Fanatec 20Year Community event and and my Impressions.

First off I would like to say thank you to Thomas and Dominic for having me out to this event it was quite the experience and a bunch of fun. First off in full disclosure as I am going to give my impressions of the new DD1 and DD2 wheels from Fanatec in relation to the other wheels on the market, Fanatec did cover my Travel Expenses relating to the Flight to Germany and the lodging and asked nothing in return but that I show up and help try to make the comparison of all the wheels as close as could be done, which turned out to be a harder feat than originally thought when they are side by side.

Anyway about the event itself.

The area of Landshut (where the event took place and the location of the Headquarters of Fanatec) is quite picturesque and strangely for those in the US reminds me of a cross between Iowa and somewhere around the Carolina’s but of course with added age in the architecture, In fact my Airport shuttle driver worked for BMW in South Carolina at one time and when I said that, he basically agreed. It is very lush and green compared with the Los Angeles area that I live in but the fact that there is a bunch of Farmland mainly growing corn in that vicinity was quite surprising.

After Arriving in Landshut at about 7:30ish at night and getting settled into the hotel which, was a slightly new experience for me personally as I have never stayed at a hotel where you basically were given the keys the entire hotel and your room and the that was just how it was. After getting settled I met Oliver Franconen (Youtube Channel - Franconen) in the parking lot and since neither of us had eaten in a while we decided to go for dinner, during this time Oliver was in communication with Dominic to meet up but they were running late setting up the venue for the event. After dinner Thomas met us in front of a nearby bar and we walked to meet other early arrivals Matt Malone (Youtube Channel - Matt Malone) and James West (YouTube Channel - GamerMuscle) at the Landshut Beerfest. We chatted and drank and did all that good stuff and just got to know each other a bit better. Once that closed at about midnight we headed back over to the bar where we met Thomas in the first place and met up with several of the employees of Fanatec and as well Will Vincent and Paul Smith from the RacespotTV broadcast team. At about 2AM Gamer Muscle and I gave up and headed back to the hotel where Matt and the others would make it a couple more hours.. Heck we had a 10AM call the next day to help finalize the set-up before everyone arrived.

The Event was held inside a hanger at a Regional airport just outside of Landshut Germany (which is just outside of Munich). The setup that was prepared was excellent, there was a open bar with beer, soft drinks, wine, along with a buffet that earlier in the day would have many different pastries and later in the day would be filled with a German BB, the prime course being a full roasted pig. There was a presentation stage of course along with a photo booth and a large area with a retrospective of all of the products that Fanatic produced over the years with a few of them working on first generation Play Stations and XBOX units. It’s been aLONG time since I have seen a normal CRT for a game system.. The rest of the room was filled with Tables and of course the Simulators…

Ahhh.. the simulators, what we were here for they had a total of 10 Simulators set-up to mess with throughout the night, 2 of them with CSW’s and the remaining with DD1’s and DD2’s (mainly DD2’s). One of the Direct Drive sims was set-up with the DD1 Playstation version for people to try out with several of the games on the PS4. The main simulators had Assetto Corsa and iRacing to run. 2 of the units with the Direct Drive wheels were set up for YouTube streaming which Matt and Gamer Muscle took full advantage of. Last there was test bench which was my biggest curiosity and quite frankly why I was there and asked to be there. BTW all of the simulators were set up with CS3 Pedals (I think, didn’t pay that close attention)

Throughout the Day (and Night) there were several activities to take part in including Scenic Plane flights around Landshut, as well as street legal GoKarts and some hot lapping ride alongs on the runways in some performance cars, no not super cars there was a Toyota FRS and a V8 Mustang GT (which I am sure was a slightly bigger deal for the Europeans in attendance than the Americans) I am not sure if there were any additional cars as i was inside out of the rain while this was going on.

