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Yes I have finally received my Fanatec Porsche Force Feedback Wheel woo yay woo

I have watched the thing travel the world by boat, travel Germany by road and now It's here after countless delays and setback the wheel I ordered in June -_-

I was expecting it in September.. no such luck it seems, some folk have had this pre-ordered over a year ago... anyway... what is this thing, this shiny technological masterpiece...

It arrived with good timing in one way as Dirt 2 just came out so I can play it first with my new wheel!! all the newness and awesomeness!



Here it is, taken at night so photos a bit grainy/blurry and washed out etc, but it still looks cool!






And here are some videos below in the links of me messing about with it in Dirt and Shift, I need to make a video of Richard Burns Rally which is by far the most fun despite It's age.



Naturally videos and pictures do little to convey the forces that are being applied to your hands as you drive, so use your imagination

;-)




Sure it was expensive, but it is the only wheel on the planet that supports everything, xbox, PS3, PC and looks good while doing it as a bonus.

It has immense force feedback, Rally Driving will jolt your arms all over if you are not careful, racing games will give you the subtle feedback as tyres are about to loose grip and when you need to counter steer a slide thus preventing a crash (they will at least if they properly simulate tyre deformation and contact patch which few do). Overall it provides a big deal of immersion into a game which may normally be a rather passive experience, suddenly you are drawn in and engaged and given extra sensory perceptions that not only make it more entertaining but easier to drive well.

It isn't as well made as a real porsche wheel, it has some defects, stitching is rough to touch, buttons have a bit of a gap and one button is really wonky to touch, the wheel is quite hard; theres no padding under the leather so it feels a bit hollow and hard, but compared to other gaming wheels.. it licks them all and it is a bit cheaper than a real Porsche wheel

:-)



This is It's closest competition:

hahahahah.. look at it... hah... get out of here, It's not any cheaper either really. Pedal Shifter on it are better though by the looks of it, which isn't difficult as the Fanatec's are so useless and rough I had to unscrew them and just use the buttons underneath, which work fine and I quite like them but it makes shifting while steering very difficult.

Biggest pest with this wheel is no game works with it properly by default, not the wheels fault as games are A. designed for retards who cannot drive, and B. are designed for weak ass regular geared wheels.

But you can always tweak and hack and disable all the dampening and aids to unleash It's power if you want.

Richard Burns rally needed a Max Torque tweak hidden away in some physics file which made the game... scary, I recommend using Drift Mode and a lower FFB if you do this though to simulate some kind of power assisted steering.

--

Below I shall detail how I went from a casual arcade gamer to full blown racing nerd with a wheel to proove it.

--

First racing game for me was really Need for Speed Underground, I don't count any games before that especially not the very first which would have been Burning Rubber on the Amstrad CPC+ shown below for amusement


It was a shit game then and it sure as hell is shit now

Anyway NFSU was a great introductory game, it was fast, easy enough to control with a keyboard, exciting stuff...


Then came NFS Most Wanted, which I felt was a great game too, nice graphics for It's time and this time I played on xbox with a analog controller giving much greater control over steering and acceleration.


Then came Forza 2, I tried the demo, thought it was an amusing insight into how real cars might handle, amusing in that they must all handle like ass thanks to It's overly difficult handling down to bad tyre physics.. ok the ewer not bad but they were on the sadistic side when it came to locking up.


I thought the game was bland and boring, and it is... really... but I changed my mind later...

I next got myself into Colin Mcrae Dirt, wow what a blast, it was fun but way more challenging than previous arcadey games I had played, still in the arcade realm though it is no sim.


The graphics also blew Forza out the water and still do, it looked the part and was a blast, so I splashed out on a Microsoft Force Feedback Wheel. Relatively cheap lil thing especially as I got %% off due to damaged packaging.

And it was an epic experience playing it with the wheel, took ages to get used to it, but once I had there was no going back. The level of immersion shot thru the roof, the fun, the swet on my brow... It's the best fun id had gaming in a long long time.

I then tried Forza Demo again and it came alive.. .suddenly it made sense with a wheel, what is the point of a car simulator if you then drive with a thumb stick... it makes no sense. With the wheel the feedback made the cars fun and drivable, it gave you a sense you would eventually just know and feel/untuit when a car was about to screw up and you would have already automatically counter acted it via the wheel.

The graphics were still horrendous and the gameplay was still dreadful, but the driving was fun with all the nuances you would expect.

I quickly realised the wheel I had while good for It's price, was no match for the high end wheels that only worked on PC and PS3.

I looked at PC Car Sims and thought of buying a wheel, but all the PC sims looked dull... lifeless even more so than Forza.

