rec.autos.simulators

THE WHEELS

Microsoft Sidewinder:
Probably sports the best pedal unit in the bunch (haven't seen the
ACTLABS wheel yet). IMHO the one flaw in the wheel is the paddle
shifters. While many people like the wheel in general and seem to like
the paddle shifters, I found them to be improperly placed & sized.
It was almost impossible to drive properly in F1RS because your
hands had to basically be in one place on the wheel. I cracked/snapped
my wrists several times trying to maintain my grip on the wheel and
keep my hands in a proper place to shift. I did however find the FF in
F1RS to be fantastic. You could feel the wheel loosen up as you lost
traction in the turns among the other usual bumps you would expect.

Saitek:
This wheel unit is essentially a clone of the MS wheel. I think it
uses the same internals. However the pedal unit is probably among
the worst in the bunch.

Logitech:
Probably sports the best wheel in the bunch, but the pedals (I have
seen a display unit at a local best buy) are among the worst in the
bunch. The lack of pedal pressure sucks.

Actlabs:
One person has posted here with a favorable report. But not so
favorable as to make me reinstate my order :-) This unit seems
to be hardwarewise (Pedals and wheel) among the best.

For me the burning issue really is N2/NR1999 support in DOS
because I still play allot of multiplayer with my friend. Hey, we
did 3 races last night... It seems so far that none of these wheels
support N2/NR1999 in a DOS box properly. I believe people have
said that GP2 will work fine leading to the conclusion that it is
not the DOS box support for these wheels which is at fault, but
rather the DOS joystick routine in N2/NR1999. I wonder if papy
is motivated at all to address this?

I guess I was hoping to hear one report from someone who owned
a MS-FF wheel (who could not get N2 to work), to say that the
Logitech wheel worked fine. I would immediately go and get the
Logitech and deal with the loose feeling pedals. And am I the only
one who is amazed that these wheels are so similar to several
software titles of the same genere? It seems like no one can put it
all together! Every wheel seems to be missing something. Totally
irritating.

Additional comments and suggestions welcome. Even more welcome
are reports that someone has gotten N2/NR1999 to work with these
wheels. And FWIW, I believe papy is at fault for this. They release
NR1999 which is a W98/DirectX game boasting on the box that
it also has multiplay support. Then after you load the game or read
page 53 in the manual you find that the DOS exe is required. Totally
uncool if you ask me. This limitation should have been clearly explained.
Shame on Sierra/Papy.

--
Header address intentionally scrambled to ward off the spamming hordes.

cisko [AT] ix [DOT] netcom [DOT] com

Papyrus came up with an optimized method of reading the game port using
timers for N2.  This was so interrupts would not be disabled and network
packets could still be received.  An analog game port is a hideous device to
write code for.  The actual reading of the port is easy, but getting
consistent meaningful values from different machines is a black art.
Papyrus came up with a good solution for their problem (read a polling
device at the same time you are being interrupted by the serial port).
Unfortuantely, their solution fools our VxD.

-Paul

-Larry

But, if the patch works for some people, they should go ahead and
release the damned thing as a beta!  It may help some of us get thru
this madness...

-Larry