Most that were in attendance were of course business guests and employees of Endor/Fanatec to celebrate their 20 years. For the sim racer front there were more YouTube Personalities and Web Bloggers than racers but several members of the RedLine Racing Team were in attendance. A couple of Professional Red Bull drift drivers and Martin Archer we also there and me. For anyone that wanted to they had a qualifying session for a race that would take place later that night. The 8 fastest Qualifying drivers would be placed in the race which was to take place on Laguna Seca in the Global Miata.. Strangely Qualifying was done with an FR2.0 car on Laguna. Needless to say all 8 spots went to those who well, Race, I’m not sure how many actually tried to qualify but I placed 10th in Overll Qualification so I just missed out being in the race, However, the Race Team (Redline Racing) was broken up by Matt Malone, Martin Ascher and I believe one Endor Employee. First race was dominated after coming from the rear by Matt Malone (who failed to put in a race qualification lap). This lead to the shenanigans of Race two (courtesy of Thomas).. Race two was to be just an inverted start but Thomas thought that was too easy so he had the wheels inverted as well.. ummm that was interesting.. reverse grid AND reversed wheels.. Anyway needless to say it wasn’t so easy to drive and only 2 out of the 8 finished the race.

That was pretty much the event Except I haven’t told you about the comparisons yet well there is a reason for that since that is what I was there for I thought I would go into greater detail on what was done and how in my mind the wheels stack up across the board.

The Test Bench:
The test bench was literally a bench with four wheels in place and you would run one wheel and then slide to the next, and then the next testing each wheel for a short period of time. The bench started with Assetto Corsa and would be changed to iRacing after a few hours so people could try both games. Earlier in the day the bench had the lower power wheels on it, that being a CSW v2.5, Accuforce, Small Mige SimuCUBE, and the DD1.

The CSW v2.5 was set-up entirely By Fanatec and I didn’t really check on the settings to see what were actually used.

The Accuforce was set to default in responsive mode (please see post http://members.iracing.com/jforum/posts/list/50/3615087.page#11178605 for some setting info) because no one had any good settings and trying to use Auto with Assetto Corse said it needed 500 Lap samples (ouch that is a lot of laps).. so that was a fail. If I had more experience with Sim Commander I MAY have been able to work with it more.

The Small Mige SimuCUBE from SimRacingBay was running firmware 0.9.7 and with the settings of Recon=1, TBW=unlimited, Notch=off, D = 2%, F= 1%, I=0%. Power was at SimRacingBays shipping standard of 12A or (18.663Nm) as opposed to the maximum of 20. so it was a little low but at the same time we were using cars and setting the powers to the point where it would require the additional headroom.

The DD1 was run at base settings with Force Effects and Power at 100% everything else was what the standard settings at this moment will be.

In tuning each of these I was jumping back and forth from wheel to wheel trying to get strengths and detail to all feel similar. I tempered my personal feeling of what the wheels , which is normally a little bit more subdued, with the activeness that others tend to like more (at least initially, some turn down the activeness later).. In the end the SimuCUBE may have been slightly over dampened for most driver taste. The wheels were set to run approx .35:1 specific output in iRacing and just made to feel about the same strength (relatively) in Assetto Corsa, about 65ish % for the stronger wheels 100% for the lower strength. I originally turned the drift mode on the DD1 to -2 instead of -1 as I felt it needed a it more friction, (I was informed that that was the way to add friction), Small change but to me it made the wheel feel more controlled. It shortly went back to -1 as people wanted the more active feel. in the end the choice of power was decent for most but we did have some people wish for it to be turned down a bit further, the personalization of feel and weight of course made it MUCH harder to keep the wheels feeling similar and on the exact same playing field.

The Interesting thing is that later in the day when the Wheels were switched to the heavier duty stronger wheels. Those being the Bodnar 54G, Large Mige SimuCUBE and the DD2 (along with a DD1) I heard no such issues or even really complaints about the strength or settings on the wheels, maybe it was the expectation of higher strength the the wheel or maybe it was just that they were easier to set up, Or maybe they just felt more correct (hmmm) I just had to throw that in, anyway..

The stronger wheels were as follows….

Bodnar 54G - Damping set to 30 (maybe it was 25) it was around there, originally I set it as high as 50 to correct a problem that was being felt in the wheel with regard to car control (mentioned later in my opinions about each) then Thomas tried them out and felt it was over dampened so it was changed.. That was definitely a correct assessment as I sort of guessed on how much it needed It was originally at 15. For me personally I probably would have put a bit more damping but to keep the activeness the new setting worked well.

