Discussion | Direct Drive Wheels: The Good, Bad And The Ugly

[Paul Jeffrey]

Discussion time! Direct Drive wheels are becoming increasingly common in sim racing, but which one should you get?

Long gone are the days of just one or two niche manufacturers developing DD wheel solutions for a hardcore few. In 2020, the discerning sim racer has a wealth of choice when looking to make the switch to Direct Drive... but with so many options, and such a high price point, what constitutes a good purchase?

I am not going to even try and pretend I am an expert on all the different DD bases available today, far from it in fact, so I thought it worth throwing up this thread for our community to discuss their own experiences, and offer up advice to those still thinking over their next steps.

For the record, I run the Bodnar SimSteering V2 and absolutely love it; however at the price point they are asking, you will probably want to follow the route I took and purchase it second hand!

 

[RasmusP]

I just got this DD2 well waiting for it to come,
its not for the force of the thing what interests me its the "responsiveness" what the DD offers + the extra detail,
you cant compare Belt Drive to Direct Drive there is nothing to compare.

Not sure which details you're talking about when I'm already taming down my csw..
As I said if someone wants more, get more! I'm not saying that it's not justified to get a dd wheel.
But it's a bit like saying there's nothing to compare extra soft slick tyres on a race car to, if someone is already sick and puking after half a lap in a stock Porsche gt3
Or if someone becomes very afraid at 250 kp/h and you tell him there's nothing better than going 350+ kp/h in a better car.

I get where you're coming from but if I put my csw to full details, it feels like sand paper in a gearbox in some situations. These belts are super tight and rigid. It's not a sluggish wobbling piece of jelly-belt there.

Anyway if I'd have a proper rig at home I would buy a dd wheel just because I find them sexy as f*ck

 

[motoliser]

I own a DD wheel SimuCube with high resolution Sincos encoder on a Simlab Pro rig for over 2 years now. Spent nearly 8.000€ on my current setup. Is it worth it?? No way!! I would rather have a G27 and an RichardBurnsRally with 2020 graphics or F1 official game with Iracing physics if you guys know what I mean. The games are 95% responsible for what you get from any wheel above g27 range. My hopes of not selling my rig are currently on titles like KartKraft. Those guys seem to be nailing the physics. Kills me when I see guys with setups much more expensive than mine playing Pcars or Dirt rally.. etc. Make no mistake so far most of racing games don't justify any DD wheel investment.

 

[RasmusP]

I own a DD wheel SimuCube with high resolution Sincos decoder on a Simlab Pro rig for over 2 years now. Spent nearly 8.000€ on my current setup. Is it worth it?? No way!! I would rather have a G27 and an RichardBurnsRally with 2020 graphics or F1 official game with Iracing physics if you guys know what I mean.

You know we could do crowd funding for something that would make this possible! Like... Project cars promised to do and we all know that it worked perfectly!

 

[CC]

Not sure which details you're talking about when I'm already taming down my csw..
As I said if someone wants more, get more! I'm not saying that it's not justified to get a dd wheel.
But it's a bit like saying there's nothing to compare extra soft slick tyres on a race car to, if someone is already sick and puking after half a lap in a stock Porsche gt3
Or if someone becomes very afraid at 250 kp/h and you tell him there's nothing better than going 350+ kp/h in a better car.

I get where you're coming from but if I put my csw to full details, it feels like sand paper in a gearbox in some situations. These belts are super tight and rigid. It's not a sluggish wobbling piece of jelly-belt there.

Anyway if I'd have a proper rig at home I would buy a dd wheel just because I find them sexy as f*ck

Yeah they look really nice great stuff,
I remember when I had belt driven turntables then got direct drive there was nothing to compare the difference was like night and day,
Like comparing a paper aeroplane to a jet,
They look nice and read nice but like I say can’t really comment anyways don’t have one, bean a long time dream though.

