New Ferrari gamepads for PC and PS3 from Thrustmaster
If you’re a Ferrari fan, you’ll love the new Ferrari 150 Italia edition gamepads which are new from Thrustmaster. First up is the F1 Wireless Gamepad Ferrari 150 Italia Alonso Edition, which is an exclusive and numbered wireless gamepad which is even signed by Fernando Alonso.
Thrustmaster F1 Wireless Gamepad Ferrari 150 Italia Alonso Edition
Featuring 2.4 GHz technology, the pad also has an optical wheel with a 90 degree rotation angle and auto-centering feature, plus two progressive triggers for precise control. The lower grip has a ‘peach skin’ texture to help you hang onto it in comfort, and the gamepade is entirely programmable. That means all the buttons, ministicks, D-pad, optical wheel and triggers can be switched around as required, and the internal memory remembers how you have set everything up even when disconnected. The F1 Wireless Gamepad Ferrari 150 Italia Alonso Edition is available for the PC and PS3 (featuring a home button for PS3), and costs £34.99.
The Thrustmaster F1 Dual Analog Gamepad Ferri 150 Italia Exclusive Edition
Meanwhile there’s also the F1 Dual Analog Gamepad Ferrari 150 Italia Exclusive Edition, which is cheaper at £19.99, but still provides a good benchmark with the PC, with 10 buttons, an 8-direction D-pad and 2 ministicks. It also has the ‘peach skin’ texture, plus the sticks are rubber-coated to help you keep control. The F1 Dual Analog Gamepad Ferri 150 Italia Exclusive Edition is available for the PC and costs £19.99
Forget 3-screen hydraulic set-ups – we want an Inflatakart
OK, so if you’ve spent the last 6 months building a 3-monitor set-up with a racing seat and hydraulics, or spent out on something like a Playseat, the Inflatakart probably isn’t for you. But seeing as a fair number of us are parents, and we might want to encourage them to appreciate motorsport, the Inflatakart is probably worth a look.
Plus it’s an ingeniously simple idea. Take an inflatable go-kart, add a plastic steering wheel to hold a Wiimote for the Nintendo Wii, and away you go. No batteries or wires required, and there’s a handy pump and puncture repair kit included for any kart-damaging race incidents. Sadly it’s only recommended for those weighing less than 100Kg, but we can always look on enviously as your kids enjoy it.
It’s available from September 2nd, and costs £24.99. It should work with all Nintendo Wii racing games, but you probably won’t want to try modifying it for iRacing or Forza Motorsport 4, and if you do, we want pictures!
Thrustmaster T500 RS wheel and pedal set review: 4/5
Everything about the Thrustmaster T500 RS suggests an extremely high level of quality; the specs, the only official Gran Turismo 5 licence, and especially the £400+ price. But does it live up to the expectations that have built since it was announced at the start of the year?
Having been lucky enough to secure a review unit for a couple of weeks of testing, I was overjoyed to see a courier straining under the weight of the box. And it’s not surprising – in total there’s about 12kg or so with a 7kg metal pedal set and a 4.5-5kg wheel. This isn’t going to work as a wheel you could balance in your lap.
Apologies for the crappy cameraphone pictures as a better camera wasn’t available at the time!
Having struggled into the lounge I started unpacking, and even sceptical family members had to admit that it was pretty impressive. Besides the new car smell of the wheel, the pedal set has the kind of engineering which looks like it’s been lifted straight out of a parked GT car. Even the power adaptor for the industrial electric motor in the wheel unit is pretty substantial, and the wheel unit itself looks absolutely great with a metal wheel and gearshifters mounted to the plastic body. Every part of the kit feels like it can take a lot of knocks, which is reassuring for a hefty racing investment.
I started setting up the pedal set first. They can be mounted on the floor F1 style, or suspended in a GT position which is more practical with limited floor space. They’re fully adjustable for height and spacing, so heel-and-toe braking is achievable even for those with tiny feet, and they come with adjustable braking resistance, although it comes unfitted, so you’ll need to attach it to benefit from the resistance when you apply the virtual brakes. Having spent 10 minutes adjusting and fiddling, it was then onto the wheel.
