Personal views here, it may not be what everyone seeks or agrees with but its my own opinons on why I would wait to learn more or discover how good the Fanatec Podium series is before dropping £1000+ on an already available alternative. Err this is what the thread is about yes/no?
Id prefer to have cordless, regardless I see it as a benefit and convenience.
Also expect Fanatec to bring some rather tasty rims.
If tuning can be done on the wheel you don't need to bring up other software, again convenience. This wheel is to offer a new display and possible options to previous Fanatec wheels.
We don't need to go to consoles, have Kunos and others not already stated they would support the new wheel and help the development of it in their titles? Fanatec work with software/developers partners, pure and simple. The point is a user may not need to go into a pile of manual tuning for such sims. So, to some this can be deemed as extra convenience or benefit. How many titles support a Mige wheel or other, direct from the software by its own developers, I ask as I dont know?
Let me ask you, how many people here are seeking to buy a Fanatec DD wheel for GT Sport?
Many people have had issues with Thrustmaster or Logitech as well. Quality control can be an issue. Time will tell but why would it be so hard for the Chinese to copy similar level of hardware that already is in many of the current DD wheels? We have to base each product on its own, pure and simple but as this is a premium level purchase, it uses more industrial level of components. Are some saying/believing that many companies can have items made in China that are rock solid and reliable but its impossible for Fanatec to do the same and come in at a competitive price?
I thought having a cord would be an issue for me too when I switched to an Accuforce but it’s really not and a lot of race cars have a cord anyway so in that sense it’s more realistic. The biggest issue in all the cordless varieties is reliability and if it was so easy and much better to do it then it would already have been implemented on high end hardware.
Fanatec haven’t done anything special but what they have done and should be commended for is bridging the gap between your low end logitech gear systems to the high end Bodnar system.
Their podium wheels will be nice but again nothing beyond what is already available, the simsteering ones are incredible as are other custom rims but they also cost as much as the cheaper OSW kits and more in some cases. The Porsche rim started at what €600(?) so dont expect to be getting a podium base and podium level wheel for anything close to £1000.
Tuning on the wheel is definitely useful for older games and console games which don’t properly support automatic DOR per car. That means Automobilsta, rFactor2 (Forza 7 if you want to include that) but all the rest don’t need any on the fly adjustments at all as all the other stuff should be set to 0 anyway and adjusted in-game; plus in VR (which IMO is the future for sim games) none of it is anymore useful.
Both Bodnar and SimXperience send their kit to devs to test with their games, if you read up on R3E you will see they did a lot of work on improving it recently. Bodnars are used in most professional sim rigs and tuned to be realistic, they need the least tuning to get feeling right and much as I like all the tuning options on the Accuforce, if it was just almost perfect out the box like the Bodnar I’d rather that.
The basic force feedback systems all sims are built on are not designed for DD wheels but to work on the lower end stuff (which won’t change anytime soon since DD at current prices will continue to be niche) and are using very primitive systems which is why you get stuff like oscillation issues. Niels (AMS dev) even though he uses a bodnar still sets up the default ini. with 20-30% clipping for low end wheels which completely screws it on DD wheels which necessitates adjusting every car individually to the correct value.
As to build quality it’s more about Fanatec having previous history of needless corner cutting which resulted in near enough all their wheels needing revisions to fix the original corner cutting. All the current DD wheels use motors designed to run 24/7 which Thomas says are overengineered. Sure they may well be but they are proven and don’t break unlike whatever custom motor they will be using not designed for such extreme conditions (though of course it could be fine but history tells us otherwise and where scepticism comes from). Consumer level gear just isn’t anywhere close to as durable as the industrial stuff in any product because it’s built with cost and profits in mind not to do it’s job as well as possible as long as possible.
Just compare enterprise hard drives or even professional monitors to the consumer variants, the kind of backlight bleed and inaccurate colours are simply not acceptable in those markets and that’s why consumer monitors top out around £1500 and professional ones go up to £30k.
Fanatec make great stuff but just be aware of the market difference, they are consumer, Bodnar is professional and OSW is industrial hardware but with community software and that’s where Fanatec and SimXperience will have one up over OSW.
Anyway long story short the more DD wheels out there pushing for better integration the better it is for everyone regardless of what DD wheel they use.
