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Author Topic: racing games  (Read 8590 times)

texasboy

  • Guest
racing games
« on: December 11, 2006, 08:08:56 am »
Just a little update on the wheel. Make your own decisions. ::)
Logitech G25
PC race fans - throw down your horrid gamepads and embrace the very zenith of steering wheel design

Married racing fans avert your eyes, for this may be the undoing of your union. Arrive home with one of these bad boys tucked under your arm and steel yourself for the disapproving look, the weary sigh and the distant rustle of divorce papers. This is the ultimate luxury for a driving game aficionado – the most convincing recreation of a vehicle cockpit outside of flight training school, and one of the sturdiest peripherals ever to endure the PCF Ham-Fistedness Test (patent pending). This is not for the frivolous, though, as only those who regularly rumble around virtual circuits will be able to justify the outlay.

MATERIALISTIC DESIRE

Still, the wheel couldn’t arrive at a better time. With GTR2 recently wowing even casual racing fans, there’s real weight behind the driving sim movement, and nothing enriches the racing game experience more than using a realistic steering wheel.

The first thing that strikes you when you haul this USB behemoth out of the box is just how rugged the entire setup is. The wheel itself is a sturdy hunk of metal and leather with pleasingly tactile paddle shifters; the pedals have fat cylinders surrounding the three shafts and the six-speed gated shifter (a first for a wheel of this price) makes satisfying clicks as it snaps your recalcitrant E-Type into a new gear.

The other big news is that this has 900 degree rotation – that’s two and a half full turns of the wheel – but can be tweaked in the drivers to any value in between. While a road-going BMW might require the full 900 for realistic handling, an F1 car may only use half that.

The only criticism we have is that the gear gate is a touch too small, meaning lazy shifts can leave the car floundering, though the option to switch to a sequential box is there.

This is the most faithful representation of a racing cockpit you can get for under £500 – the kit is robust, the force feedback is strong, without a hint of buzz from the motors, and there’s varied resistance to the pedals. If you’ve never tried a PC steering wheel before, rest assured the G25 transforms just about any driving game it’s plugged into.

Mike Channell

Price: £180

Verdict
If you’re a simhead, this is an expensive but essential purchase.


PvtStash

  • Guest
Re: racing games
« Reply #1 on: January 22, 2007, 07:35:22 pm »
These are brilliant for the money they ask, I have one and you can't get anything better for more than double the price. I mainly use it with games such as rFactor and GTR2 and the feel is so close to real it makes fast laps quite a bit easier. The big thing is having the clutch and gated shifter, this allows you to "split shift" IE 6th-4th instead of having to sequentially shift through all gears. Can be worth quite a bit of time per lap and combined with the nicely weighted brake pedal things get better and better. You really do need to use it with a decent simulation and perhaps customise some of the settings contained within the game's .ini or .plr files but once setup the feel is simply amazing. You can fne tune the feed-back to levels where the slightest slip from the front or rear tyres is transmitted to you allowing for instant corrections and saving the horrors of meeting walls or other solid objects at speed. Very counter-productive to fun and fast laps :P Anyway, like it says above if you are a sim nut then you really should consider the G25. You wont be disapointed. :)

Happy laps all, PvtStash ( rFactor mad )

texasboy

  • Guest
Re: racing games
« Reply #2 on: January 23, 2007, 06:39:28 am »
 ;D Tks PvtStash. I had really forgotten about making this post. Still playing all my older games and only have the Wingman wheel" to keep an old man happy.lol
cheers