Again, there’s a range of adjustment for positioning the wheel in a stable fashion – and you’ll need to plan a suitable surface if you don’t have a racing set-up already. Luckily, there’s far less to sort out, and the gearshift paddles are nice and easy to reach, and great to operate. Inside the wheel there’s an industrial electric motor for powerful and responsive force feedback, and the wheel itself can do 1080 degrees rotation – three full turns. Using magnetic sensors means that heavy use shouldn’t have any effect on the accuracy of the wheel, so the benefits shouldn’t be short-lived.
And it was pretty obvious that it brought some benefits to my driving. I’ll be honest and admit that I come from a console controller and third-person view background, so although I’ve started using the in-car view more in games, it’s still my default initial settings for reviewing the handling model in games. But besides feeling stupid using a wheel for a behind-the-car view, I also noticed that switching in-car didn’t have the initial hit on my lap-times that I expected. If you’ve used a force feedback wheel in the past, you’ll know that a game which provides decent levels of information on tyre adhesion will let you record faster lap times, and the T 500 RS is certainly the best wheel set-up I’ve used for providing the right information for me to even chop a bit from my best laps on a number of tracks.
In short, the Thrustmaster is the best racing wheel and pedal set I’ve had the pleasure of trying so far, and has had the most positive effect on my actual driving, as well as my enjoyment of the games. And if you’re a classic car fan upset at using paddle shifters, there is an external gearshifter coming, although it will cost extra.
But I’ve saved the biggest benefit to last, and it’s this that has made me seriously consider investing my own money in actually buying a T 500 RS for myself.
As someone fairly serious about online racing, I’ve seen the scepticism of friends and family, even when I’ve explained how professional drivers use simulators for training, the success of GT Academy winners and the times Gregor Huttu recorded the first time he’d ever sat in a racing car.
But nothing I ever said or did had the same effect as letting them use the T 500 RS. Suddenly older family members who struggled to manage a single corner with an analogue joypad could understand exactly what was happening and start to actually manage respectable racing. Friends who either didn’t touch consoles, or only played the latest Call of Duty and Fifa suddenly became interested in GT5, and those who had dabbled in Forza or Gran Turismo suddenly started asking about online racing leagues and tuning tips.
And that’s a major part of the appeal of the Thrustmaster set-up. Yes, it’s pricey and you could almost buy an actual car for a little more – certainly you could spend a day on a real track. But it’ll no only last you longer than both of those options, and cost you less in the long run than a £400 car, but it also builds the credibility and accessibility of racing games, and that means more people supporting our passion, which can only be a good thing.
Before the T 500 RS arrived, and after it left, I kept questioning whether any console accessory could be worth more than the price of the console itself. And although the T 500 RS is better than anything I’ve tried, the difference in price from competitors probably isn’t quite enough to justify the additional cost alone. But the effect it has on others, and the fact that it looks good enough to be permanently on display, rather than hidden from sight, means that if you’re serious about online racing and getting the absolute most from racing games, then actually it’s a worthwhile investment.
So the Thrustmaster T 500 RS gets 4/5 review, and if you’re thinking about buying it, please do consider using one of the affiliate links below as you’ll be supporting ORD at the same time!
Buy the Thrustmaster T 500 RS wheel and pedal set on Amazon
DiRT 3 racing seat from Playseats
The DiRT 3 racing seat has been announced, with styling modelled on real rally cars, and complete with head stabilizers, plus some other additions above Playseat’s flagship Evolution model.
The seat is compatible with all digital driving wheels supported by DiRT 3, with a robust and stable metal frame. It has a folding mechanism with a fully adjustable frame for height, length and depth, and it’s suitable for gamers from age eight and up. It’s upholstered in leatherlook vinyl with the offical DiRT 3 branding and synthetic leather reinforcement in areas which are likely to get a lot of wear. The seatback and base cusgions are removable, and the seat will fit drivers up to a 42-inch waist.It’s particularly suited to the Logitech G27 with special screws to ensure the Logitech set-up fits perfectly.
