Now of course to get some good output, you need a good physics engine and track mesh data. To this end the videos and review I’ll refer to using my favourite sims – Assetto Corsa, and Assetto Corsa Competizione. I’ll save comparisons with other sims for another post as they can be quite different.

First of all tracks come alive. You thought you got feedback with that Direct Drive wheel didn’t you? This is taking it up a notch or 10.

2020: Updated video – The crowd favourite, Dirt Rally 2.0 with servo drive speed maxed out 😉

Firing down the front straight at Hungaroring in the Ferrari GT3 car, the reason why you want heave becomes very apparent – the rig starts cycling through up/down motion following the contours of the laser scanned road. Not the pitch of the road – no, but the actual race track surface – hollows, crests, that are in the laser scan mesh – the better the sim is at representing this and outputting to telemetry, the more you’ll feel.

Below: Exaggerated levels for demo purposes, definitely wouldn’t use this setting all the time :

Get out of the GT3 into an F1 car and those seemingly gentle oscillations turn into brutal vibrations. Don’t believe me? Let’s compare the two….

Hit a kerb and you expect to move around a bit. This you can tell the difference from a flat painted surface, through to a solid car launching sausage kerb.

Traction control hunkering the car down for it scrabbling for grip. You’ll feel that too.

Pitch as the track surface goes up a hill or down a hill. Yep

Hit the brakes and feel that ‘surge’ forward. Yep. Hit the accelerator you go backwards Yep. How quickly will you find out your braking to the apex is untidy? Oh about Turn 1 I reckon. If you’ve picked up bad habits the motion platform will tell you about them.

What happens when you go off track – well, it’s a basic math equation – if on track you’ve got the rig tuned to give you a good amount of sensation, go off track and you’re hitting sand traps, walls, etc. They’re easily 2-3 x what a kerb would be like. If your sim racing game of choice models that effectively – you’re *really* going to feel it in the platform. Whilst it’s not “whiplash” consequence it is uncomfortable being jolted around violently. So you kinda get that extra emphasis to be a better driver.

Essentially anything that the simulators output in telemetry SimFeedback picks up and translates into movement. The better the physics engine of the title, modelling of the track surface/conditions, the better your experience. The best way to put it is there’s not an output from the game to say “I’m changing up a gear” there’s a series of values for all of the car velocity/pitch/direction that represents what’s happening so many times a second. Eg velocity longitudinally along the car 0, 0, 0 [clutch in], -2, [engage gear], [clutch out], 3, 2, 1, 0 [back to steady speed]. For instance, lets go crash sideways into a barrier…

How is it for “power”? Well it has more than enough headroom. Would you believe me that I only run it at 50% intensity level with the motors set to max speed. No? Well if I turn it up to full intensity level (a) it’s really hard to see/concentrate going through kerbs in corners and (b) I’m just waiting for something on my rig to break. It’s honestly *too* much. Great to show off to people. Too much to lap with.

How about noise? Check out the videos.. it is definitely quieter than SCN-6 style actuators. In my case there’s actually more noise as a result of what the actuators are doing to the rig, the MDF is twisting/squeaking in various places that I’ve got to address. You don’t hear the motors, and you hear a slight noise from the ball screws/sliding. That’s it. There is a high pitch electrical ‘whine’ from the motors when they’re holding the rig at a static starting position. Most of the time I have open back headphones on and nothing noise wise breaks the immersion.