The Large Mige SimuCUBE from SimRacingBay was running firmware 0.9.7 and with the settings of Recon=3, TBW=Unltd, Notch=off, D = 3%, F= 0%, I=.5%. Power was at SimRacingBay’s shipping standard of 20A or (22.32Nm) as opposed to the maximum of 25.

The DD2 was set to again 100% and defaults except I put Drift -2 again and it wasn’t changed.

We tuned all wheels for feel strength in Assetto Corsa by Gain % and at this time the DD1 remained on the bench and was used 20% less in power just to show the relative difference in a gain of 5Nm from a DD1 - DD2. We never really did get around to having iRacing on the Large units but at the end of the night and throughout the day I was testing the DD2’ at power to see how they performed. We never cranked any of the high powered units to there absolute output and were running generally running with AC Gain of about 65-70% which works out to about .5 - .55:1 Specific output, close but not quite what my normal wheel strengths are. The Fourth unit on the bench was the DD1, which in reality if running at full 100% output from game could come close to matching what was set on the bench. The DD1 was set to 90% gain in AC so it was getting close to it’s Max output but Still at 20% less than the DD2.

Impressions:
So what did I think of the wheels.. well So I will go down the List from Weakest to strongest..

CSWv2.5 - Well as you would expect it is not really much of a competition here. It’s vague, kinda lifeless, and lacks road communication, which lead to a lot of spins as it and you do not react fast enough to the cues of handling to really be running the car right on the edge. Now really it is still probably one of the best for the lower than Direct Drive wheels but it seriously is out of the league of the Direct Drive and shows just how MASSIVE the difference really is. You would have to do the same sort of comparison with say a CSL, TM300, TM500, TS-PC, G920 ect.. as those are the range competitors.

Accuforce - While I do like the Accuforce in many ways regarding the software and the value it presents at the Lower $750.00 price point that they have offered recently (Note: it may not remain that low after the summer of 2018) it honestly and unfortunately just isn’t quite in the league with anything above this point. It is one of the first DD wheels and though it has Matured through Softtware and Firmware over the years I don’t believe it has matured to the levels that the others have.. With all of that being said the Accuforce was probably NOT fully set up optimally and was at default settings (on Responsive Mode) so it might be a little unfair in this respect but in driving it it just doesn’t seem to match the level of smoothness and continuous range that can be found in the other wheels. The software unfortunately also didn’t really allow for me to be able to set something up really fast without complete guess work. Auto setup was tried but it still wasn’t fast enough and for Assetto Corsa was looking for 500 laps of date before it would do something. Berney is working heavily on documentation for SimCommander, which is a very important aspect that has been seriously lacking for his wheel especially given the amount of things that can be modified. I just don’t feel at this moment that the Accuforce has aged well in light of this competition and even though by no way is it a Low End Wheel it is definitely now in terms of performance an Entry Level Direct Drive unit which as that implies it is a great first step into the Direct Drive realm.

EDIT: - added a setting I forgot about (responsive mode)

Small Mige SimuCUBE - From all my testing with this Servo I know a lot about it’s tendencies and I have sort of a love/hate relationship with it.. It is extremely active due to its rotor weight and winding but that makes it REALLY hard to control properly for force feedback and it showed this way for me as well again. It would ether be too active and feel like a Bratty kid on Sugar, or you would temper it with filtering and then it would come down from it’s sugar high and never perk back up.. And there inlays the issue I have with it, it is temperamental with the settings.. If you want it deadened enough to NOT beat on you then you loose the liveliness but if you let it be lively it may choose to bite you a few times.