Then I heard Need for Speed were doing a 'sim' racer, and Forza 3 was coming.. and Dirt 2... and I danced, oh how I danced

Dirt 2 above... in game.. no really in game, graphics so good It's actually sexier than real life, I could lick it


How crap does Forza look now.. this is Shift looking very nice indeed

NFS Carbon had came and gone and had been shit, NFS Pro Street had came out, was a piece of shit, NFS Undercover had came out and was a piece of shit... pattern forming stuff... fortunately NFS Shift was by someone else entirely, and they have done a brilliant job, it feels like pretty damn good sim under the hood especially after some hacks. And the graphics and immersion are way above what anyone else other than Codemasters has been able to deliver.

Anyway, I heard of this Fanatec wheel when Forza announced they were supporting it shown below with a motion rig.. and i'm like finally!

Forza 3 looked really good too (from a distance), the wheel looked like a must have... then I saw the price... thought harder about it... and decided what the hell, I earn money to spend it and have fun, and this definitely looked like a top top quality product not only in aesthetic thanks to the Porsche styling genuine leather and paint and genuine badge... but more importantly it was quality gear inside that only the likes of the Logitech G27 can come close to... and man that wheel looks like a toy POS to me.

Anyway Forza 3 then came out, I bought it, turned out to be ok, but still ugly and dull as sin compared to what NFS and Codemaster were putting out, but it was all forgivable-ish as the handling was huge leaps better and it was class leading before. They have now full tyre modelling for deformation which is a big deal in how it affects the car handling and tyre slip/grip.

Forza is a driving game, Shift is a racing game.. big difference. Driving around on your own in a nice car in Forza is actually a pleasure on the few scenic road tracks it has.

Forza still has a plasticy look to it down to the bad car shaders which they could get away with better if they did any post/color correction or even get basic exposure right. They should really use normal maps on the cars instead of high poly as you can see dings and dents in them which could be easily avoided and make it fast enough to have more cars on track., another huge huge let down as It's limited to 8 cars a race.. ugh what a waste of time driving round a 10km track with 8 cars thinly spread over it.

Looks pretty good above sure, but in game and on older tracks especially it looks pretty sad at HD res.

Sorry for the rant/history lesson, but I want to show how I went from casual arcade racer to full blown top of the line limited edition force feedback wheel. I'm even looking at some of the hardcore PC car sims that I previously wrote off as ugly and dull. Got into outdoor 60mph karting And thinking how I can realistically buy a Lotus Elise to do the real thing-ish...

And theres also GT5 to look forward to on the PS3, which looks better than Forza, but it still looks like it might be quite sterile and dull in gameplay... though who knows, I shall wait to try it before judging, I commend them on the amount of content the game will have and if they add weather and day/night I will have to have some pretty bad gameplay to not still be a great game.

-Edit

Ok another GT5 preview article just came out and the thing looks outstanding on paper, they are adding weather and night racing... yay oh yay! finally! ooh and damage-to what exact extent i'm not sure but they even say they have interior damage for 100 or so cars'
How such a major part of racing has been left out of most.. nay all games, I don't know. All you ever hear about during F1 races or Rally or GT or anything is how the weather effects the tyres. My only hope now is for some real endurance race type stuff, but to have the computer pick the tyres for yo.

Which reminds me of another point I love that in Forza you can go in a tweak the car's setup and parts, it has It's own fun to it, but I'd also like to be able to forget about that entirely and just be a race driver sometimes too and have an expert team behind me setting all the stuff up and leave me to racing and trust my car is ALWAYS competitive, in Forza I feel like half the time I loose is cuss my car is junk... yah It's alll the cars fault

;-)






And that above is all I've got to go on right now regarding the night racing

:-P



You'd have thought being given a world exclusive they would have put bigger images in -_-



--

So is this wheel worth the money... yes, and if you want a longer answer to that... yeeeeeeesssss

it was worth my money, whether it is worth yours depends on how much you value your money and how much you would enjoy racing games really.

Now who wants to buy me the full setup for Christmas? I want to nerd out!!!!! they have a motion rig coming soon too... I need more money for this hobby

:-D



And before you say that the 3 screens is overkill, It's actually quite a big deal with car games, as without periphery vision you can't make tight turns as accurately as you can't see the apexes or see cars to your left and right that you may drive into. Aaand you judge speed from your peripheral vision, stuff whizzing by on your far left and right really makes you feel and see the speed you are doing which is why sims feel like you are driving slow and to the 200mph you are doing in game, try driving with a box on your head and a slot for your eyes... tunnel vision is not cool to be race driving with.











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