**The Fun Things You Can Do on a Computer**

Let's take a look at some exciting things you can do on a computer. I recently bought a used setup that I found on Craigslist for $460 Canadian dollars, which includes the frame and a Formula 1-style wheel.

**My New Thrustmaster Setup**

I'm not a huge fan of the Formula 1-style wheel, as rally is my preferred racing Sim genre, and this type of wheel is not ideal for it. The price of this setup is similar to a new Logitech one that sells for $400 Canadian dollars with tax.

The wheel itself is made of metal, and has alcanta grips which are the "rarest" material but I think it's stupid to have on touch points as they become disgusting quickly. The paddle shifters are quite nice, and the base is a Thrustmaster TX Servo base that supports Xbox and PC.

**Pedals and Calibration**

The pedals are a decent improvement over the Logitech ones, with much better pedal feel and actual resistance in the throttle pedal. However, the rest of it is quite plasticky, and it's very heavy with no calibration or setting changes needed.

**Testing Out the Setup**

I jumped straight into Forza where I realized that the screen capture wasn't working. Just the difference between the pedals and shifters because the belt system does both steering and feedback, you can tell what the car's front wheels are doing a lot more than with the Logitech one.

The feedback is way more subtle but it's so much more realistic. Oh this is so much better, see? Because you can control your power slides way better because you can feel what the car is doing as opposed to having to guess.

**Rally and Calibration**

I then tried some more dirt rally which without any calibration or setup worked great. It's so much better now it just needed to learn how to do rally cuz I don't know the track at all and I don't know how to follow Pace notes.

Now that I knew what to look for, I went back to the Logitech base and set up some Logitech profiles with it and reduced the throttle sensitivity which made it a lot more usable. Dirt rally 2 is a lot less gratuitous with how it used the rumble than Forza was which meant it translated the feeling of the car through the Logitech steering wheel way better than Forza did.

**Comparison to Thrustmaster**

Even in dirt rally when compared to the ThrustMaster wheel, the Logitech set feels a lot more numb and less detailed. Also, the Logitech pedals are quite a big step down from the ThrustMaster ones in terms of brake feel and throttle resistance helping you control the car more subconsciously.

All in all, the ThrustMaster base just feels that much more realistic. This comparison has gotten me real curious about direct drive to see how much better this experience can get and maybe some VR either way keeping your eyes peeled on the used Market can get you a great entry into trying out this very fun hobby.

**Just Do Your Research and Be Patient**

Just do your research, be patient, and until the next video. Thank you for watching, bye-bye!