DD1 - This was a surprise honestly, I did feel going in that it would be decent but it looks as if they did do their homework and did it well. It is really quite good and very well matched to racing in general. It remains relatively light and rarely becomes overbearing in anyway. This may have to do with the use of the DD2 motor instead of the originally planned lower output/lower cost servo that as Thomas put it didn’t quite live up to expectation in development. The DD1 does only needs the slightest bit of calming for me and for most it will be just about spot on. At the moment I am not sure if it can be let loose a bit more (for those that want more activeness) as I was informed that one of the areas still in development is the damper setting filter which was set at 50 for the event but because it was still in development didn’t really do too much when I played a little. Note, I didn’t play much, and only tried a couple steps up and down and didn’t get that much of a feel difference) but I am guessing that may change for release.. This is not to say everything is bells and roses I do have a few quips with it though.. The lovely OLED display is EXCELLENT for setting up things from the software on the fly because you actually get things spelled out for you, but all the little graphs and information displays are virtually useless to a driver in practice as who’s going to be watching their wheel box while driving. As well (being a Fanatec outsider) I have some issue with some of the naming conventions, though the names and functions might be easy for Fanatec ecosystem users, they are strange to understand right out of the box such as drift mode (I would have never though friction) as I was told that is the primary function. Also for many like me I thought this unit was HUGE in physical size because of the photos on Fanatec's website, it is pleasantly and thankfully NOT. it is only maybe 3/4” (19mm) taller than the Mige Servos. NOTE: the wheel is not really an all in one unit as the power supply is external and is currently about 12 x 5 x 2” which is smaller than any other external BOX since it doesn’t house the main electronics but it still isn’t exactly small though that is to be expected and that unit I was told could change as they haven’t solidified what they are using for production. I would suspect anything used would be of the same volume though because they do have to pull enough wattage.

DD2 - Honestly it’s the power, you can pretty much take everything I said about the DD1 and copy and paste and then add power which gives headroom and weight and you have it.. The DD2 at higher power does need to control that little amount of over activeness with the friction as we found out putting it on the bench but others it is in every respect a DD1 (or is that the other way around) anyway it is good.

Bodnar 54G - The Grandaddy of the Direct drive wheels and you know what unfortunately it is showing its wrinkles, literally. The Bodnar has this odd wave like throbbing and springiness in its feedback delivery that is unlike any other system. It is difficult to pinpoint why or where it is originating but I suspect it is in the way the input filter is implemented.. This springiness is WHY the damping NEEDED to be turned up what would happen is you would run over a curb with the rear tire and the wheel would turn in response the only problem was it would bounce in oscillation just being out of range for you to catch the tank slapping wave that you would get. it was just you would be a split second behind what it wanted to do not letting you catch the car without Spinning or letting off the throttle too dramatically. Every other wheel you would do a slight flick correction and the car would come back in line.. even when fixed with the damping the overall feel had a slight waviness to it which gave it a bit of vagueness. The funny thing is I don’t remember that being the case with the 52G I have driven in the past so it could partially be an instability at higher power that Bodnar just haven’t really addressed. Honestly, I was sort of hoping to still name this the KING of the DD’s as it is the originator but I honestly just can’t.. Can you feel the disappointment in my writing…

EDIT: --- Looking online for the control panel to remember the settings I am not sure if the Bodnar had the latest software on it or not as all I can find are photos of the control panel with a slider for Overall Damping.. The Control panel at the event ad a 0-150 Numerical input for Damping and appears to have less options.

EDIT2: --- Yes confirmed the Firmware used was earlier probably in the 2.x range it did not have the 3.x which by screenshots has more effect options So.. I am not sure if the Bodnar could actually match or be better feeling.. This could probably change my ranking for it up but it would need to have a clear significance in improvement to overcome the Cost difference being over 2 - 3 times the price of the others.

Large Mige SimuCUBE - I put this last in the list because if opened up it will be the most powerful of the bunch even though it was not fully during these tests. For me as many of you know this is the wheel system I use and it is actually probably still the one best suited for me as I still like the control of the servo that the SimuCUBE firmware gives over everything else in this level. That being said the DD2 is honestly right on par with it on a general feel level. infact they are so incredibly close that If I were blindfolded and the power were the same it would be very Hard to tell (though I did notice one really important difference that I could pick up on that would tell me which was which as at the end of the night I opened up the SimuCUBE to 25Nm and set the DD2 and the SimuCUBE to the exact same settings in iRacing and found an interesting difference which I will mention in the next paragraph.

