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Virtual Driver's Ed. A Beginner's Guide to Steering Wheel Controllers By Richard Leader Like most children of the 1980s, I was held in awe of one game at the local arcade: Sega's Outrun. Bucking the then contemporary trend of over-head racing games, Outrun brought 3D graphics, a sit-down booth that rumbled along with the virtual road, and a shiny steering wheel that no kid could resist. Unfortunately, few kids could afford the four quarters per play and the game spent most of its life in demo mode--but on a rare occasion, an adult took the wheel and the whole arcade craned to get a look at the action. Today, even though I know next to nothing about cars, live as a pedestrian, and could care less about NASCAR, driving fast in a virtual world still has a profound appeal to me--especially if there is a shiny steering wheel involved. As Gran Turismo 3 for the Playstation 2 has reached "killer-app" status (a phrase that denotes that many owners of the platform bought it specifically to play the particular game title) videogame racing is closing in on the mainstream and more casual gamers are pondering the merits of investing in a wheel controller for their systems. While there are more options available console owners, many of them are not as appealing as they seem at first glance. Companies such as Radica are offering wheels that are held in both hands (as opposed to being mounted) for both the Playstation 2 and the Xbox, where only half of the wheel rotates, turning inside the other half, while the other hand holds it steady. Not only are these scarcely more accurate for racing games than the analog sticks now included with standard control pads, they are a good deal more tiring to use because of their bulk and weight. But they sure are cute.
Other console-only wheels take account of your probable position of being seated on the couch or the floor and mount the wheel on a base that you actually sit on, straddling it with your thighs to keep it in position--though these are problematic in that they often are not the right size for many users, either positioning the wheel too high, low, or even to close to you to be comfortable. On the other hand, the best and currently most popular among console gamers are wheels that have their roots in the PC world. Being that the console market dwarves that of the PC, manufactures would be foolish not to provide console adapters for or with their units. However, the physical realities of their origin often make their
use problematic for console gamers: cords designed for a desktop environment
are not nearly long enough for the living room and the clamps designed
to attach the wheel to a desk or table are of precious little use
to someone sitting on a couch or floor. When users are seated as such,
the foot pedals are often set at an angle that will push them away
from you rather than accelerating or braking. Still, these wheels
offer the best driving experience and many gamers are improvising
ways to make them work in their home.
The NASCAR Pro Digital 2 by Thrustmaster Spring-loaded wheels, as their name implies, use springs to supply the tension on the wheel. The further you turn the wheel, the more pressure that builds and the harder it is to turn--giving a vaguely realistic feel to it. Because of the nature of the springs, these wheels are limited in how far they can be rotated, usually supplying just over 180 degrees of rotation (meaning a bit more than half a turn in either direction). Force feedback wheels use a wider variety of mechanisms than their spring-loaded counterparts. Most force feedback wheels use a series of gears, usually made of plastic, though some of the more expensive ones employ metal ones, providing a crisper and more durable feel. Some models, the most expensive and elite, also use steel cables to supply the tension in a uniform fashion (much like the spring loaded ones do) as the gear models tend to feel "gritty" to some degree, especially when turned quickly in one direction and then the other. These steel cables can also be found in some of the older more basic force feedback models that were built prior to the gear system catching on. These are great units that can often be had for a bargain price, but their life cycle is nearing an end. Rather than USB, they have serial port connections which are not only harder to set up on current computers, are being phased out entirely on future mainboards. Force feedback models usually have a somewhat greater range of motion than their cheaper spring-loaded siblings. The most expensive models have even more--some approaching 270 degrees of rotation, nearly allowing for realistic hand-over-hand steering.
The Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback Many people are under the impression that force feedback is all about special effects--and manufacturers and retailers go to great length to cultivate that perception. Most computer superstores have powered in-store display units where people can press different buttons to make the wheel shudder and jerk violently. While such effects might be a guaranteed crowd pleaser, it is not what force feedback is about. At heart, force feedback is a way of conveying game information back to the user which gamers do not normally receive during play, as we are usually focused on audio and video cues. In racing games, the most important information is not the texture of the road or vibration of the engine (which would largely fall under the heading "special effects") but the grip of the tires on the road and the inertia of the car's weight. Simply put, the more control you have over the car, the harder it will be to turn the wheel. The less control you have over the car, due to speed, weight conditions (which occur during braking as the inertia of the car shifts), and even the quality of the virtual road--the less resistance the steering wheel will provide, spinning freely, or in some cases (often due to damage) favoring one side and drift left or right on its own, requiring additional input from the user to "correct" for it. While those interested in exact mechanics might find nirvana in that additional information, many expert virtual drivers find it unnecessary and distracting as they can judge how their car will react from visual and audio cues alone. Force feedback wheels can sometimes behave unpredictably or hinder your ability to successfully navigate a course (sometimes deservedly so, making it more realistic) so for many elite gamers who compete in races online against other humans, the less complicated spring-loaded wheels are actually preferable when winning is everything. On the other hand, the special effects that force feedback provides are indeed crowd pleasers. These effects are created by ratcheting the wheel left or right. Whether this ratcheting is fast or slow can give the appearance of a myriad of overlapping effects, such as the texture of a bumpy dirt road, violent collisions, or even the low vibration of "engine volume." It is rather amusing to pump the gas pedal at the starting line and feel a surge come up through the wheel--though if employed too strongly, this effect can lead to bodily strain and fatigue, as if you had just held onto a jackhammer for a few minutes. Indeed, there have even been lawsuits and articles in the NY Times over the health hazards associated with vibrating video game controllers, though usually concerning the less complex "Dual Shock" game-pads for the Playstation 2 which are most often used for greater periods of time and by children. A few spring-loaded wheels have vibration mechanisms built in, but these should neither be confused with force feedback as not only is just one "effect" implemented, it is done in a very rudimentary fashion--whether this is an asset to a spring-loaded unit is merely personal preference. The strength of force feedback wheels are also their weakness. No two games will react the same way with the wheel and the software drivers for it will often be in competition with the games themselves. This is especially evident in the auto-centering feature. While spring-loaded wheels will return to their center position if you let go of them, force feedback wheels will not unless they are instructed to--in fact, if the force feedback is turned off, the wheel will just turn like the cheep piece of plastic it is, offering no resistance at all. The strength of the auto-center (or whether it is turned on at all) can be set in the software drivers for most wheels. However, many games also have an internal setting for auto-center, and for these, to prevent the two settings from competing, it is often necessary to disable it on the software driver side. Because of this, you are often at the mercy of how well your games implement force feedback effects. Some, such as Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed (which, despite its age, sadly remains the best playing and looking choice for the amateur driver) offer innumerable sliders for specific force feedback effects such as road texture, collisions, stick volume, engine volume, and more, each of which have to be adjusted and tweaked. On the other hand, some games like Driver offer little more than a switch to turn force feedback on. These games often offer dramatic collision effects that are much more viscerally satisfying than their more complicated siblings, but have a tendency to have such a strong auto-center that it often feels like you are driving through mud, even when the game is set on city streets.
Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed Force feedback wheels are among the most complicated of gaming peripherals and users need to be willing to learn the various terms involved with setting up and tweaking them for use--because failing that, they are much less useful than the more simple spring-loaded models once the novelty of a controller that vibrates wears off. Important concepts must be learned and understood, such as the size of the "dead zone" (the area measured in degrees that you can rotate the wheel left or right without it registering as input) and different kinds of axis (the gas and brake can be mapped onto a single axis, so that only input from one pedal is used at any one time, or for a more realistic effect, many wheels allow them to work simultaneously). It is by no means rocket-science, but it is not exactly plug-and-play, either--you have to do your homework. When shopping for a wheel it is important to first know exactly what you are looking for and how much you are willing to pay. Only then can you decide between the competing brands and models, which roughly correspond with each other in terms of features and price as the market for them has been stabilized for some time. Spring-loaded wheels usually retail for $30-60, though it would seldom make sense to purchase ones towards the higher end of the spectrum, as the mainstream force feedback wheels usually run $70-110. The most expensive force feedback wheels, that feature the superior steel cables, unnecessary luxuries such as leather covers, and even options for expandability (such as a clutch pedal and stick shifters with custom gear arrangements) start at $170 and quickly grow much more expensive after that. Those prices can seem like a pretty steep investment for the casual gamer, but do not be put off--wheel controllers are the ultimate sale item--not only are their prices severely slashed around the usual holidays (usually dropping a model from the top of the above price-ranges to the very bottom), but last year's models are often sold at discount stores and online for less than half the price of the contemporary models. These older models largely offer the same functionality, but lack some of the aesthetic improvements that have been made in the current crop. Aesthetic improvements are not as intuitive as you might think. Older models tend to be much more visually appealing than the newer; the wheel often using multiple materials in its surface construction, such as three (hand-sized) rubberized grips placed 120 degrees apart on the wheel, the interstitial sections composed of smooth plastic. Though only a moderate irritant, if you prefer your hands in positions considered to be nonstandard by the manufacturer, or practice hand-over-hand steering, the skin of your hands will often rest on two different materials of staggeringly different properties--typically joined with a rough seam. In fact, some wheels such as the popular Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback have molded hand grips built into the "3 and 9 o'clock" positions, all but forcing you to use them. These assume that you will not be making full use of the wheel's range of motion but will have the software drivers adjusted to a very high sensitivity--meaning that it would be possible to turn a game vehicle 360 degrees using just 45 degrees of movement to the left or right with the wheel (the furthest it is comfortable to turn the wheel without removing either hand from it). While this might be ideal for F1 racing games, casual gamers who tend to be more interested in street cars where steering wheels have more "play" will likely keep the software driver's sensitivity at a much lower setting, making the presence of molded handgrips a slight nuisance rather than an asset. Several manufacturers who provided tripartite grips in the past are now rubberizing the entire wheel surface, for a uniform grip. They might not be as flashy looking, but they are far more comfortable and are seldom ugly (save for a few models that come in beige--though black ones are more likely to show visible signs of dust which is troublesome to remove from the tacky surface). While a myriad of buttons might look like an attractive feature in a wheel controller, the very nature of games (races do not usually take place on event free and straight sections of track) keeps them from being as useful as they might seem. Even if you remember what function the middle button in the left hand row (of three) is supposed to accomplish, it is often hard to press it while executing a sharp turn, as your hands have shifted to nonstandard positions (or rather, the wheel is in a non-standard position relative to your hands) meaning you might have to press the button with your opposite hand--if you can even find it before the situation calling for pressing it is resolved! "Hat switch" buttons are small "nubs" that can be rocked in four or even eight directions to form an equivalent number of individual buttons "in one," such as the ones found on Thrustmaster's NASCAR branded wheels, are especially problematic. Not only do you have the problems with them listed above, but the direction that they must be pushed for the desired effect changes when the wheel is rotated. Wheels that are marketed especially for console use often have game-pads built into their construction, which theoretically allow you to navigate menus without the use of the keyboard before play, but suffer the same drawbacks in the game. Other features that potential buyers should get a feel for (taking advantage of in-store display units, if possible) are the shifting mechanisms. Most wheels today have "butterfly" style F1 shifters on the back side of the wheel, one falling under each of your index fingers. Different models implement this in various ways. Some, like the Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback, merely have little nubs that click at the slightest press, while others have large wings (hence the "butterfly" name) that allow them to actually spin around your fingers where you have to reach out and grab them to shift. Though some models that use the latter can be obtrusive and run into your knuckles, the latest revision of the Thrustmaster NASCAR line rectified that problem, giving you more finger room--so it really comes down to personal preference. Some wheels offer an additional stick shifting mechanism as well, but these are merely switches that can be rocked in two directions (they are often referred to as "tiptronic" shifters) that add two additional "buttons" to the controller. The pedals and their housing platform deserve inspection as well. Some models have nearly identical looking gas and brake pedals, while others may physically look different yet require the same amount of pressure to activate--a botch in realism as far as many gamers are concerned. The relative amount of pressure each pedal requires can often be examined in stores. Pedals of various models also offer differing levels of sensitivity (some might be able to discern between 10 specific levels of pressure, and some several times that amount) though this information is rarely readily available to consumers and is often dependant more upon the software drivers than the actual construction of the pedals themselves. Heavier pedal bases are less likely to allow them to be pushed away from you during use, as are ones longer than they are wide. All in all, the pedals will actually be the most used and enjoyed part of your wheel controller, as they will always be there under your feet; the accessory you never knew you needed. Whether you are using a word processor or even just browsing the web, having two pedals under your feet is always a welcome diversion--often worth the money even if you do not intend to use the included steering wheel at all. I could go into how they relieve stress or promote physical well being by maintaining blood flow in your feet, but it is probably best not to play armchair physician and just say: pedals just rock! It is also important to take note of the mounting mechanisms different wheels use, there being two basic systems employed by the majority of units. Many have a C-clamp on either side of the wheel's base, which can be closed around the table surface, and then torqued up with a screw until the connection is firm. Although extremely sturdy, these clamps can take a minute or so to screw in when setting up or taking down the wheel. This does tend to curb impulse play and prolong your sessions once they are set up. Being that there are two clamps on either side of your legs, wheels that make use of this style of mounting system are often uncomfortable or completely unusable for physically larger gamers. The other mounting system uses as single clamp that is centrally located, which is usually screwed tight from the bottom, rather than the top. Although the connection is not quite as sturdy, it is by and large sufficient, and certainly made up for by the shorter setup time. Being that the clamp is in the center of the unit, depending on your table and chair height, it might block your leg from traversing from one side to the other--forcing you to put the pedal housing further to one side or another than you like, lest you be unable to move your right foot over to the brake. Investing in a wheel controller is not for everyone. Even then, the urge to splurge on more than you might need is particularly strong because of the exotic nature of the purchase. While this guide might not be as specifically useful as individual product reviews (which you should certainly consult before deciding on a brand or model), these broad outlines will help you determine your own individual needs and preferences before taking the next step. Good luck. |
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