I am one of the "lucky" people who picked up a Force GT in the UK
before Christmas ( the shop only had 4). So what are my first
impressions? Well the external look of the wheel is OK and the
installation is a breeze but there the good news ends.
So here we go :-
1. Clamping
The clamps work well but if you have a keyboard tray forget having any
access to it because they extend about 6 inches below the level of the
desk. ( why did they change from the old T2 clamps which were much
smaller ?). Overall the the clamps are very secure and relese from
above with levers which is very quick.
2. Connections
There is a small separate mains PSU which is OK, it plugs into the
underside of the wheel along with the pedals which use an 8 way mini
DIN. The wires from these connections together with the serial/USB
wire (which is hardwired for some reason) are supposed to be held in
grooves in the moulding but as 2 of them have bulky anti parasitic
inductors clamped to them they fall out. In fact the whole arrangement
is absolutely disgraceful "design" and I have to say TM really let
themselves down here. You have to just cram everthing in and try to
clam the wheel without trapping any cables Doh!!
3. Construction
Its typical TM held together with about 12 screws (and yes I have
looked inside thus invalidating my warranty) and since the serial/USB
wire is permanently attached it is very difficult to separate the 2
halves of moulding. Inside it is actually better than the T2 which was
an appalling rats nest of cheap wire which looked like it had been
soldered with a hot nail.. As a professional engineer it never ceases
to amaze me how poorly TM products are designed from the manufacturing
standpoint I suppose that since they are made in China where the
labour is cheap it does not worry them that the whole thing is a
nightmare to put together. Still not all bad news here, there is a lot
of metal inside and everthing looks solid and strudy.
4. Feel
When it works in FF it is quite good (CM Rally) but I find in non FF
and some FF enabled games it feels really awful with loads of stiction
giving a lumpy, jerky feel. Sometimes this goes away and it feels
smooth and as yet I do not understand what affects this but it seems
to get better with use. When it is smooth the simulated spring force
is OK but at other times it is ***and very hard to drive. Overall
very disappointing, perhaps it is a driver problem or some kind of
initialisation issue but it needs looking at.
5. Controls
The wheel is fine as are the paddles and there are four buttons on the
wheel but they are not programmable which could be a nuisance and
seems like an oversight to me.
5. Drivers.
The TM supplied drivers are very basic giving only a single slider
control for FF strength and a check box for separate axis pedals
(hooray!). You can test 3 types of force but only the bumpy road seems
anything like convincing, the icy road and banked track are very
unimpressive. Much better are the Immersion Reference drivers which
give a lot more options for setting the FF characteristics and testing
forces.
6. Manual
Very poor giving no information on what serial port settings to use
and no guidance on how to calibrate the wheel (you don't have
to!!).More time is spent telling you how to enable FF in certain games
which I would have thought is obvious.
So what to make of it all ? TM have their core business in this area
and coming late to the market you would expect them to have got it
right but I am sad to say that they have not. Their design is a
rehashed Nascar Pro with a reference Immersion design bolted on and it
shows. I think the cable entry and retention mentioned above is the
worst piece of design I've seen in a long time. In fact I am quite a
TM fan I had a T2 for nearly 2 years and despite the usual spring
breaking problems it was a good wheel.
Oh by the way, I started with the serial port connection as it is the
most straightforward and indeed it seems to work without any problem.
Yesterday I tried the USB to see if it was any better but I cannot get
it to work despite the fact that my USB Root Hub shows 2 ports one of
which has a device connected and the device ID is Thrustmaster Force
GT so I have to assume that there is actually communication to the
wheel. Both the TM and Reference drivers simply do not see a
connection.
One last point, my wheel works fine (in the context of the comments
above) in GPL it does not crash the game if you use the directinput
setting.
My advice is try before you buy, maybe mine is a bad one but compared
to, I hate to say it, the MS or Saitek wheels the TM looks a bit sick.
Cheers and Happy New Year
>My advice is try before you buy, maybe mine is a bad one but compared
>to, I hate to say it, the MS or Saitek wheels the TM looks a bit sick.
Sorry to read this, but thanks for the info.
I had been keeping my eye on the Logitech and the TM wheels.
I like the look and feel of the Momo styled wheels they use.
I haven't used the Logitech powered up, but the powered down feel
wasn't so great. Hopefully that rough "cable sliding around" feel goes
away with the unit powered up.
Seems like the ACT really is the way to go. Hopefully they ditch that
wheel style soon. Looks like they took it out of a Barbie/Power Wheels
Prowler.
--
http://www.users.fast.net/~fusion1
(dirt bikes, rat bikes, rental car abuse...)
I originally bought a thrustmaster wheel simply because their products
have always been good and it was 30 cheaper than the Logitech.
I was very dissapointed with it. The force feedback mechanism had so
much stiction that I found it hard to turn the wheel quickly enough to
play any driving game. Also it was extremely noisy - and sounded like
the belt inside was jumping.
I took it back and swapped it for the Logitech Formula Force.
The difference between the two wheels is like night and day!
My Logitech wheel is as smooth as silk powered down and has great feel
powered up - certainly more able to convey ffb signals than the TM
