All I wheely want for Christmas: the Fanatec Porsche Turbo SSanta was most kind to Ars contributor and racing nut Jonathan Gitlin, leaving the most expensive racing wheel on the market under his tree this year. He takes it for a spin to tell us if all of that money buys you racing realism.By Jonathan M. Gitlin "Christmas is a time when Ars people get toys. January is a time when they review them." Thus tweeteth Deputy Editor Jon Stokes, and right he is. Under the tree this year (well, on the UPS truck) was a new steering wheel for my Xbox 360. Not just any wheel, but a (deep breath) Fanatec Porsche Turbo S steering wheel and Clubsport pedal setup, available directly from the manufacturer for the princely sum of $499.95. Yes, that's a lot of money, but as we'll see, you get quite a lot in return, and you could spend quite a lot less on the standard edition and still have what's probably the best driving wheel peripheral on the market right now. Compared to the Microsoft Wireless Racing Wheel, the Porsche-licensed peripheral is a massive leap forward for Xbox gamers, and the ability to use the rig with a PS3 and the forthcoming Gran Turismo 5 should put it high on any racing nut's wish list.Video games used to be simple. Your NES came with a rectangular joypad that was all you needed to steer Mario from one end of the screen to the other, down pipes, up vines—and you'd get a nice dose of sore thumbs as an added bonus. Soon, the four points of the compass weren't enough, and neither were A and B alone. We got shoulder buttons, analog sticks, and a proliferation of buttons to twitch, mash, and press in order to get to the end of the level and trigger that little flush of dopamine that's the gamers' equivalent of one of those chicken-flavoured cat treats that I reward my pets with when they've been especially adorable.The standard game controller might be fine for some folks, but thankfully for the gaming peripheral manufacturers of this world, lots of us demand more faithful ways of interacting with our virtual pastimes. Different genres obviously have their own peripherals, from arcade sticks to musical instruments to the reason I'm writing this and (hopefully) the reason you're still reading: steering wheels for driving games.For a while, Microsoft has had a fairly good steering wheel available for the Xbox 360, which is a good thing since almost no one else has been able to offer one. Microsoft chose to use a different standard for the 360, so wheels that work fine on PCs and PlayStations have been useless on Redmond's console, much to the chagrin of Logitech wheel owners. Their G25 and more recent G27 wheels have been the gold standard for driving sim players, but there's a new player in town called Fanatec, and if you're looking for a wheel that will work with both Xbox 360 and PS3, look no further.I first became aware of this German company in the middle of 2008. They were already offering PC wheels, helped along with a license from Porsche. The wheels were replicas of those found in Carreras or GT3s, but what got my wallet out back then was the answer to every couchlocked racer's dreams, the RennSport wheel stand ($129.95). Named after Porsche's legendary series of stripped-down road monsters, this is a folding wheel stand that comes with a wife acceptance factor that's several orders of magnitude higher than anything you could build for yourself out of shipping palettes or MDF. But more about the wheel stand later. Back to the main event.Word on the street was that Fanatec was releasing a wheel that would work with the Xbox 360. So what, you ask. Microsoft makes a pretty good wheel that works brilliantly with the 360. But couple that news with finding out that for the first time, a console racing game would support the use of a clutch pedal as well as an accelerator and brake, and now you have something interesting on your hands. Not only that, but a proper H-pattern gearbox like you'd find in your average car. The game of course is Forza Motorsport 3, already covered on these pages at launch, and a mighty fine game it is. But here we are, 500 words in, and still I've told you nothing about it. What a poor reviewer I am.Off to the racesThe Fanatec Porsche Turbo S Wheel, to give it it's full name, comes in three flavors. The Pure edition (the cheapest version at $249.95, sans pedals or shifter set), the regular edition ($349.95), which comes with a three pedal set, a sequential shifter, and an H-pattern shifter, along with an RF dongle that looks like the key to a 911 and lets you use the wheel with a PC or PS3, and finally the Clubsport package (now sold out, unfortunately), which is all of the above, but instead of the base pedal set you get Fanatec's hefty Clubsport pedals ($199.95 on their own), which wouldn't look out of place in an actual track-going 911 GT3 RSR racecar. These superduper pedals (which are available separately and will work with just about any other wheel in conjunction with a PC) use contactless sensors and are light years ahead of the plastic ones that come with the Microsoft wheel we know and love. The brake pedal comes with a pair of very nifty features: a load cell sensor that allows you to vary the amount of pressure needed to reach full activation (i.e. how hard you have to press it to get 100%) and in conjunction with the wheel, force feedback that pulses the pedal at the point that the wheels are locked up, in the same way your car's ABS behaves (yes, it still does this when you race with ABS turned off, which is a good thing as we shall see).Being the racing nut I am, I went for the clubsport package, and after a lengthy wait, everything arrived last week (as I have discovered, Fanatec makes great products, but not in a hurry). Three large boxes arrived in my office, which turned out to be the wheel, the shifters, and the pedal set. Work dragged by as you might expect, but I'll confess to practicing some heel-toe work under my desk as I waited for the end of the day to roll around.Setting everything up was fairly easy, although it required a trip to the hardware store to pick up some metric machine screws for securing the wheel to the stand (the included screws would have worked perfectly if the holes in the mounting plate on the stand had been chamfered on the underside instead of the top). The pedals, being solid aluminium and therefore rather heavy (10.8 lbs, 4.9 kg) didn't even need securing to the wheel