Right. I've had my G-Belt for nearly a couple of weeks now and while I haven't had a great deal of time to spend with it, I have enough to give some initial impressions on the unit and software. Bear with me.....
Firstly, I live in Australia. The worldwide pandemic continues to hinder all sorts of logistics. I ordered my G-Belt Monday night and paid 110 USD for shipping. It arrived Thursday afternoon, THE SAME WEEK. I'm not sure how much of this comes down to SimXperience, but they've clearly had it packed up and ready for FedEx to collect super early. Hats off to not only being amazingly fast in organising the order, but also for not using a shipping company that's completely useless.
Packaging was fine. It was super well packed, nothing was loose and everything arrived safe. The box is just a regular unbranded box, which I'm neither hyped nor disappointed about, obviously. It's a box. It got here super quick and in perfect condition. Can't ask for much more.
In the box? The unit (boy, is it HEAVY), power plug for US (I had a spare kettle plug so was able to just swap that in for Aussie power outlet), decent length USB A to B cable and the control box. The control box is nice and neat, has a power switch that you can turn on and off without having to turn the outlet switch off, which is nice considering the fan is not silent. It's not terrible, the NX1000D amp I have is an absolute disgrace where fan noise is concerned and it sits next to that. So as long as they're both on, it's basically inaudible. The plugs for the power and data cables from the unit are fairly well fitted, however they do pull out if your messing around with cable management like I was. So leave some slack on them and make sure not to pull on the box if/when you're moving things around. Under normal usage, this is a non issue.
The unit itself. It's built like a brick sh*thouse, as we say here. Absolutely bulletproof, at least from a physical perspective. It's
just able to be mounted by a single person, I was able to do it myself but I nearly dropped it once or twice trying to locate the thread onto the screw. I've got mine mounted on the back of the headrest directly on my Sparco Rev bucket seat and it feels like it works really well there. I was worried the unit might be too heavy for the fiberglass shell of the seat to hold, but it's been there for a while now and nothing feels weak. Nothing really moves and I do not run motion anymore so there's no concern of twisting or torque being applied to the fixing point. Some people have built towers so that the unit is off the seat and further back but where mine is seems perfect. Minimal fuss, two 6mm holes drilled into the seat and we're done. Cables are wrapped in black mesh and are nicely concealed up against my black seat. Very neat. Length is pretty good and I've got the control box under my pedal deck with my amps all placed nicely together. I've run a 3M extension from the unit to the PC and until now, no drop outs that I know of to be USB related. Main unit looks great, it has a great black finish to it, feels fantastic and is less of an eyesore than I anticipated. It's there, you notice it, but it's not getting in the way, it doesn't look terrible at all and most importantly, doesn't add to the footprint of the chassis if you're using my mounting method. Operation is not silent by any means, and the motors have a little squeaky tone to them when in use, but I wear earbuds and never hear this. It's going to differ person to person how they are affected by the noise, but anyone using anything decent for sound, be it speakers or headphones will likely not notice anything while using it. I take it that the sound is just how the certain motors used sound, as seen with some motion platforms. I did have an SFX based actuator system and the motors that recommends to use do not sound like these, which is why I'm pointing it out. Not bad, but not amazing either.
The software. Some love it, some hate it. SimCommander is a mixed bag for me. At the end of the day, it gets the job done for me just using it for the G-Belt and I'm trying to find ways to make it as simple to use within my ecosystem. I'm playing with the idea of having a single profile for ALL games and just changing the game selected in the drop down box in the profile settings. Seems to work for the titles I've used so far, but may run into issues if you're adjusting effects to suit rally and other disciplines. I like the Simhub approach of the game being auto detected as running and once my profiles are set, all I need to do is launch the program and I never think about it. SimCommander seems to not support this (yet, I have no idea) but having one profile will definitely simplify it for me. The cloud sync feature is pretty cool. As mentioned in the thread already, you are recommended to start with these and go from there in tuning your profiles.
So, the part everyone wants to know then. How does it feel? I have some shoulder pads added to my 3" harness, which is a 4 point system at this stage. My cam lock does have a 5th point but I cannot find the 5th belt to attach it. It very well may not have come with one when I bought it, I cannot remember. Either way, I don't need it. If you tighten your lap belts properly, there is no way that the shoulder harness pulls up enough to move them. Strap yourself in firmly, you'll feel a lot more connected to the car. Comfort wise, it's just like using a 'passive' (read, regular) harness but I can only imagine it might get a bit uncomfortable without the padding. The elements the G-Belt adds to your driving experience are excellent. You'd think that the braking effect is the more sought after feeling and one that the system would excel at the most. While this is true for the most part, the other effects are equally worth having. Namely, cornering effect, gear shifts, bumps and to a lesser extent, acceleration. I also use Pitch effects to gain a sense of how the car is pointing on the track but I use these to a lesser extent as you really shouldn't feel the weight of pointing slightly downhill too much in the belts. But some sense of elevation change is pretty good. Here is my current work in progress profile for anyone interested.
View attachment 477160
I am on the Extreme setting seen in the Device Settings tab (not shown in pic) and have no slider above 100% at this stage. For me, I prefer pretty much all the effects that the G-Belt gives me over my 3DOF 4 actuator motion platform. It's that good. Only thing I miss at times is the sprung effect of the heave capabilites of the actuators. Since the G-Belt gives such a good feeling of all the other effects, it actually highlights what's missing when you see the car bouncing and feel the bumps in the belts. It takes a minute but you adjust to it not being there and, here's the kicker, you'll never know what you're missing if you've never tried an actuator based motion system, which I dare say is most people reading.
Brake feel is amazing. You gain a lot of feedback to what the pedal is doing when you press it with the tactile feeling of the belts as opposed to just watching the screen and hoping you don't run over your apex. Cornering is awesome as well due to the dual motors giving you left and right positional feedback. I like this feature a lot. The car feels very active when you enable the effects that I have and as long as you balance the strength of the effects, it is pretty convincing. It only gets better in VR since you're completely immersed in the cockpit of the car as it is. Gear shifting completely destroys anything you can tune from a tactile bass shaker / transducer perspective. There's nothing that compares to getting a tug on the shoulders as you shift through the gears. A point of note is even if you enable that effect, you need to manually assign the strength of each gear change. For me I got nothing until I did that.
Overall, the experience I've had with the G-Belt is outstanding. Delivery was amazing. Installation was simple. The unit looks great. It offers enough flexibility to fit within my current ecosystem re placement. The software offers a good selection of effects and tuning. A bonus is if you already run other SimXperience products, you won't need another app running. Most importantly, the increase in enjoyment while driving is excellent. I'm not done tuning yet and I'm still getting used to having the harness back on the seat after removing it for a while when motion was taken off the chassis, but I actually enjoy being strapped down into the seat. It makes you feel really connected to the car. Just make sure once you're in, anything you need such as mouse or VR controllers are within reach!
For the price, this is a clean, cost effective way to add another layer of immersion to your sim racing and you can achieve some excellent results with it as long as you set it up optimally. For me, this and tactile are the perfect way to 'fill in the blanks' when we're comparing a static sim rig to anything you would feel in the real world. Certainly doesn't replace it, but it's not what it's designed to do.
I've not made a considerable upgrade to the rig since adding motion back in the new year of 2019. I am in no way disappointed with or regret my decision to try one of these. It's true that you can make your own DIY belt tensioner and I thought about it for a while before abandoning the thought of adding yet another active electronic device to my already troublesome rig. I'm glad I went this route. With a GS-5 being completely out of reasonable reach for me here in Australia, this is a fantastic alternative.
