T500rs. What can I say but wow!

[Andy_J]

Managed to grab a bit of spare time this afternoon and unpack my new T500RS. I am moving up from a Logitech Momo, then a DFGT and then for a short while, the G27. Out of those I really liked the FFB on the DFGT the most, but I liked the pedals of the G27 too.

So last week I sold my G27 ( on the bay for more than I paid for it new just before xmas)

Then after doing loads of reading and research both here and many other race sim forums, I decided on a new wheel. My shortlist consisted of the TX, the T300 GTE or the T500RS. After weighing up many things, cost, value, performance and quality, I finally went for a new T500RS. It turned up the other day but I have only just found the time to play. (family had to come first)

I un-installed all my previous Logitech software and installed the latest Thrustmaster software before I unpacked the new wheel.

Now the box, it's quite heavy. Heavier than I expected. I love the size of the wheel with it being closer to normal full size and it does feel quality and reasonable heavy too.

But by far the best part of the package for me are the pedals. Boy are they heavy. Solid and very well made. All metal too. I have the latest revision pedals and wheel and the springs feel great as standard. I fitted the included stiff brake mod and that transformed the feel so much again.

I decided to change the F1 setup to my preferred GT style. It tool me about 20 minutes to swap around and adjust the pedal angles and positions to my liking. I love it that they are so adjustable. The brake, as standard with the stiff brake mod is quite stiff and felt very good. But next I fitted the Basher mod that I had previously ordered and what can I say. WOW! On first test the braking is transformed. It feels so real now and very progressive.
Not had much time to test yet except for some aggressive laps around the Top Gear track in the Porsche EGT version in Assetto Corsa. Jeez, this FFB is strong now and I have it at 60%.

It feels so smooth and strong and quick reacting. I am gobsmacked in the difference between this wheel and pedals set compared to my G27 and DFGT. It really is night and day difference for the better.
I'm just gobsmacked at the pedals though. They are superb and better than I expected with the basher brake mod.
I am so glad I payed about £25 more for this than the GTE I was going to get.

Tomorrow hopefully some more time to play.

Edit: take no notice of the dates on the pics, my camera's date is wrong.

 

[Skazz]

hmm going by that should run about 60 % on the TX also for more linear ffb. I can try it with the TX can add to the chart perhaps if you have a link to the software

It's from iRacing, but if you don't have an account with iRacing it's also available on this Assetto Corsa thread: http://www.assettocorsa.net/forum/i...ack-wheel-using-wheelcheck-and-ffbclip.14319/

The curves can be used to tune your wheel for the most linear response, which is good in some games. iRacing works great when you add minimum force and pick the wheel gain for linearity. Other games vary depending on how the FFB implementation works, especially how well games use the full range of available forces and whether or not they offer minimum force to remove the deadzone at low force% levels.

As Blkout says, a TX/T300 can be tweaked to feel slightly lighter or slightly heavier by using 75-85% gain in drivers - it doesn't noticeably change the dynamic range of the wheel but it does mean that forces in the middle of the range feel a bit lighter or heavier relatively, which changes how you experience the wheel. Think of it like hifi speakers which are often tweaked to be slightly "warmer" sounding rather than purely 100% linear since that is what user's ears often prefer to hear.


Here is my full T300 force chart taken a while ago: I might redo it with firmware 24 soon. As you can see 50% appears more linear than anything else, but it has a relatively big force deadzone so would feel crap in games where you can't alter the deadzone using minimum force commands. In the end a higher gain (e.g. 75-85%) is just easier to tune different games with, at least to me.

 

[Skazz]

Back on topic (T500)...

Here's my very strange (but reproducible) T500 test results. You can see that the T500 doesn't curve as much as the T300/TX, instead it is fairly linear until a spin speed limiter basically cuts it off. Which means you can pick any gain value and get effectively identical results: 50% gain in drivers and 80% gain in game will behave identically to 100% gain in drivers and 40% gain in game, clearly.

The interesting thing is that my wheel (December 2013, latest variant) appears to have a partially broken limiter (seen with firmwares 41 and 43, identical behaviour). Makes me think what the T500 would be like if they removed the limiter and gave us linear behaviour with spin speeds of ~360 degrees in 0.3 seconds instead of the ~240-250 degrees in 0.3 seconds which you see when the wheel behaves "normally". Probably much hotter motor and shorter lifespan, but hey

 

[Blkout]

Good stuff Skazz, thanks for taking the time to run those and post them.

 

[Pär Öqvist]

I understand linear is what you should and wheel design should strive for but if it sacrifices FFB strength to the point that you lose detail due to weak forces, is it really worth it? I find that the TX/T300 feels best for me at 80-85% overall FFB strength, regardless of what any linearity graph shows. To each their own. I like tests and data but they don't always tell the tale about how a wheel feels.

