A Simracing Wheel That Works In A GT3?

[Paul Jeffrey]

Recently German sim racing hardware giants Fanatec announced an interesting new collaboration with BMW to develop a replica sim racing wheel... that isn't a replica, but actually works in the real car!

Yes you heard that right, the newly announced BMW Fanatec wheel has been created to work in both the real and virtual world, meaning that for the very first time sim racers will have the opportunity to use hardware on their rigs at home that is identical to the wheel attached to the latest GT3 specification race cars from the Bavarian marque.

The announcement piece from Fanatec got me thinking, with the worlds of real and virtual racing seemingly converging ever closer in recent months, how big is this announcement for our sport? To see a brand as prestigious as BMW engaging with the powerhouse that is Fanatec to produce a crossover piece of hardware like this is something rather incredible, and can only mean exciting things for the future of hardware development at the very highest end of the market.

Think back 10 or even 20 years ago, playing with a plastic wheel on the old Xbox with it tightly pinned onto the sofa by your knees, and how far hardware has travelled in such a short space of time is almost crazy to comprehend.

This announcement, aside from being very, very cool in its own right, is potentially massive for our hobby. BMW themselves consider esport to be a key pillar in their motorsport adventures going forward, both in terms of competitions and hardware, and that extra influx of prestige and obviously exposure can only be a great thing for our community going forward.

Real cars using sim racing wheels, at the top level of international GT racing. Yup. We live in strange but absolutely wonderful times.

Fanatec BMW announcement | Read more HERE.

What do you make of the new announcement? Interested to see how the wheel performs in the real and virtual world? Do you think this is the start of potentially a golden age for sim racing hardware? Let us know in the comments section below!

 

[Kayumi]

mod-edit: removed

So you insult people who can afford this wheel, because you can't?

 

[Terry Rock]

Not sure why this is so amazing. It's just a wheel with some buttons. As long as the real car can read the button pressed it will work. It will undoubtedly be massively overpriced for sim use.

Just another gimmick to add more cost to the product.
Who in simracing gives a rat's *** as to whether their steering wheel works on a life-sized BMW?
It isn't like suddenly the BMW racing team will appear at your house and offer you the ability to use your wheel to drive their car.
They should be advertising it on the basis that it has all of the buttons and is a good and reliable wheel...which looks and feels like the real thing.
That's more important.
Why do seemingly intelligent people fall for this kind of stuff?

 

[RichardHessels]

There is ton's of people spending 5000 to 10.000 on a bicycle.
If it's you hobby, who cares.

It's nice wheel, by the looks of it.
Not as nice a my own made GTE M8 wheel.
But that was so much work, it would be to expensive for most of us.

 

[Oldzeb]

more expensive than a dlc at 15euro?

 

[Kayumi]

more expensive than a dlc at 15euro?

We can expect it to be abit more expensive than a DLC, but not by much

 

[Jens Roos]

We can expect it to be abit more expensive than a DLC, but not by much

Make it happen Studio 397, Kunos, Sector 3, Reiza and others

 

[CrimsonEminence]

Watch the sarcasm.

I usually have my problems with that, yes, but this one was actually a bit tricky to interpet.

 

[DomB_Fanatec]

My experience with Podium products hasn't been great.

Fanatec marketing is ambitious and the products look good on paper but the reality is quite different. For Example -They launched intelligent telemetry a year ago to utilise the Oled displays the podium bases and the endurance button module a year ago (last years halo product) and it still barely works to the extent that the official advice is not to use it - just stick to the Fanatec logo.

My DD2 hasn't worked properly for months - wheel constantly losing connection and freezing. I'm on my third RMA now in 18 months - this time the wheelbase itself has had to go back - sent it two weeks ago and still heard nothing - I have doubts whether it will be back this year. Dealing with support is painful - the reps are helpful but clearly rushed off their feet - takes ages for each ticket to be picked up then even longer to reach a solution - each email isn't replied to until one or two days later

Endless beta software releases that never fix long standing problems - for the last 12 months the only way to use some hardware was to use beta software - no official releases worked. The infamous FFB clunks still exist but according to forum reports they have temporarily stopped trying to fix them and have moved the flawed beta firmware to full release anyway.

I can't help thinking that introducing a new product into an ecosystem with longstanding software issues isn't going to help things - their software developers are already clearly stretched beyond their limits.

