Well yesterday afternoon I found a source for the driving force GT wheel I was hunting and placed an order, almost as if it was sent immediately the box arrives on my doorstep at half 8 this morning (damned good for 500km away). I nip out to bunnings and pick up some timber to make myself a basic shelf unit to mount the wheel and set everything up to go.

I load up my PS3 and chuck in GT5 and by heck the game is radically different with a wheel! I've never had to fight a controller before, it changes the tension on the shaft depending on the driving conditions so you have to really put some movement into a good turn and it really feels like you're controlling something that has mass and physics. With a controller, a gentle turn is a matter of holding the left stick at a slight angle but with the wheel you're making dozens of tiny corrections as it adjusts for the angle and resistance of the road. When making a large right turn, you just hold the stick all the way to the right but with the wheel you have to decide if you want a relatively stable but slower turn or if you really want to wrench the wheel around and sacrifice a bit of stability for turning speed. Its a massive improvement the likes of which I never expected to get from just changing controller. If you're a fan of GT (and presumably other reasonably realistic driving games), I can't recommend it enough.

My next project (after actually finishing the cabinet) is hooking it up to my media PC, loading up CCS64 and trying to use the wheel to play Pole Position or maybe Test Drive

Wow, you really make me want one, because I've been enjoying it quite a bit with just the controller. I don't think I could make a great mount for it though... but then again, it would bring Dirt 3 to life as well...

Gah, it's just too much money, I'm trying not to spend any these days.

Yeah the Driving force gt Steering Wheel by logitech is awesome..hit a wall and the force feedback almost broke my wrist...It is a awesome steering wheel for many of the racing games ..Split second Burnout series etc... Highly recommended and really cheap at Sam's club :D

P.s. The one for Ps3 can also be used on the computer ..just download the drivers AliasAlpha :D

Well I'm not exactly a handyman and I managed to cobble together a pretty solid cabinet out of 4 bits of wood (well 3 at the moment, the 4th is waiting to be put in because I wasn't sure what height I wanted my shelf) and some screws. I reckon if I can then anyone can.

The money part is a problem (try looking on ebay just after christmas, you might well get a bargain) but its been well worth it already. Just the nonsequiter of my mum sitting behind me nitpicking my cornering technique made it worth the moneyOh I know, thats half the reason I got it! I'm going to be so disappointed if I can't get CCS64 to recognise it.

Thinking of getting midnight club la tomorrow so I've got a variety of racing styles

There are a few programmers that have small programs to macro all the controls to any game out there :D Ive had it for a few years now and i even use it for my old tank sims and boat sims on the pc :D


You might check out the logitech profiler, but it was very limited