etc it´s still there and you can feel it when you drive.

I reall hope alot of people will come over to IRacing in the future and really get to try some hardcore racing.

This is not me saying "get rid of GT5" because GT5 is a good game. Many Iracers play it but not to get the most authentic experience possible.
You can still play both games like many people do.

For example, i just ran a 1.2Hour race at Brands Hatch with the Riley and Mustang in a multiclass. That´s pure, hardcore, clean racing that is unbeatable in the gaming industry at the moment.

And the best part of Iracing is that it continues to evolve every three months meaning it will never get old. Only better and better and better

And that´s exactly why i need this wheel to really extract everything from IRacing in terms of FF. For a reasonable price of course.

 

[CoolColJ]

^ Well I currently have a iRacing sub, but I haven't touched it a while and will let it expire, I'm more likely to turn GT5 on. iRacing is when you want to race online as a sport. But I find myself fooling around a lot more in GT5 off line. Tracks are good, but not enough cars, and the right type of cars in iRacing for me. The whole vibe is different.

Too me while the tracks feel good in iRacing, the car, controller, connection is bad IMO.
And the cars look like their skippping along the road, rather than driving ontop of it

 

[RC45]

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[hampus_dh]

^ Well I currently have a iRacing sub, but I haven't touched it a while and will let it expire, I'm more likely to turn GT5 on. iRacing is when you want to race online as a sport. But I find myself fooling around a lot more in GT5 off line. Tracks are good, but not enough cars, and the right type of cars in iRacing for me. The whole vibe is different.

Too me while the tracks feel good in iRacing, the car, controller, connection is bad IMO.
And the cars look like their skippping along the road, rather than driving ontop of it

Yes IRacing is about racing. plain and simple. You need to have the right mindset to join races otherwise it wont end up good.

Can you explain more in detail on why you think the car, connection is bad?
The cars are probably as good as it gets in terms of tintops while NkPro has the edge in formula cars because of their tyre model which IRacing haven´t put out yet.

And if you mean connection as in onlineplay etc it´s the best there is. period.

About the cars skipping along the road. Did you read all of my post or just some of it?

 

[hampus_dh]

PD did survey and collect a vast amount of data while working on the Nordschleife during 2004 as they worked on GT4. 6 years ago that was the most cost effective and detailed way a commercial grade track was going to get replicated in digital form.

Unless youplay daily, iRacing is throwing money away. I have had iRacing on 2 seperate occasion. And both times let it lapse, because unless you race regualrly it is an needed repeat cost.

My experience with iRacing a while ago was that while they may have gathered a huge amount of data, they are not utilizing it all - they are utilising a lot of the data, but no more than the amount of data used for laserscanned rFactor tracks.

The iRacing folks have a large following, a large budget and have brough laser surveyed tracks to the mainstream, but there are still issues in the implimentation. The point (cloud) being that the tracks are good, but not perfect - and they still havent taken the time to FFB tag every inch of every trrack correctly (at least this was my experience early in 2010 - maybe it has changed now).

Doesn´t matter what you do or how many pictures you take of a track. It will not even come close to a digital replica down to the millimeter. every little crack, every little bump, every little elevation is exact down to the millimetre in game.
It´s impossible to create a track with the same accuracy by taking pictures or doing 100 laps of Nordschliefe than it is to acutally scan the track.

Please elaborate on the bold text. And please back it up with facts to support it.


I should say that i do not play every day, sometimes not for a week. And to me it´s worth evey single penny because the fact of the matter is that no other game comes close to Iracing when we are talking about accuracy and realism.

But if you do play alot, and join races often like once every week you will get paid by Iracing to do so . Yes you read it right, they will actually give you IRacing dollars depending on how much you play .

 

[RC45]

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[Shogunz]

This thread seems to be getting off topic.

 

[CoolColJ]

Yes IRacing is about racing. plain and simple. You need to have the right mindset to join races otherwise it wont end up good.

Can you explain more in detail on why you think the car, connection is bad?
The cars are probably as good as it gets in terms of tintops while NkPro has the edge in formula cars because of their tyre model which IRacing haven´t put out yet.

And if you mean connection as in onlineplay etc it´s the best there is. period.

About the cars skipping along the road. Did you read all of my post or just some of it?

Connection as in representing the the wheel, car, physics, feedback loop.
I just do not feel like I'm driving a car. The throttle to throttle responce/effect seems out to me as well.

Yes I read your post, but even on a surface with no obvious bumps I can feel, the car looks all weird and floaty.

So the wheel jiggles about in iRacing which makes you think it feels realistic, but how this ties in with how the car reacts doesn't feel to good IMO.

 

[RC45]

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[Shogunz]

Trying to steer it back...

Yeah I noticed that.