I admire Thomas' ambition but more investment is urgently needed in the support and software side of the business - releasing new products without solid and reliable software and support is not sustainable. I can't imagine that tis new wheel will not also have similar issues.

Hi @GagarynGaribaldi , your feedback is appreciated.

Firstly I'm sorry to hear about your base, and that it is taking a while to resolve. Turnaround times are affected during busy periods like this. I have previously been in contact with you on the Fanatec forum so I will also follow up on this case there. Of course it is not normal or acceptable for any of our products to lose connection/freeze, so please stay in communication with Technical Support until you are completely satisfied with the performance.

The jolt issue is resolved when using the Home screen on the display. We are still working on further improvements, but the driver was considered to be worthy of a full release, which is why it has been rolled out to all product pages on the site.

Regarding your concern about adding more products into the ecosystem potentially affecting software development: the team is keenly aware of this, and in fact the introduction of CAN bus support in this product required a complete redesign of our firmware architecture, which will have long-term benefits for the customer. The plan is to extend this new-generation, modular firmware architecture across the entire ecosystem. This will significantly improve the efficiency of software development in general, leading to greater stability and a better overall user experience.

 

[LMracer]

I don't like it, for a home enviroment:

-It is oversized. 310mm is too big and will make more difficult to correct mistakes
-Overbuilt. Nobody needs a steering wheel able to resist forces that not even the strongest direct drive servo can't output in a crash
-Overenginered. Who the heck needs CAN bus in a home simulator?, it won't reduce the lag at all, and nobody would notice any difference between a serial protocol and a CAN one, it is just marketing, and also windows, macos and linux are not RTOS (real time operative system). So who cares what hardware anybody have, the OS will introduce quite a lot more lag than any lag comming from any comunication protocol.

The carbon fiber construction is absurd, adds quite a lot in costs as it has to be manufactured in a highly manual and labour intensive process. As simracers at most we only would need an small substructure made in cast aluminium just to add stiffness feel to the steering wheel at a cheap price without increasing weight by a lot, and then the carcass of the steering wheel can be coated with hydro dipping carbon fiber vinyl as some people does to their aluminium rims, and it feel very realistic.

-Overpriced. The quality of the materials, the licensing, the real life structural strenght needed, the carbon fiber construction, the fact that it can't be manufactured in mass cheapening the costs, none of us need any of that, but it skyrockets the cost and sinks the availability of the product up to such a point that it keeps the never ending trend of making this hobby obscenely expensive.

Lack of controls. It is a real life steering wheel, but it lacks controls because those are in the cockpit of the real car, I hate button boxes, modern sim wheels should have almost F1 amounts of rotarys and buttons. This steering wheel has a right amount of buttons, but lacks rotarys. Nowadays we are living a never ending increase in buttons and rotarys in every simulator on the market.
3 rotarys does not cut it at all in 2020, just in ACC with GT3 cars You need 6 rotarys: 1 for ECU MAP, 1 for ABS, 1 for TC1, 1 for TC2, another for brake balance, and would be nice to have other 2 to control the car high and low beam in just 1 rotary and the wipers speeds (yes, ACC allows it).

-Also, and it is just only my personal taste, but I find that steering wheel ugly as a sin.

I would kill for a officialy licensed F1 steering wheel from any team competing in this season championship with a functional real size color display compatible with simhub, and all the buttons and rotarys functional (the micro displays tha fanatec incudes in their wheels are useless), all the buttons and paddles made in reasonable cheap materials but with the same springs/magnets/kind of sensors as the real steering wheel to have the same feeling when using the controls as in the real car, and home enviroment grade electronics. The carbon fiber construction, real life internal electronics and conectors, and the overprice that comes with all that it isn't needed at all, it just adds costs and doesn't add nothing to the user experience, except bragging rights.

So just on the first point here I disagree that 310mm is too big for a sim wheel.
It is dependant on what kind of base it's running on but as its likely aimed to those with DD bases I think that something similar in size to to the real car is perfectly fine.
So for a single seater it may well be too big. For a GT or touring car however it's likely a good size. I've regularly used wheels upto 320mm diameter and have had no problem correcting mistakes or controlling the car car because I use it with cars that it makes sense for, in this case 60's cars and 90s touring cars in AC

 

[Vilmos Vas]

I guess the real target audience are our wives. With this wheel in hand we can say even more confidently: "honey, it's not a game, it's a sim" so that they can fund our hobby from the bottom of their heart.