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enrecently I bought my first racing Sim setup which went very well I was like  trying to like oh you can actually dve but it did get me very interested in the hobby  so I decided to head on to the used market and see if I could scr up something a bitbetter now before we have a look at the used racing Sim Market I want to briefly walk you  through Sim racing wheel-based technology which sounds really boring but it actually isn't and  according to a bunch of Gary's online makes a really big difference there are three ways in  which racing Sim wheelbases connect the steering wheel to the motor that drives the feedback and  as far as I can tell these three methods exist in a distinct hierarchy of goodness at the bottom of  this hierarchy we have gear based systems which as the name suggests connects the steering wheel to  the motor using gears now according to enthusiasts the problem with this method is that it's very bad  at reproducing smooth steering action you can really feel the naess in the gears which means  it can't reproduce detailed feedback making it the loser tier dri Tech now as far as I can tell  most budget Wheels use this technology including the Amazon one we tried before and most of the  very common log litech racing wheels and people seem to like that Logitech wheel quite a lot so  maybe the technology isn't that bad I guess we'll find out now in the middle of the hierarchy we've  got belt drive bases which as the name suggests connects the steering wheel to the motor using  belts as opposed to gears now again according to enthusiasts these can go a long way to alleviating  the vague naess of a geared base so it feels a lot smoother but you can still feel the changes  in tension in the belts which can give you kind of weird feedback and those belts can wear down over  time potentially impacting long-term reliability but apparently it's quite a step up from geared  bases and then finally we've got the god king tier at the top direct drive bases which according to  people who have used them is the greatest thing since Michael fast Bender's package direct drive  bases typically have a Servo motor in them and then the steering wheels connected directly to  like the spinny bit in the middle of the motor because you have a much smoother Direct connection  between the wheel and the motor you don't really feel the base as much apparently giving you much  more accurate feedback and they tend to be way more powerful you get wildly powerful bases that  can easily snap both your arms like they're made of wipi the main problem with this technology is  just that it's more expensive even though they have been coming down in price quite a lot over  the last couple of years this fitech direct drive kit for example only costs a bit more  than the current generation Logitech loser drive one and it's way more upgradeable now one of the  companies that make these direct drive bases mosa did reach out to send a base and wheels  setup over for me to try which I was very tempted to accept but I don't want to include it in this  video because we're looking at like used cheaper entries into the market but let me know in the  comment section down below if I should check that out for a video cuz I'm really interested  to see how it would compare to these other bases and with arguably too much context let's have a  quick look at the used Market before checking out the couple of setups I bought starting with eBay  where the higher end direct drive and belt driven stuff seems to hold on to their value very well  almost to the point of delusion on the sell's part why would I buy a used one for more than I  can buy a new one for and even the ones that are priced anywhere close to sanley have very high  shipping and import duties basically erasing any savings to be had and the whole shipping issue is  exacerbated by the fact that I live in Canada and most Sim racing enthusiasts seem to be br British  for some reason shipping is also an issue for the more budget Logitech Wheels which I really wanted  to try one out because they're so popular and I think it's a great point of reference so I headed  over to Craigslist for some local back alley used knife battling which had its own problems  the first of which was very limited selection and then the couple of options that there were had a  very common Vancouver used Market problem where there were just a bunch of new ones that people  bought on sale and are now trying to scalp for MSRP however if you very closely monitor  the Market deals do pop up one of which I snagged now unfortunately this is a new one due to Market  reasons but I really wanted to check out one of these Logitech sets because they're by far the  most popular a couple of good used deals did pop up locally but they sold so quickly that  I just missed them every time and I wasn't going to buy a sculpt one so I just bought the sale new  one but don't worry we've got a very exciting used setup to look at a bit later it comes with a 42 W  power brick to power all of that driving force there's some advertising for you to buy morestuff starting off with the pedal box which is already like four times the size of the  one that came with the Amazon one we've got metal pedals ooh there's some resistance to  the brake pedal the rest of it very plasticky but it's a huge improvement  over that Amazon one it actually sits in place as well ooh and it connects  to the steering wheel with this Mesozoic period Port looking thing that's nice in  retro oh on the base you've got this carpet catcher oh like that that is very useful forcarpet ooh the steering wheel is wrapped in real leather which feels quite nice the wheels kind  of small compared to a real steering wheel which despite the nicer materials still makes it feel  like a toy on the note of toy the button placement on the inside of the wheel is nice and ergonomic  we've got some nice if sharp feeling metal paddle shifters but unfortunately this Logitech one  doesn't have that awesome included sequential gear changer which is a real shame I need to be  more aggressive with the shifts to really get the speed up but you can get a shifter add-on  for this one which I'm not entirely sure if it works as a sequential gear lever all in all with  this Logitech set all of the touch points have really high quality materials on them and then  everything that you don't normally T is super plasticky but it does feel like something that  