 

[vampalan]

It will be interesting to see what the pc support is like for the t500rs, I was really happy to find pc support for the DFP way back when, otherwise it would be a ms sidewinder for me to try and make work. Off topic, I sub to iracing a bit, but it just didn't have the appeal, graphics were very outdated looking and car selection was limited too. Was considering going down the eyefinty route for it but just lacked the appeal. The kiss of death was lack of Nordschleife, if there was one, I probably would have kept going. Forza's version of Nordschleife I believe is not accurate either. So it's back to GT5 and a T500RS for me. Shame there's no xbox support, but no biggy, since there's no GT on it. And same for PC, I would spend a serious amount of money on the PC if it was out for that.

 

[Prophet_540i]

Can anyone confirm that this is available anywhere? Fryes says out of stock....

 

[Deano-gt]

Fry's Milton (Alpharetta, GA) had 2 in stock, now they have 1. When I asked them to check, the only 2 besides Dallas were in GA. This is considered a special order item in the store and is not in the wheel section but on an endcap. Even the yellow Fry's placard says Thrusmaster instead of Thrustmaster.

 

[Ranger099]

Fry's Milton (Alpharetta, GA) had 2 in stock, now they have 1. When I asked them to check, the only 2 besides Dallas were in GA. This is considered a special order item in the store and is not in the wheel section but on an endcap. Even the yellow Fry's placard says Thrusmaster instead of Thrustmaster.

I'm unimpressed with Fry's so far - Amazon beats them in every aspect of online shopping anyway. Only placed an order bc they are the only one in the US accepting orders.

Stunned that they took my and many other orders on 1/6 yet stocked the stores FIRST. WTF. Those weren't pre-orders in store. They simply stocked the retail shelves and SKIPPED jackasses like me who ordered online. If Amazon opens up pre-orders I will most certainly cancel my order with Frys.

PS - I'm also surprised TM is not taking heat for greatly exaggerating wheel availability. Available on 1/5 doesn't mean ONE online store in the entire USA taking pre-orders a day later. Perhaps in French "available" means "coming soon".

 

[.Hz]

This gentlemen, is a comment from a straight up fanboy. You should observe things more objectively next time, "can help you in life"

The fact of the matter is that the wheels are good but compared to a T500RS and the technology the wheel uses they SUCK BIG TIME!.

yes i´ve owned most wheels and by you mentioning the dfgt just makes me laugh. And no a PS3 game will never ever reach the fidelity or FF that a PC game can produce. The only reason the T500RS is so good on GT5 is because it probably was developed alongside.

You should try a game like Rfactor with a certain mod that is known for it´s FF but that doesn´t even come close to the FF IRacing can produce.

You won´t accknowledge that because you haven´t even tried Iracing.

Therefore what you say doesn´t really mean anything m8. Atleast not for me.
Read the Specs on the T500RS and you will realise that the technology that goes in to that wheel you can´t even find on a FREX wheel even though a FREX probably has the edge in terms of wheel. But is far away from being as exact.

hampus, you really should look at the facts first before you spit complete non sense: The Cell BE in the PS3 is *FAR* more powerful than ANY desktop processor being utilized by PC sims in terms of mathematical calculations which have to do w/ PHYSICS, and FLOP operations, so not only could the PS3 PWN any PC rig, but from what I see has already at least matched iRacing. Get real dude, seriously. Maybe iRacing has some edge somewhere, but do you even read what other people w/ real world experience playing both say? I still say so, even more so more than ever, but I would still really like to try iRacing sometime. No man, I DO agree T500 is much better than other offerings in terms of a technical standpoint. Sorry but you're just wrong on those above "facts" regarding PS3 vs PC, simple as that! BAM! In end, sim racings deep, so if you dig iRacing for w/e reason, that's fine man, no doubt.

Now, let's keep this thread on more on track (that was a pun, booya)

 

[jmke]

GT5 doesn't do tyre modelling in any "realistic" way, this alone is what sets it apart from PC titles like LFS and iRacing.
has nothing to do with calculating power of the platform used, but the goal of developers and how accessible they want their games to be.

GT5 can be played with a gamepad.
LFS and iRacing require a steering wheel.

EOD

 

[Mr Latte]

Back To the Wheel

It took Darin @ ISR a single day with the wheel to report it was the new benchmark. Have other owners found the wheel clearly only after a short period of usage could be defined as such and agree with that comment?

Or do you feel the wheel improves things only slightly compared to the current Fanatec / Logitech models.

 

[hampus_dh]

GT5 doesn't do tyre modelling in any "realistic" way, this alone is what sets it apart from PC titles like LFS and iRacing.
has nothing to do with calculating power of the platform used, but the goal of developers and how accessible they want their games to be.

GT5 can be played with a gamepad.
LFS and iRacing require a steering wheel.

EOD

hz. READ THIS! The PS3 is not god´s gift to the world m8. PC is still above everything else in terms of Gaming.

Back to topic now. btw RC45, thank you for that. I´ll take this up in the Iracing forum when i get a chance.