 

[Cote Dazur]

I just got this DD2 well waiting for it to come,
its not for the force of the thing what interests me its the "responsiveness" what the DD offers + the extra detail,
you cant compare Belt Drive to Direct Drive there is nothing to compare.

so, you are waiting for your DD2, but you already know it does not compare, we can only imagine how your full review once you actually have one will be. Let me guess something like: it is even better than I imagined as I was waiting for my wheel.

I remember when I had belt driven turntables then got direct drive there was nothing to compare the difference was like night and day,

Most high end turntable, costing many times the cost of a DD wheel base, are belt driven, it seems you missed an other opportunity to not comment on a subject you know little about.

 

[Case_]

I only really see two kinds of comments from DD wheel owners - around 5% of them is "it's so amazing, it transformed my simracing!", with the remaining overwhelming majority being "I can't get my super special custom 50 Nm wheel working with this game!" (or "I can't find any reliable settings that would give me the feel I like, and I've already went through all 75 independent tweaking options in my custom software and sacrificed a goat!").

Given that I'm slow anyway and no gear will change that, and my T300 literally does everything I could ever ask for or need from a simracing wheel anyway, I'm pretty OK with the fact that I am the "sour grape" who can't afford a DD wheel

 

[RasmusP]

Yeah they look really nice great stuff,
I remember when I had belt driven turntables then got direct drive there was nothing to compare the difference was like night and day,
Like comparing a paper aeroplane to a jet,
They look nice and read nice but like I say can’t really comment anyways don’t have one, bean a long time dream though.

Hehe I guess it's a bit like flac vs a high quality 320kbit mp3.
There's for sure a difference on high output levels and crystal clear headphones 600€+ or a high quality pair of stereo speakers for 1.5k€+.
But I love this story:
I took a bunch of friends that always told me I should only listen to flac to a local studio (I'm a hobby audio engineer) with extremely good monitoring speakers and did a blind test with them.
Fun fact: I bought a new pair of stereos a few weeks earlier and started to get into this flac-hype too!
Truth is: we didn't have any fecking clue what was what.

 

[JoeAMGC63]

I have the Fanatec CSW2.5 and would like to switch to the podium because I have a lot of Fanatec steering wheels. Unfortunately, the customer service and quality of Fanatec is very poor, I have had bad experiences. That's why I doubt whether I should buy a podium or switch completely to another brand. Maybe this survey will help me here.

I own a DD1 and have owned it since day 1. No issues at all. I've also owned 3 other Fanatec wheels and many accessories. I've never had any issues. Their customer service is a bit rough, but thankfully I've only had to contact them for minor issues.

 

[CC]

I own a DD1 and have owned it since day 1. No issues at all. I've also owned 3 other Fanatec wheels and many accessories. I've never had any issues. Their customer service is a bit rough, but thankfully I've only had to contact them for minor issues.

Almost ten years here with Fanatec wheels, never had 1 single fault at all and must have driven around the world ten time’s over,
The best customer service for me is the one you never need.

 

[General_Failure]

Anyone who drove a race car (even a standard car at high speed) knows that you feel the car with the g-forces acting on your body, not with your "hands". FFB in games (all) is totally overrated, and in some cases it becomes ridiculous. I mean, it's ok, despite being a toy it's the only physical connection that we have, but the features of a basic wheel are good enough (if the sim is well coded), the rest is just luxury.

 

[Sigmar Bomar]

The best customer service for me is the one you never need.

Exactly, that's why I don't want any Fanatec products anymore. Let's see why - how about 4 out of 5 had to be sent for RMA?
Pedals, shifter, both my rims (F1 and Porsche rim) - you think this is normal? Luckily I did not have to send CSW back. And I'm not the only one having problems. I switched to Simucube DD and HE pedals. Zero issues since then.

 

[DJinferno_12]

I use a TS-PC and love it, I plan to move to a DD only because I know so much, but only if my present one breaks, if it ever does...

Keep in mind that I only road race, I don't drift my belt driven base as it just doesn't feel like it's made for it, I mean I've seen it done and I'm sure some will say it's OK but to me you're just asking for trouble...

Now being that I see this a hobby and i'm a parent, theres so much i'm willing to spend, also if you're gonna push a DD, you have to get equal level pedals...

