Xbox 360 Steering Wheel Blog

If you play racing games long enough with the same steering wheel and pedal set you inevitably come to a moment when some of the precision is lost and random, sudden movement of in-game controls is noticed. The car turns on its own, the throttle pauses for a moment before suddenly revving up, brakes locking up even if you’re being smooth, and so on. The reason for that is, although all mechanical parts wear out with time, what often suffers first are the potentiometers.

Potentiometers are the heart of your steering wheel and pedal controllers. They are small round-shaped (mostly) mechanical or optic devices, that converts and transfers the physical input from you to controller’s mainboard and thus to the system, so it can be analyzed and used by the racing game. That is done by measuring the resistance depending on how much the wheel is turned or how far a pedal has been pushed.

Unless you own one of the top wheels available out there, which come with very expensive set of potentiometers that are guranateed to last for a very long time, or if your model uses an optic pot that virtually has no wear whatsoever, the chances are you would end up with a dirty and eventually, worn out potentiometer. But not to fear because you can prolong the life of your pots by at least a double.

The importance here is to identify your potentiometer is the cause of the erratic movement, with slow then fast reactions (spikes) of the steering, throttle, braking or clutch (if you have a clutch pedal). Once you’re relatively sure the problem does not originate from your game settings or drivers, you have to figure out carefully how to open your wheel or pedal set, unless of course you haven’t done it before. It depends on the brand and model of the controller, so there are no general rules here, but it usually involves the use of a simple screwdriver to remove the bottom cover and then observe the internals until you spot the potentiometers. Remember, they look like little round knobs and are mostly connected directly to the movable part of the controller through their shafts.

The majority of pots have a little hole on their back and unless they’re completely covered, you’d be able to clean them without having to detach and open them. The idea here is to clean the track inside that does all the resistance measurement, so spray a little WD-40 or graphite-based cleaner through the hole, then move the corresponding controller a couple of times to spread the fluid. If you have to open the potentiometer to reach the track that needs cleaning, be extra careful not to detach any wires and not to break the pot’s casing. It usually has little metal legs that you need to bend a bit before you can pull it apart, then after cleaning the track (be careful not to scratch it!), you have to push them back so it’s closed up properly and put the pot back in its nest, connecting it with the movable part.

It must be said that despite the efficiency of cleaning a potentiometer to prolonging its life, the mechanical wear eventually reaches a level when it simply becomes impossible for it to function as it should. Due to the fact that the layer of material onto the track inside that provides all of the resistance measurement simply becomes too thin and doesn’t provide good contact with the shaft’s pins. But as I said, it takes a lot to reach that state, unless we’re talking about steering wheels and pedals that use cheap crappy pots.

Technorati Tags: clean potentiometer, cleaning pots, pedal pot, steering wheel pot

It seems I’ve been talking about Logitech wheels in the majority of my posts but there’s really not much of a choice there - they are just that good and popular. And here, again, the focus is on one of their two PS3 steering wheel controllers - the Driving Force GT.

I happen to have found an excellent article over at Techgage.com written by William Kelly who, like many of us, has been a major video racing junkie as long as he can remember.

“With the advent of HD gaming and the HDTV, it was only natural for us armchair road warriors to graduate from the PC to the console.” - he says and I can’t agree more! Although there’s something on PC that consoles still lack it’s an undeniable fact that racing games have improved massively and the console scene is becoming more and more plausible even for the hardcore simracers.

What’s good about this PS3 steering wheel is the ease with which you just plug it in and drive, it works so well even with the default settings, so it’s a blessing for those of you who hate bothering with options. As William says “Within five minutes I was driving deeper into the corners without a second thought. Braking was also something that was improved so much that I am failing to find the words to describe my feelings. My previous fastest lap times were no match for my new-found level of control.” Great, huh!

I must admire the guy for finding the time and patience to take some nice photos and test out the features, and then write an article about it. It’s an excellent read about an excellent PS3 steering wheel, so if you’ve had enough of torturing yourself with the inefficient default controller check out the Driving Force GT article.

Technorati Tags: logitech, playstation, ps3 steering wheel, racing games

For being as glamorous as it is the Playstation 3 console is seriously lacking in providing a decent number of choices of controllers for the passionate racing games player. Despite the increasing number of titles being written or converted to support that platform the same cannot be said for the PS3 steering wheel manufacturers as of yet. Worse than that, there are some who apparently attempted to take advantage of all that by creating something of a doubtful quality in hope to fool those in need. The P3 Racer Wheel & Pedals by Madcatz is a bright example.

It is mind boggling, considering the years of experience in making steering wheel controllers and the overall saturation of the market with high quality innovations, that Madcatz produced such a PS3 steering wheel and put their already not so stable reputation under threat. Well for their (and the customers who fell for it) regret, it led to nothing good.

Of course, for starters, the P3 Racer is cheap enough to catch the eye and honestly, one can’t look forward to anything of an exceptional quality in that case, but you would at least expect that it is functional and works properly. Apparently, not nearly so here. What immediately strikes as soon as you open the box is that the rubber coat of the wheel smells. No, seriously, it just stinks. It is so unexpected that at first you might wonder where does this smell come from until you soon realize! As far as I know Madcatz are aware of the issue, but the fact remains that despite that they kept producing stinky models of this PS3 steering wheel. No excuses here, but let’s assume you go further than that and actually attempt to use the wheel.

As you get to hold the wheel and try to put it in the best position for your own comfort you would notice it is quite light and flimsy, which is a good sign that, depending on how much and how hard you play, something (plastic) is going to snap sooner or later. Racers, especially enthusiastic ones, spend a lot of time and effort driving and that always puts a toll on the controller, so it’s imperative that it withstands that for as long as possible. With this PS3 steering wheel you just get the odd feeling it’s not going to last. On the good side, the design is a classic console orientated one - the wheel is at nearly a 45 degree angle to its base and its lap rest feels comfortable enough if you chose not to use a table. Judging by its size it must be said it seems focused on smaller people or children though.

So anyway, you get to the point where you think “OK, I didn’t pay much so I can close my eyes for those rather subjective issues.” and you fire up your favorite PS3 racing game after having connected the wheel. You’re soon going to realize that the default settings of the P3 Racer are rather disturbing. The pedals are assigned button functions so unless the game provides options to completely override the predefined configurations you’re stuck with on/off throttle and brake if you chose to use them. In other words, no analog smooth movement and if you want that you would have to switch to the flaps behind the wheel which is not very practical when you’re steering a lot. If you can re-assign the controls, the pedals are actually not bad at all. Another thing that as far as I was concerned was impossible to get rid off is the default dead-zone range of the steering wheel. For a wheel that provides the classic 270 degree range it is just inexplicable why it was configured with so much % of a dead-zone. Honestly, you may be able to close your eyes to all the other issues, more or less, but the dead-zone issue really puts a major handicap on this PS3 steering wheel. If someone has come up with a solution for this, great. But I believe most people would rather not bother and just prefer a controller they can plug right in and use without much hassle.

So what on the surface looks and promises to be a very good PS3 steering wheel, even more so considering the lack of quality choices in the cheaper price range, turns out to be the next mediocre thing. Perhaps for the inexperienced and not so regular player it might just work good enough for awhile and in some way it provides the features it claims to have, also it probably works with any games Madcatz promote it with (have not looked into that), but in any other case you should rather keep away from this PS3 steering wheel.

Technorati Tags: ps3 steering wheel