![]() Nowadays, steering wheels can be taken off the wheel base and exchanged. And there is more: the steering wheels are finally equipped with LEDs that can display the RPM directly on the wheel itself, instead of on the game monitor. The steering wheel is equipped not only with snappy paddle shifters, but also with a row of buttons and turn-switches with which you can make various changes to the steering wheel software such as changing brake bias while driving or activating KERS or DRS. There have also been developments in terms of functionality. The manufacturers do everything in their power to keep their products as realistic as possible, and even make their replicas to the original size and weight. Exact replicas of original steering wheels are being produced, using high-quality materials ranging from various synthetic leathers and hand-sewn real leathers to anodized and polished aluminum. Steering wheels themselves have also taken a big step forward in the past years. A hasty shortcut is answered with strong rattling that you can feel all the way up to your shoulders.Īll of this enables the driver to get a deeper feeling for the race track and to receive genuine feedback about how the car fares at its limits. Force feedback makes curbs feel flat and smooth, high or roughly grooved. ![]() It shows how uncomfortable the car feels on a curve that hangs towards the outside. It enables you to feel the difference between a slippery and a grippy road in tight curves. 20 years ago, you could feel nothing but a slight binary jolting - today, the steering wheel transmits the car's force in up to 16-bit resolution (equivalent of 65536 values on the wheel's steering). It directly connects the driver to the car. Force feedback has become one of the most important, if not THE most important, element of a steering wheel. Not a flimsy plastic plaything, but a wheel with real inertia and resistance controlled by force feedback. What are the characteristics of a good steering wheel? The most important thing is the authentic feeling of holding a real steering wheel in your hands. Never have you been so close to a race track in your own living room as you can be now. As the ex-Formula 1 world champion Niki Lauda put it so well - the "buttometer" (German: "Popometer"), the feeling a race driver gets for the car (which comes mainly via your seat) plays an important part in being able to drive so fast. Apart from graphics that you can hardly tell apart from the real world, particularly with the support of various VR glasses, such as Oculus Rift or HTC Vive, gamers now want to actually feel the car. Due to the clear advances in realism in the gaming sector, steering wheel manufacturers have become aware of the great possibilities of growth that a premium market could offer - the best is yet to come. ![]() The latest technologies such as laser-scanned race tracks and high-performance physics engines have even enabled smaller game publishers to produce realistic, well-developed and high-detail games. Some of the current top games in the simulated racing world are “ Project Cars” (remember: the release date for the successor " Project Cars 2" is September 22nd 2017), “ Assetto Corsa”, “ iRacing” and “ rFactor 2”. But just look at that data rate: 1000 Hz update rate via the USB port and resolutions of up to 16 bits. The best hardware is only as good as the data quality that the game can offer. Manufacturers of input devices such as Logitech, Thrustmaster or Fanatec are dependent on games that actually supply the amount and diversity of data that the steering wheel needs. And if you have ever had cramps in your hands in the middle of a race due to force feedback - which simulates driving dynamics on the wheel (and even on higher-priced pedals) - you would not miss the vibrating and pulling of the wheel for the world and feel naked and helpless on the race track without this additional information, as if you were flying blind.Īs in all areas, supply and demand have to work together. Once you have tried racing with a steering wheel, you will never want to go back to doing even a single round on the keyboard.
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