So for me, the only option would be AccuForce as I feel that they have the most bang for buck as a complete package with software to control transducers, match that to some Heusinkveld Sprints and thats pretty much how id go...

 

[metalnwood]

I will jump in as one of the minority here, someone that owns a DD wheel and might say something positive about them.

Built one in 2014 and it was a massive upgrade to anything around in that time. It still would be to anything non DD today.

I have read a few 'truths' in the thread but most truths are pretty subjective as are mine. I come from the perspective of a road racer running mostly open wheelers and GT3's. From what I read ovals are different and the perceived benefits are less.

I don't believe that you can put a figure on how much faster it will make you. I think it will make you more consistent at a minimum and it may not make Joe any faster but it could make Fred a while lot faster than he was. It all depends how you drive the car and what inputs you get your information from.

I never bought anything to make me faster, I bought my gear to make it more fun and I can tell you the the fun factor went up by more than 5%. I see lots of talk about how much faster will it make you. 95% of us dont win races. Most of us watch the fast guys take off in to the distance but we sure as heck play these sims for fun and in my book more immersion is more fun and if at the end I could only say it made me a couple percent faster I wouldn't care, thats not why I use one.

I am not sure that I see any cons to a DD other than the price. Too much detail to confuse you? What? Too much force to hurt you? What? These wheels have all the options and more that the others do. Set the power to what you want, thats probably not 100% , closer to 30-40%. You dont have to hurt yourself and on that note, its not a great idea to get a friend in to your rig with the hope you show him how powerful it is. No matter how much of a brother in law he might be..

Too much detail? If you dont like it turn it down. Being able to have it and remove it if you want is better than the option to not have it.

If it's in your price range and sims are your hobby that you are OK investing the asking price I don't see any down sides. That pretty much goes for any hobby.

 

[michelforest]

I don't have a DD wheel for many reasons: 1) The model I fancy is almost as expensive as a two-week trip to Paris and given the choice, I'll always take Paris. 2) I am not a very good sim racer (in fact, I'm probably below average) and I do it for my own personal enjoyment, so spending 2K$ on a wheel would be foolish. The only reason I'd buy one would be to have a F1-like steering wheel in my hands instead of the round steering wheel of my G29. It would look really cool!

 

[Miguel Batista]

To be honest, I think about it sometimes but I am so happy with my CSW... it is hard to justify spending the extra. Especially with software like fanalabs being developed (the next sim racing differentiator imho).

I am more interested in setting up my wheel as best as possible for the titles I play and what I get from it is plenty for me. I need a proper mounting solution for it first before thinking about an upgrade (lack of cockpit is a wife issue more than anything).

To be honest, I will probably get a DD wheel sometime in the next 5 years or so because I want to see for myself what the fuss is all about.

I am also starting my first custom rim to be mounted on my fanatec and in a DD wheel, I wouldn't need to fuss so much about the weight of the rim I suppose. Having 8Nm of torque or 20Nm makes all the difference there. Also, I want to try and feel what a group C driver felt while driving those monsters in anger. I guess you do need a DD wheel for that.

 

[Copef1]

I've been sim racing since the late 90's. I have had 7 different wheels in that time. Last May I upgraded from a Fanatec CSW V2 to a Fanatec DD1. I don't think it made me any faster, but it sure is a lot of fun. If you love sim racing, have the means, and love new tech things, then I can't think of one good reason not to get a DD wheel.

 

[BazzaLB]

I totally agree they are expensive, but some of the stuff you've said in the second paragraph was just nonsense lol

All I have is a lowly Fanatec CSWv1 and accompanying Fanatec pedals... Yet, I fired up AMS2, tuned the general FFB settings via the UI (admittedly, the default were too floaty for some cars) and am enjoying it immensely as it feels great to me from a FFB perspective. How about you?

I only really see two kinds of comments from DD wheel owners - around 5% of them is "it's so amazing, it transformed my simracing!", with the remaining overwhelming majority being "I can't get my super special custom 50 Nm wheel working with this game!" (or "I can't find any reliable settings that would give me the feel I like, and I've already went through all 75 independent tweaking options in my custom software and sacrificed a goat!").