No but they don´t lie and give better information then a human being subjectivelly trying to describe what he is feeling a lot of times. Comparative reviews are great just like comparing benchmarks is great. Need some references or you have no idea how the reviewer describe the product and what his preferences are.

Thanks Skazz will look it up. I will start a new thread about which firmware for the TX as to not get more off topic but I am happy to see the charts

 

[Blkout]

No but they don´t lie and give better information then a human being subjectivelly trying to describe what he is feeling a lot of times. Comparative reviews are great just like comparing benchmarks is great. Need some references or you have no idea how the reviewer describe the product and what his preferences are.

Thanks Skazz will look it up. I will start a new thread about which firmware for the TX as to not get more off topic but I am happy to see the charts

Oh boy, here we go. I agree with you that data doesn't lie or can be influenced as long as the testing procedure is repeatable, accurate and true to the source. I'm not implying that Skazz did anything wrong, just establishing a point. That being said, I completely disagree with your point about comparing a wheel based on subjective feel. I'll try to explain this the best way I can, I'm an audiophile and a headphone fanatic. There are thousands of headphones from $20 - $20,000. While some of the best headphones in the world measure wonderfully on test equipment, many people simply don't like to listen to them. Why is that? I'll tell you why, music and sound is subjective because its how the brain interprets it from the ears. Ears are like our hands in this situation. The ear doesn't always prefer the most accurate headphone or the headphone that measures best on test equipment, sometimes the ear just like a certain sound that even a less accurate headphone provides. A wheel to me is no different, just because some wheels may test better at certain things doesn't necessarily mean it feels best to that user. Yes, a wheel is just as subjective as headphones, the difference here is that you fall into the category that believes data and tests trump any real world feel, and I don't. I like what I like based on feel regardless of measurements, same principle with my headphones. If wheel X simply feels better to me than wheel Y, that's my preference regardless of data or specs and lots of people are the same way, you just may not be. Applying the same principle also works to FFB settings, some people prefer more or less of this or that setting than others, is that wrong? Absolutely not, its subjective preference.

 

[Pär Öqvist]

No need to make that point. But you explain really well why I don´t rely entirely on subjective reviews because in the end they are just that subjective.

I am a bit of an audiophile. My simracing headphones is Audeze LCD-2 or Sony CD 3000 Both measure reasonable well though not the best I really do feel benchmarks helps out with audio gear also. There is a lot that can be measured accurately. and well audio is even more subjective then ffb I recon. Our sense of feel I would believe is more common then our hearing

If you want to discuss further we can take it to PM.

 

[JeffL]

New tx owner here and really enjoying the wheel, just night and day from my old dfgt. But as a life long professional audio engineer. I never had anybody put on a set of senny's with a good audio signal and say "I don't like them". They may not want to use them for reference, but not sound good? I don't know about that.

 

[Blkout]

New tx owner here and really enjoying the wheel, just night and day from my old dfgt. But as a life long professional audio engineer. I never had anybody put on a set of senny's with a good audio signal and say "I don't like them". They may not want to use them for reference, but not sound good? I don't know about that.

In fairness many people absolutely hate the Sennheiser HD 800's and HD 700's. I own a pair of 800's which I love, had a pair of 700's which I sold, and I also own a pair of 650's. All different sounds but I can understand why some people love or hate one or the other for different reasons.

 

[JeffL]

I hear ya, I try not to talk audio gear anymore, life time of arguing, worse than simracing. LOL. LOVE my TX DAMN

 

[JeffL]

I bought the TX as a non working, new in box for 60 bucks. I got in mail yesterday plugged and work fine. My lucky day. Knocked 2 seconds of my best time in gsc v8 today . Rock on.

 

[Blkout]

I bought the TX as a non working, new in box for 60 bucks. I got in mail yesterday plugged and work fine. My lucky day. Knocked 2 seconds of my best time in gsc v8 today . Rock on.

Oh wow, I remember reading that you took a chance on one from ebay. I'm surprised it worked without needing anything. What a fantastic find. I'm convinced that a lot of the failures of these wheels are people that simply don't know how to connect them properly to the Xbox One, or don't load the drivers properly on the PC.

 

[Pär Öqvist]

I hear ya, I try not to talk audio gear anymore, life time of arguing, worse than simracing. LOL. LOVE my TX DAMN

lol yeah. Nobody never hated my HD 800 though when I had it.

Crazy deal on that TX make you wonder if it was stolen. Did you get the receipt for it? Has the TX even been out long enough to have no manufacturer warranty? I know it´s just 6 months in some countries but Thrustmaster offers more then that I believe.

 

[JeffL]

No, it's one of the older versions, and it looked new but it was used. Probably store demo

 

[Andy_J]

I bought the TX as a non working, new in box for 60 bucks. I got in mail yesterday plugged and work fine. My lucky day. Knocked 2 seconds of my best time in gsc v8 today . Rock on.

That's great news Jeff. Nice one. Still beat ya in that second race last night though .................... Great fun.