So let me give you guys a little more about the SimuCUBE and the DD2 when power matched. It appears and was loosely given the nod that there is some oscillation and active damping control going on in the DD’s 1 & 2 and I think this is where the issue may stem from as there is a range of things you can get and unfortunately when you get one thing others diminish and it is hard to get all parameters at the same time. Fanatec is coming close though and they MAY be able to do it. However, the issue, mind you this is pre production and they may find a way to fix it (or I may just be overly sensitive), is when comparing the DD2 to the Large Mige everything felt EXTREMELY close except as the car would start to lose traction (mainly the front wheels and the telemetry that comes along with that) the DD2 seemed to subdue the information causing a slight vagueness, almost a clipping feel even though there should be and is additional information there that is easily felt with the Large Mige. I believe I also felt this with the DD1 at lower power and as well the DD2 at the normal test bench and is probably the main reason why I felt I needed Friction added to the wheel, as the DD1 and 2 both had a tendency to drop off in information really fast when a car understeers. Feel wise that is my only significant complaint.

So how do I rank these.. well I am going to rank them on both what I feel performance wise in addition to the value for the money paid, I will also let you know why they are there. BTW I told Thomas my basic overall thought directly before I left and he made some points that I will put in the notes on each as well.


The Ranking and Pros and Cons:
NOTE: all prices are in US$ minus Tax & Shipping with a Fanatec BMW Wheel with all of the needed stuff to get ti to work with the unit so that All could be considered Plug and Play. (priced 08.27.2018)

MSO = Max Specific Output based on 40Nm = 100% for iRacing.. you can get a comparison to how the wheels were tested above at .35 and .55 on the test bench. 40Nm will allow about 85% of the cars in iRacing to NOT Clip at all.


#7 - CSW v2.5 (9Nm, MSO = .225:1) - $500 base ($800.00 complete) - No third party hardware

Pro - It’s not as expensive

Con - Just not at all on the level of a Direct Drive

#6 - Pro-Sim Bodnar 54G (26Nm, MSO = .650:1) - $3115.32 base ( $3727.16 complete) - SRM Fanatec Wheelside Adaptor + Accuforce QR

Pro - You can say you have the Most Expensive DD (well maybe)

Con - Performance and feel is just not on par with other options out there.

Con - The price IS really high.

Con - For a considerable amount less money you can get a SimuCUBE with the SAME servo (new) and a retrofit encoder and have much better overall performance.

Con - Additional wheels will be about $96.72 more expensive as there is no base side adaptor

#5 - Accuforce (13Nm, MSO = .325:1) - $750* base - ($1236.72* complete)

Pro - The SimCommander software allows you to adjust and profile many different things for each vehicle and game driven.

Pro- Comes additionally with SimVibe which many use and if you domt have it it saves about $90.00 if you want it.

Pro - Can be bought complete with Wheel and QR for $86.72 less than the complete I mentioned above (the above is with a Fanatec Wheel for comparison)

Pro - Great entry level to the DD market.

Con - A little rougher feeling than the other comparable wheels.

Con - You can feel the software doing it’s job extracting the most from the motor (though if you have never driven the others you won’t notice this)

Con - the power level is a little low for headroom.

* Accuforce priceing based on the 2018 SUMMERSALE normal pricing is about $200.00 higher


#4 - Sim Racing Bay Small Mige (20Nm, MSO = .500:1) - $1207.71 base ($1646.47 complete) - SRM Fanatec Base Side Adaptor.

Pro - Power is enough for 80% of the drivers out there.

Pro - Smooth feel from Very Active to Dampened.

Pro - Motor upgradable in the future if you want to.

Pro - Software allows for Maximum adjustability with limited things to learn.

Pro - With the SRM adaptor and the SRB Fanatec Quick Release (in complete price) any Fanatec wheel can be used and is Hot Swappable.

Con - Small Mige motor can be finicky to set up.

Con - NO base profiles to get you better feel right off the bat (set for MAX activity)

Con - Sim Racing Bay lowers shipping output to around 18Nm so you have to manually increase it to the 20Nm if you want - can make it hard to use sample set-ups from others.

NOTE: The top three units are SOOOO close that I will label them 1, 2, and, 3 with an modified 1st position rating at they all fall into the 1st position level really.

#3 (#1c) - Fanatec DD2 25Nm (25Nm, MSO = .625:1) - $1500.00 base ($1800 complete)

Pro - Extended Power Range.

Pro - Excellent Game feel right out of the box.

Pro - No wires to the steering all is internal.

Pro - Hot Swappable Wheels.

Pro - Dual Locking QR system for maximum wheel security.