 

[Kurvz]

Using my Formula V2 rim on my DD is way too small when Im driving GT3 cars really need a larger wheel to wrestle with the force feedback, but for open wheel racing it's a great size at 27cm.

Im using the Porsche wheel but will do my best to swap it for one of these BMW wheels, I would like to think selling off my unneeded Fanatec gear will easily help me raise most or all of the cost.

Im hoping there will be "a this is a replica version", as I dont think I'll be buying a BMW racing car in the future.

We shall see meanwhile Im still waiting for my Ryzen CPU pre-order and still have not be able to get a GFX card lol

 

[Turk]

I like the direction Fanatec is taking. I had assumed they were just going to be reselling a wheel produced by a regular race wheel manufacturer because I thought making a race wheel was beyond them. Watching the reveal video it appears they are now making actual race wheels, and while actual race wheels may be priced out of most sim racers budgets I think the tech they develop doing that will filter down to their sim gear. I'd expect to see more budget friendly wheels being produced in the future that makes use of some of the tech and materials they develop making real wheels.

I'd only said recently somewhere else I'd like to see Fanatec doing more official wheels because I think a race car engineer knows better how to make a wheel than a game controller engineer.

 

[Muzzy]

It has been hinted by Fanatec that two additional new equipment are to be announced in December/Januar (one in the CSL family, one in the CSW(?) family)

I'd be surprised if none of them was a more affordable GT-style steering wheel...

 

[ohyeah2389]

Garish is what springs to mind when I look at that wheel.

It doesn't really look much different to the Porsche 911.2's wheel: https://d3lp4xedbqa8a5.cloudfront.n...072/2018-porsche-991-2-911-gt3-r-interior.jpg

 

[PegaMixel]

Thats because almost all of those new breed of wheels come straight from cosworth.

 

[lovemesomespeed]

I’m still blown away that people on this forum bash sim racers who spend “lots” of money on this hobby (however that particular person defines “lots”).

I remember the first $500 I spent on this hobby... I was slightly sick to my stomach thinking I just spent $500 to play Forza when my Xbox controller was doing just fine. Now here I am years later upgrading my rig with motion and a g-seat.

What constitutes “too much” is all dependent on the particular person, how much they love this hobby, how much disposable income they have, etc. As we’ve seen from the ”Who Uses a Dedicated Sim Rig” thread, some people here are using setups with a total cost of $500, some are using setups well over $10,000.

In a world where there is so much divisiveness, we’ve got our own little community here of fellow sim racers... we should spread love no matter what end of that $500 to $10,000 spectrum you fall on. I have no problem if you want to bash a product and say it’s too expensive and you’d never buy it, but bashing fellow sim racers for wanting to spend that kind of money - it’s just not necessary.

Much love -

 

[Fanatec_Thomas]

The original design was created by BMW for the BMW M8 GTE. This design is even protected by a design copyright. The Porsche wheels were a bit "inspired" I guess.

 

[Kyuubeey]

Well I guess it's kinda cool to know that you're driving the exact same wheel as a real life pro driver in a "higher class" racing series.
It's similar to people wanting laserscanned tracks for tracks they will never race in real life.
And I'm not talking about just "wrong" tracks that seem weird when watching real live videos.

I'm talking about well made non-ls tracks where the only difference is that you can tell yourself that the bumps in the road are exactly identical to the real thing.
Will you ever know the difference when the devs wouldn't tell you?

You'll also never race a real dtm car. But you'll have the same wheel as the real drivers.

Is a laserscanned track cool enough to pay... 10€ for it? I guess...
Is a real steering wheel worth 999€?

Mh.... For some people absolutely, for others definitely not.

I really like the idea of laserscanned tracks tbh. I also like the idea of having a "real" steering wheel.

Liking ideas won't give fanatec my 900+ euros though

The idea of laserscanning isn't really to get the bumps and cracks or whatever everyone claims, those are not even that accurate nor do any small cracks or crevices exist in the sim tracks. At least large bumps end up in the right spot, but I'm unsure if the magnitudes are correct at all, based on what I've heard.

The point however is to get the general elevations, camber, positioning of the road with only a meter or two of error in the end. As opposed to completely estimating it and being far off in the end. That's the big important part IMO.

 

[cangrejin]

nothing beats my keyboard, on a steering wheel there is not so much room for more function keys.

keyboard warriors are at another level of control.

 

[Deleted member 963434]

phew, i invented it first!