 

[hampus_dh]

Connection as in representing the the wheel, car, physics, feedback loop.
I just do not feel like I'm driving a car. The throttle to throttle responce/effect seems out to me as well.

Yes I read your post, but even on a surface with no obvious bumps I can feel, the car looks all weird and floaty.

So the wheel jiggles about in iRacing which makes you think it feels realistic, but how this ties in with how the car reacts doesn't feel to good IMO.

Turn off Vsync. That will do wonders in terms of getting a connection with the road and the physics.

What wheel and pedals do you use and what fps did you get?

I´ve never heard anyone say this about Iracing. What cars did you try?

Btw, PM me instead so we keep it clean in here I´m not trying to convert you i´m just curious.

 

[GainSym]

Nice pictures with "Speedmaster V2.0":

 

[hampus_dh]

What is the height of the "case" ?

 

[Nightowl]

As far as I can tell, Asda entertainment, Love Film shop, Send it and Zavvi are all thehut.com, at least as far as the T500rs is concerned. I was close to placing a pre-order with thehut before I started reading some of the customer service complaints (just google thehut.com review).

I've gone with Play for now but if Amazon drop their price closer to Play I'll switch to them.

Vampalan good point, gave my girlfriend my credit card to buy a bag in the new year sale. It was still about a thousand pounds. (I thought it was a sale.I hate to know what it cost before)
I had to cancel with Amazon needed by the 19th of Jan as i'm away for a week after that. So I ordered it from play.com. Its a shame was expecting to play this weekend as well.
Vampalan -Yeah i have to admit i prefer Amazon customer service, but i will go with Sendit (okay service) or Play (better service) and if it happens to drop in price in Amazon while I'm waiting to at least £420. I'll get it from Amazon. (not sure 60 to 80 pounds is worth the customer service difference).
Asda and Lovefilm also have the same 380 price (Lovefilms in Jersey too hard to return if there is a fault and Asda entertainment has lousy service) Zavvi has it to, but has the slowest service, not recommended.

 

[warpspeed2slow]

I am kinda interested in this wheel, but in those pictures the pedals look bad, downright ugly.

 

[KyleR]

I've already commented to Speedmaster about how rediculous it is that they are the official compatible sim rig for the T500. As you can see in the pictures Gainsym posted, the pedals don't actually fit. They are fine in F1 mode, especially since you can remove the frame so they'll look similar to Fanatec or Logitechs offerings, but in GT mode it is pathetic. I don't want to have to remove the casing of my pedals or drill holes in it like Speedmaster suggest. I don't want the risk of debris getting in there a effing things up.

I also told them that the official rig should have been one of the "playseat" style rigs.

 

[IMZ14U2NV]

I am kinda interested in this wheel, but in those pictures the pedals look bad, downright ugly.

I have to agree and it has been noted by a few others, there is a very tacky gaudy look to the pedals with that Diamond Plate, I am really surprised that this got past the design approval folks, but then again I really shouldn’t be because I saw how excited Mr. Kazunori Yamauchi was about NASCAR, I am sure this was done to please him, but I really think they should have made that part look a little more conservative and classy.

Maybe they will offer replacement plates in different styles to please the folks who actually care about what their gear looks like!!

 

[lunarwolf]

I've already commented to Speedmaster about how rediculous it is that they are the official compatible sim rig for the T500.

it's not the "official" rig. where did you get that info? it's just a compatible rig.

this is from the Thurstmaster facebook page:
"Thrustmaster also works in close collaboration with a number of cockpit makers, in order to quickly provide updates for both available and forthcoming cockpit designs. We are already in talk with Hotseat, Playseat, Gamepod, Obuto, Mobsim and others to come.
MAJ: we are now working also with Speedmaster, VisionRacer and ...Apica!"

 

[cleanvrsix]

I just cancelled my G27 wheel on amazon.com...hopefully the T500 will become available real soon.

 

[IMZ14U2NV]

I've already commented to Speedmaster about how rediculous it is that they are the official compatible sim rig for the T500. As you can see in the pictures Gainsym posted, the pedals don't actually fit. They are fine in F1 mode, especially since you can remove the frame so they'll look similar to Fanatec or Logitechs offerings, but in GT mode it is pathetic. I don't want to have to remove the casing of my pedals or drill holes in it like Speedmaster suggest. I don't want the risk of debris getting in there a effing things up.

I also told them that the official rig should have been one of the "playseat" style rigs.

I don’t want this to be interpreted as off topic, I was looking at the pictures of the Thrustmaster T500 RS mounted in the "Speedmaster V2.0" cockpit and the thought that comes to mind is that I kind of remember some better looking and more stable looking cockpits in ad’s on Websites.

If Money was not a real issue within reason, which cockpit would you guys consider best overall??

I am not speaking just about hard mount screw positions or rather it is indorsed officially, I am speaking of just best period for your money!