stand, unlike the Microsoft pedals which had been velcroed into place. So, wheel attached, pedals plugged in, H-pattern gearshifter attached, go go go!Ouch. The first race was brutal. Well, technically, it was the second race, as I needed to calibrate the shifter so that it didn't think I was changing from 5th to 5th. As quite a few people will have found, moving from the standard controller to a wheel tends to hamper laptimes. Well, the jump from two pedals and 270˚ steering to three pedals, a gear stick, and 540˚ steering (you can select between 900˚, 540˚, 270˚, or 210˚) was every bit as huge. Despite driving a car with a manual transmission every day, going through the motions in front of the TV felt strange for the first half hour.With the original pedals, left-foot braking was completely natural, and changing gears was just a flick of the finger and didn't require taking a hand off the wheel. No more. Accelerating through the gears wasn't a problem, but arriving at the end of a straight in 5th and having to brake, change down to 2nd, and turn into and then through a hairpin wasn't pretty the first time I tried. Nor the second, or the fifth. For the time being, trailbraking was out of the question. Better to brake and change down in a straight line than worry about turn-in. So I was slower than I'd been before, but despite that, the experience was much more rewarding. Being able to steer through 540˚ meant I could place the car more accurately, and the force feedback was greatly improved over the MS wheel. One F-class endurance race later, and I think I was getting pretty close to my old lap times, but even now the fastest cars remain a challenge. Maybe it's old age, but S-class cars that were fine with the controller became too fast for the Microsoft wheel, which seemed to reset my preferred skill level at A or even B class, although this was offset with a corresponding jump in enjoyment. Moving from the Microsoft wheel to the Fanatec has seen a similar drop in skill (C- and D-class is now where I find myself most often), but as before, the fun factor jumped just as my ability dropped, and the thought of going back to the Xbox 360 controller hasn't entered my mind, even if it would mean faster lap times.Just because you can use a standard gearshift and a clutch, you don't necessarily have to; the wheel has flappy paddles (these are metal, just behind the spokes on the wheel, and a joy to use) or a sequential shift (pull back to go up a gear, push forward for down), and since realism is what we're going for, using a clutch pedal and gear stick in a car that has neither doesn't seem right.Returning to a theme from the first page, let's briefly revisit the wheel stand before heading to the wrap-up. This might be the best part of the package. It's certainly the one I'm most familiar with, since it's been in my possession since the end of 2008 (I did say there was a long time between ordering and shipping). Like many of you, my console is in the living room, along with the big TV. A dedicated driving game rig would be marvellous, and if we lived in a 4000 sq ft suburban McMansion, that might be feasible, but your average DC row house has less than half that space. The wheel stand gives you a stable platform to use a driving wheel but it folds flat in seconds and can be stored under the couch or in a closet when not in use, something that will certainly appeal to anyone else you share your abode with. It's fantastically well made, and I can't recommend it enough.Some issuesBut enough of that, back to the main event. So far I've told you I'm slower but having a lot more fun. But is it all roses? Well, there are a couple of issues I've encountered that I should pass on. Using the H-pattern gearshift is a hoot, but be careful when using it in conjunction with a rewind feature. Lets say you're approaching turn 10 at Road Atlanta. You shift down from 5th or 6th to 2nd, but you turned in too late and went into the gravel. No worries—hit the select button to rewind (to be found at the bottom of the vertical spoke) and try it again. Except when you resume, your car is suddenly in 2nd instead of 5th. As you can imagine, this does bad things to the gearbox, clutch, and sometimes the engine too, so when travelling back in time, REMEMBER TO CHANGE GEAR!I've also found that it's easier to lose the back end of the car, which I'm putting down to a combination of more sensitive steering and a more responsive throttle. No more turning in and mashing the loud pedal in RWD cars. Oh, and if you have one of the original Xbox Live headsets you're going to need to order a new one, as they changed the design and only the new ones fit properly. Finally, the leather wrapping the wheel is nice, but it's not really in the same league as an actual Porsche steering wheel, and the edge where it finishes on the back of the spokes could have been done a little more elegantly.Those are my only real gripes, though. The A/B/X/Y buttons are much better to use than the Microsoft wheel, especially the Y button which lets you look behind you. Even though I'm slower, I'm having more fun, and there's a lot of flexibility depending on how involved a gaming session I'm looking for.ConclusionsSo, should you buy it? Here I think the answer has to be, "it depends." There's no getting away from the fact that which ever option you choose, you're going to be spending a fair bit of money, so for casual racing fans I'd argue that the $100 MS wireless wheel represents a better investment. On the other hand, if you're a petrolhead like me, and you play a lot of racing games, then yes, I'd recommend it., Especially if you want a wheel that will work both with Forza and GT5 (if and when the latter ever actually comes out).As yet I'm unable to report on how the wheel performs with the PS3; I'm aware that a demo of GT5 has come out, but until they ship the actual game Sony's not getting my money for a console that won't get used. I've not heard of any massive bugs, though. If you already have pedals and don't want to spend that much, the Pure Edition will work with the Microsoft wheel pedals, and those from the Logitech G25, so you've got that option. The Clubsport package is now sold out, so you'd have to buy the Clubsport pedals, shifters, RF dongle, and Pure Edition together to get the lot, but if you can live without the superduper pedals then the $350 Turbo S Wheel might be everything you need.Happy racing!