Given that I'm slow anyway and no gear will change that, and my T300 literally does everything I could ever ask for or need from a simracing wheel anyway, I'm pretty OK with the fact that I am the "sour grape" who can't afford a DD wheel

You nail it pretty much every single time! I'm not even sure what more "accurate" FFB even means. One persons great FFB effects seem to be anothers complete pile of stinking poo.

I am however in favour of having new Toys for the sheer sake of having new toys. But that's a different argument

 

[Pretext]

I recently made the jump from a TSPC belt-drive to a Simucube 2 DD wheel. Huge difference. I've recently improved my lap times at Spa by about 2-3 seconds a lap after hitting a plateau before the DD wheel, because the quality of the feedback helped me learn more about what techniques were working for me and what weren't. I could probably go back to a belt-drive wheel now without losing that much time.

Also, I'd say that how much a DD wheel could help partly depends on how much downforce your car has. IMHO, DD wheels benefit F1 cars the least and vintage cars the most, with everything else on a spectrum somewhere in between.

 

[Spinelli]

DD owner for 3 or 4 years now of the following in order:
- OpenSimWheel 5000 PPR encoder
- OpenSimWheel 10,000 PPR encoder + Simucube software mode
- Simucube 1
- Simucube 2 Pro

I would never go back to a non-DD wheel but, at the same time, DD wheels are overrated (but still awesome).

Raising the power also means increasing a lot of FFB unrealism that isn't noticed in non-DD wheels.

The problem is the power/force, acceleration, and top-speed (especially power & acceleration) of DD wheels are too much compared to the "prehistoric" FFB all games run on. Fundamental FFB technology is still based on the 1990s and has barely, if at all, improved since then. The capabilities of DD wheels are too much relative to the FFB technology games/software/windows uses.

What we need is an update or re-write of the actual FFB itself. We can't just keep adding stickier tyres and bigger engines to a 1980s Honda Civic. You get to a point where the extra horsepower and grip is so out of proportion with the fundamental design of the car that all that extra power and grip expose so many shortcomings and flaws of the car. You can try and hide the problem with "band-aids" (equivalent to FFB filter settings) but that really doesn't do much, what really needs to be done is update the vehicle from a fundamental structural and chassis point of view or just come up with a redesign of the vehicle from the ground-up.

That's the state of DD wheels in today's world of simracing - using way over-capable wheels in an environment not designed for such extreme capabilities.

- Getting rid of Microsoft Direct Input would be a good first step (this is being looked into by some)

- Using a torque-based DD system instead of position and/or velocity based would be another great step (or a combination which at-least involves torque-based control)

- The final step which is potentially the most important but also the most difficult - maybe impossible - is to use a passive/reactive system which is how real-life "FFB" works rather than an active system. This may be impossible but I read a report of a university engineering team experimenting with what they called a semi-passive system which could at-least be better than the active system we currently use.

 

[metalnwood]

Spinelli, I watched most of the video but I can't say that I have felt what you are describing. Also went form Argon OSW 2500, the 5000 20Nm mige encoder to sc1 with 30Nm Mige and Biss C to the SC2 pro. I believe that they are torque driven as it is, the position is only used for feedback to the game to get steering angle. Position is also internally used inside the controller as far as I know but to calculate effects, not to try and move the wheel to a position.

You also describe how it is unrealistic how the wheel behaves and then show footage from a formula car. I can't say that what I am seeing looks completely unrealistic. You put some lock on a wheel and let it go on an openwheeler like that and it's going to bounce back at you, driven by the speed of the front tires centering. It seems to be trying to demonstrate something as unrealistic by driving in a way that wouldn't be done. To me, from accidents I have seen footage from, a wheel snapping like that on that kind of vehicle is not uncommon. If it is unrealistic, who drives like that to care? Perhaps the sims are not modelling resistence in the steering rack then yes, perhaps it goes faster than it would but it's still a use case that shouldnt worry the majority of us.