The price is £439 online at the moment, so it’s not cheap, but will easily be better than trying to balance your wheel on your knees or your coffee table! And just to make sure – you’re buying the seat, not the wheel and pedals, unless you choose one of the bundled offers on the Playseat website. But obviously a seat is compatible with all consoles and computers, so no problems there!
Official GT5 Thrustmaster T500RS wheel available tomorrow
The new T500 RS wheel and pedal set becomes available tomorrow in North America and Europe, and on January 25th in Japan. Produced by Thrustmaster, it’s the officially licensed product for Gran Turismo 5 – and comes in at a whopping £459. As you’d expect for that sort of money, it’s a high-spec product.
The goal set by Polyphony Digital CEO was simple. Thrustmasters simply had to produce” the most precise wheel ever developed, without any latency, to accurately reproduce the sensations of GT5, and let users truly feel the emotions experienced by drivers on real racing circuits.”
Not much to aim for then.
As a result, the set-up is quite hefty, with the wheel weighing 4.6kg and 7.3kg for the pedal set, and there’s a lot of metal used in the construction. Sequential gearlevers are mounted on the base and feature 17cm levers, whilst the wheel offers 1080 degrees adjustable rotation. The pedals are fully adjustable for spacing and height, with a ‘floor-mounted’ F1 style position, or ‘suspended’ GT style, and the brake pedal has had special attention with reinforced and adjustable resistance.
A 65W industrial motor is used for the force feedback, and the wheel features 16-bit resolution and 65536 values on its steering axis. More importantly, the promise is that it won’t get any less accurate with use.
The Thrustmaster T500 RS is now available from selected stores, including Amazon.
Making racing games wheely good
I’m planning to prepare properly for this Autumn. The release of Gran Turismo 5 and F1 2010 are important to me. The dates are in my calendar, my time is booked off work and I intend to get all my affairs in order beforehand – including the writing of a will. It also means that after few months under the bed gathering dust it will soon be time to once again break out the polish, oil up the pedals and bring out my trusty USB steering wheel.
Classic Car Steering Wheel by pmarkham on Flickr (CC Licence)
Most racers that don’t use a steering wheel complain that they don’t feel quite right and that they can play the game perfectly well with a controller. First of all, that’s fair enough. Wheels are a real pain in the ass to have around in the living room – there are cables everywhere, you need something to attach it to, need an extra plug socket and will probably have to calibrate the thing every time you want to use it. Having pedals attached to a wheel presents an entirely different problem – they need to be up against something solid and heavy to avoid you pushing them to the other side of the room as you race. During an online race when its impossible to pause the game you can end up on the floor half way across the living room. And then there’s how they look – using a wheel can look so geeky that should a potential partner walk into the room unexpectedly and see you using one you’d wish for the ground to open and swallow you up instantly. You may as well have been making ‘vroom vroom’ noises with your pants on your head and be sitting in a puddle of your own wee.
Yet whilst USB steering wheels can have the knack of making the user feel quite silly driving their ‘pretend car’, when you actually use one you begin to understand why they are increasingly popular. First of all it ‘feels’ right. Funnily enough it feels like driving a car, and doubters should note that games have now developed a level of sophistication not present in earlier wheel-based games such as arcade classics Outrun, Sega Rally and Daytona USA. Using a wheel can also give the discerning online racer a much greater degree of precision. It’s much easier to precisely position and slide the car, which in a full-blown simulator like Gran Turismo can make the difference between winning and losing, and in online racing using a wheel can give you a distinct advantage.
My own wheel is not a particularly fancy one. It’s not very new, the buttons are a little sticky and it doesn’t turn all the way around but I still love it and feel it has enhanced my gaming experience back from the ‘Grand Prix’ series through to Gran Turismo: Prologue. Of course there are hundreds of wheels now available and I’m tempted to upgrade. I really want one with 900-degree rotation, like the Driving Force GT Steering Wheel
Will I get the new one? Probably not – the best ones are pushing £150 and my old one still works perfectly well. Oh, what was that? It has an illuminated horn button? Sold.