should hold up well used and from what I've read online these Logitech wheels are more reliable  than a wood burning stove and it even comes with table clamps not suckers like the Amazon one so we  may be able to use it without having to duct tape it to the table oh wait I just realized I  still need to plug all the other cables in and with it mounted on the desk like this you you  can't really access it so I'm going to have to take it off and redo that and after plugging in  the cables and setting it up again I was ready for some framework of reference the moment I sit  down I can kind of tell why a frame would make a big difference because with this kind of setup  you can't really adjust your driving position much and now I just I'm in full granny mode  but with some shifting around I got it to a point where I felt a bit less like a 90-year-old behind  the wheel that feels a bit better oh VR mode I do really think this is the best use case for VR like  actual driving Sim racing I was talking to one of my friends about it the other day and it it really  seems like the best application for it because it oh that's so notchy feeling it's like but before I  could crush some sick gravel or whatever I had to download some drivers and calibrate the wheel ohoh wo this there's so o oh drift oh there's so little feedback what that is that feels so  different to what I was expecting it to feel like so I've been using my used wheel for the last 2  weeks and it does not feel at all like this one I I wonder to what extent the game has to do with it  I then spent ages playing around with settings to get the driving feel to make sense to me and maybe  also make it feel a bit less like the world's limp handshake but if anything I just kept making itworse like it's not turning and once I got dir two completely unplayable I decided to  just abandon it for Forza for now okay let's let's give it a try cuz with the other wheel which we're  going to look at in a little bit Forza worked perfectly pretty much straight out of the box  and then as some kind of karma I guess forza's screen capture just stopped working the moment  I started driving so with my iies please imagine some amazing gameplay over the next little bit  oh yeah okay there we go this feels way way better but then the force feedback kicked inwhoa that's such weird force feedback you  can really feel the gears clacking away inside I I'm I'm not a fan ofthat because it feels so simulated even on its lowest setting the force feedback  on this wheel in Forza feels really unnatural because you have similar limp steering feel  as in dirt rally 2 underneath and then the intense Rumble feels like a separate  thing just thrown over top to feel cool or whatever but if anything it just distracts  from the little bit of usable feedback the steering wheel gives you but it's still so  much better than using a controller is like one of the most fun things you can do on a  computer and on that note let's have a look at the very exciting used setup Ibought I managed to knife battle this reasonably heavily used belt driven thrust Master set off of  Craigslist for $460 Canadian dollar that includes the frame and a Formula 1 style wheel so you can  be real sweaty or cosplay as a Tesla owner now I'm actually not a huge fan of the Formula 1  style wheel like I said rally is the best racing Sim genre and that's very much not a  racing wheel I prefer like a round one anyway to put the price into perspective that Logitech one  we were looking at earlier new not on sale sells for $400 Canadian doar with tax and stuff that's  a very similar amount to this one and again it even comes with the frame now to set it up you  just kind of pull that out and then there you go starting off with the wheel it's made of of  metal over here and then we've got alcanta on the grips which is the racest material but I  think it's a really stupid material to have on touch points because it becomes disgusting the  moment you look at it funny and you can see that these are quite heavily worn but they still feel  decent the paddle shifters on the other hand listen to that now the base is a thrustmaster  TX Servo base which supports Xbox and PC and like I said it's a Bel driven base with pretty brutal  build quality but you don't really interact with that bit so I I guess that's fine the pedals are  a decent improvement over the Logitech ones you've got much better pedal feel and actual resistance  in the throttle pedal and you still get metal caps but the rest of it is quite plasticky oh my God  it's so heavy and with no calibration and setting changes I jumped straight back into Forza where  I still didn't realize that the screen capture wasn't working oh just the difference between  the pedals and the shifters because the the like the belt system does both this the steering and  the feedback you can tell what the car's front wheels are doing a lot more than with the Logitech  one like the feedback is way more subtle than the Logitech but it's so much more realisticoh this is so much better see cuz you can control your power slides way better because you can feel  what the car is doing as opposed to kind of having to guess I then tried some more dirt rally which  without any calibration or setup worked great it's so much better now it just needed to learn how to  do rally cuz I don't know the track at all and I don't know how to follow Pace notes now that I  knew what to look for I went back to the Logitech base and set up some Logitech profiles with it  and reduced the throttle sensitivity which made it a lot more usable dirt rally 2 is a lot less  gratuitous with how it used the rumble than Forza was which meant it translated the feeling of the  car through the Logitech steering wheel way better than Forza did although even in dirt rally when  compared to the thrust Master wheel the Logitech set feels a lot more numb and less detailed also  the Logitech pedals are quite a big step down from the thrust Master ones in terms of break feel and  throttle resistance helping you control the car more subconsciously all in all the thrust Master  base just feels that much more realistic and this comparison's gotten me real curious about direct  drive to see how much better this experience can get and maybe some VR either way keeping your eyes  peeled on the used Market can get you a great entry into trying out this very fun hobby just  do your research be patient and until the next video thank you for watching bye-bye