Pro - At least 3 year additional warrantee than other comparable wheels - 5 Years*

Con - Software (in pre-production) doesn’t allow a Massive range of adjustability but it does seem to be enough.

Con - The cool little OLED Display is practically useless while driving.

* Not sure if 5 Years will be standard after the preorder period


#2 (#1b) - Sim Racing Bay Large Mige (27.9Nm, MSO = .6975:1) - $1382.91 base ($1821.67 complete) - SRM Fanatec Base Side Adaptor.

Pro - Extended Power Range.

Pro - Smooth feel from Very Active to Dampened.

Pro - Motor upgradable in the future if you want to.

Pro - Software allows for Maximum adjustability with limited things to learn.

Pro - With the SRM adaptor and the SRB Fanatec Quick Release (in complete price) any Fanatec wheel can be used and is Hot Swappable.

Con - NO base profiles to get you better feel right off the bat (set for MAX activity).

Con - Sim Racing Bay lowers shipping output to around 22Nm so you have to manually increase it to the 27.9Nm if you want - can make it hard to use sample set-ups from others.

         
#1 (#1a) - Fanatec DD1 20Nm (20Nm, MSO = .500:1) - $1000.00 base ($1300 complete)

Pro - Price is excellent.

Pro - Excellent Game feel right out of the box.

Pro - No wires to the steering all is internal.

Pro - Hot Swappable Wheels.

Pro - Dual Locking QR system for maximum wheel security.

Pro - Power level will cover Most Users.

Pro - Use of the DD2 Motor in the DD1 give the EXACT same feel at lower power levels.

Con - Software (in pre-production) doesn’t allow a Massive range of adjustability but it does seem to be enough.

Con - The cool little OLED Display is practically useless while driving.

Con - Is the only 20Nm+ wheel lacking a Kill Switch.

SO.... Final Notes:

There you have it I actually think the DD1 is the best all around wheel, The feel is on par with my Large Mige at a MUCH lower price point almost as low as the Accuforce on the Summer sale after factoring in a rim but it really is well worth the extra $150.00 or so to get the 7Nm of additional power. They appear to be built well and have comparable warranties to everyone else.. As noted above there is a little “feel” issue that I have but not knowing that issue exists I would well never notice it and since I have mentioned it to Fanatec it may be GONE when the production comes out..

Personally though knowing what I do know I would still probably go with a Large Mige and that is because I am a tinkerer AND also like higher power on higher powered cars.. I run my wheel at .594:1 which as you can see by the MSO that is higher than the DD1 could achieve at 40Nm = 100% I would have to go all the way down to about 33Nm on the DD1 to achieve that output but at that point anything above a GT car ie Indycar, LMP1, HPD, ect.. would end up clipping and I would be forced to turn down the strength of the wheel. On the tinker end of things the SimuCUBE allows you to change the servo to pretty much anything and I actually have a completely different servo that is massively different and more powerful than anything on the market for these (Sam Maxwell is running the same servo). This means in the future if a Better servo comes along maybe even an out runner option (like the Fanatec) it could possibly be used on the SimuCUBE making things even better. Software wise the SimuCUBE seems to be able to have more range in the types of feel you can extract from the wheel where the Fanatec is limited, however that is a decent decision as the general market will get confused with too many options (i.e. SimCommander) the SimuCUBE has the right amount of options but at the same time they all affect the drive controller directly which is where the wider range of feel options come from.

All In all I am impressed with the DD1 mainly which of course is the same as the DD2 feel wise just lower power. So my choice for DD is the Fanatec DD1 for the Average user and the SimuCUBE Large Mige for the Power user (for lack of a better term) though the DD2 could easily probably replace my Large Mige (though I wouldn’t change unless there would be some massive benefit later in life or the SimuCUBE for some reason fails, Which I don’t believe will ever happen.

Thank you - Thomas, Dominic, and the rest of those from the Fanatec Team for 1. Making a comparison like this possible, 2. Being brave enough and confident enough to actually do it, and 3. Making it possible for me to take part in it and be open about my thoughts.

BTW - to those that will ask. NO I didn’t get a chance to see the new wheels, Thomas Had them but I didn’t make it over to his car to take a look at them.