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Pro Direct Drive Steering Wheels

VR Simulators are pleased to announce our most exciting upgrade yet with the arrival of our new pro direct drive steering wheels. Over the last few months we have been extensively testing various setups and have finally delivered the new OSW pro direct drive steering wheels onto all of our fourteen sims. We have also added our converted Formula Rims from Fanatec. These rims make driving the sims much easier but also much more realistic by limiting rotation to 400 degrees.

Why use pro direct drive steering wheels?

The major difference with pro direct drive steering wheels compared to a traditional belt driven wheel is the response time of your inputs. With direct drive your steering inputs are instantly sent through the electric motor rather than through a series of belts and pulleys in standard belt driven wheel. This makes driving with no assists easier as you will be able to react and input quicker to catch the “back end” of the car when loosing traction and spinning the car. The force feedback generated with the motors is also more realistic and you get far more kickback than you would over a standard pc gaming wheel. Combined with our new fanatec inverted v3 pedals the sense of realism cannot be matched commercially anywhere in Europe.

Fanatec Formula Rims

One major issue we noticed when running the original steering wheels is that beginners who drive in real life would feed the wheel like they do in their normal road cars. Our cars are set up with 400 degrees of rotation from full lock right to full lock left. This would mean that after 200 degrees each way the additional rotation would not turn the car any more. With the new formula rims there is two handles that prevent you from trying to feed the wheel. This makes beginners much better at grasping real race driving over traditional road car driving.