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Review: The Fanatec Porsche 911 Turbo S Wheel and Clubsport Pedals

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Driver Impressions

Introduction The Wheel Clubsport Pedals Driving Impressions, Conclusion Shifters, Rennsport Wheel Stand It suddenly becomes hard to describe the performance of the PWTS / CSP combo. Somehow mere words aren’t up to the task of describing the feel, feedback, responsiveness and accuracy of this product. Quite simply, the wheel feels wonderful. The way a game’s physics output is translated through the force feedback/vibration system and into your hands is sublime [turns out that AutoSimSport used the exact same word to describe the PWTS in their review - Ed]. Wheel rotation is butter-smooth, because the belt-driven system is quiet, firm and direct, with almost no perceptible slack.

Working around my preferred test track of Laguna Seca, I could feel the pavement imperfections and each bump in the corner kerbing, both in rFactor and FM3, as well as the grip level of the tires. That last part is particularly evident in Forza Motorsport 3, where the PWTS really give incredibly detailed feedback about what’s going on with the game’s detailed tire model. In Richard Burns Rally, the wheel’s detailed response to the virtual driving surface can be a bit overwhelming at first, with FFB response really moving the wheel a lot in your hands. The wheel also has very impressive and crisp response to inputs in this rally title, thereby demanding more precision from the driver. These factors made it hard, at first, to put in quick stage times with the PWTS. Often I found myself over-correcting for a sliding turn, the car suddenly pointing in the opposite direction. No doubt due to RBR’s age, using the drivers to set wheel maximum wheel rotation angle results in that selected angle being doubled in-game. I found it best to set 360 degrees on the in-wheel “Sen” settings, overriding the PC driver’s settings.

Overall the PWTS made RBR feel more "real" than any other wheel I’ve tried. It’s just an opinion, but the PWTS quite simply comes closer than any other sim racing controller to a feeling of true realism.

Sitting out of sight under a desk, pedals tend to be the unsung heroes of any racing controller, and often receive limited attention from design engineers.Yet pedal quality is often the deciding factor in a controller’s precision and a key to good lap times. The Clubsport Pedals are so good, so precise that it’s hard to compare them with other products. Chunx and the rigThey are clearly in a class of their own. To execute good braking, you have to adjust the force you apply to the brake pedal, just as in a real car. Mentally “recalibrating” your braking foot is needed, because the CSP also demands more precision from you to take full advantage of what it has to offer.

As SimHQ has opined many times before, the quality of the controller can make or break the immersion and realism of any sim. Just try driving rFactor or iRacing on a keyboard, or with a joystick. You’ll probably go faster and certainly feel more involved with a proper racing wheel and pedals. The Fanatec PWTS and CSP combo takes that ‘proper’ bit to a whole new level.

Nowhere is this fact more evident than when playing Forza Motorsport 3 on the Xbox 360, mostly because the Fanatec wheel’s only competition is the cheap and vague Microsoft Xbox 360 force feedback wheel. That’s somewhat like comparing a Ferrari F430 to a Yugo. But more to the point, the PWTS and CSP brings FM3 to a whole new level of entertainment, as it gives you full access to the depth and quality of FM3’s top-notch physics engine and tire modeling. A title with that much effort put into the physics and tires really demands a quality FFB wheel in order to feel all that’s offered by such powerful modeling.

It might seem like this review is a romantic ode to the PWTS and CSP, but not everything was stunning perfection in this FFB wheel combo. In rFactor (but not FM3), the paddle shifters have a tendency to double-shift every now and then. It takes quite awhile to adapt one’s foot to the load-sensing brake sensor, although once you do it’s pretty darn intuitive. On the Xbox 360, the wheel sometimes loses connection to the Xbox 360, requiring a power cycle. Ditto if you attach the Xbox 360 headset after the wheel’s already synched with the console, or else it won’t be recognized. And the buttons can be hard to get to while driving, especially the D-pad. And.... well, come to think of it, that’s about it, really. It’s a pretty short and inconsequential list of driver’s gripes, and the plusses of this controller vastly outweigh the minuses.

A surprising find in the Fanatec PWTS owner’s manual is a warning that says the wheel should not be operated for more than 1 hour without giving it a break, to prevent overheating damage to the internals. That’ll be problematic for endurance racers who run stints in excess of 60 minutes. Naturally I had to test that warning, and although Magnum and I participated in an online race session consisting of 10 short races over a 3 hour period, we had no problems with our wheels. A week later, I used my PWTS and CSP controller combo to drive my ILMS Corvette C6R to the GT1 class win in SimHQ’s Deuce2 2.4 hour online racing event. Hopefully those long gaming sessions are a good indicator of the PWTS’s durability.

My ILMS Corvette C6R in SimHQ’s "Deuce2" 2.4 hour online racing event

Conclusion

The Fanatec Porsche 911 Turbo S Wheel and Clubsport Pedals re-proves the theory that a quality controller truly makes a race sim come alive. In PC racing sims, the PWTS and CSP combo is a high-performance controller that delivers a great deal of immersion and improves the enjoyment of that hobby, standing a cut above the competition — a cut that hopefully justifies paying nearly double the price of its nearest competitor.

But for Xbox 360 race sims like Forza Motorsport 3 and RACE Pro, the PWTS and CSP is quite literally a monumental game-changer. With this controller, Forza Motorsport 3’s physics engine/tire model is transformed, shining in the fullness of its, well… fullness. Car placement in is laser-precise, something that simply wasn’t possible with the toy-like and sloppy Microsoft Xbox 360 FFB wheel. And for multi-platform gaming, it’s the only game in town.

Our only concerns are the vulnerability of the wiring, the warning about overheating during long racing sessions, and the robustness of customer support from Fanatec. If you have the money and the desire, the PWTS and CSP combo is indeed the supercar of racing controllers.

Reviewer's System Specs

  • Dell XPS M1710 gaming laptop.
  • Windows XP Media Center 2005, SP3
  • Monitor: Sony 40" HD

 


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