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Logitech Driving Force: Impressions from my first driving wheel

ourumov

Member
Well, I know it has no 900º degrees, that the force feedback is not as good and that it has no drive shifting stick...
But it was cheap compared with the other and from what I heard from a couple of friends you are nealy never using the insane 900º...
So then I decided to buy the cheap one.

I have to say that this is the first time in my life that I buy a driving wheel. Never before I wanted one. I thought they were really low quality and that they weren't very fun to play with...
I wanted something like the wheels in the arcades and well...in theory, this wheel was all I needed.

Although the thing auto-calibrates by itself, you can also calibrate it by hand but I am always having a bit of trouble finding the exact center position...Anyways no problems here.

I first put GT3 and selected a RX-7 in professional mode. I would lie if I said you that my times were incredibly good and that driving with the wheel it's easier...Actually it isn't but you have to consider that I have to fight with an entire life of driving with controllers. However after the first 10 laps I began getting the trick of driving with the wheel and my times began to improve.
Basically the secret is to automatically "counter-turn" (sorry if the word isn't the right one) after you do the normal turn. This is a thing we just do with a little movement when using DS2 but even with this wheel you have to make your arms work...
Then you begin enjoying the power of the wheel :)
The replays look a lot more interesting when driving with a wheel...There are tons of "Ridge Racer drifting moments", a lot of them not being done in purpose but well they are nice.
I also wanted to play Battle Gear with it...but it was impossible. It seems the PAL version of the game doesn't have wheel support which sucks since one of the main reasons I bought it was to use with Battle Gear.
I'll try to find Burnout 2 cheap...and re-beat it (beat a friend's copy long time ago)...

I haven't tried anything in the PC side...I wanted to play VivaNono with it and perhaps use it with the old GTs on epsxe...but I haven't.
Friends have also recommended me to try some PC games with it such one called Netkar...I doubt it'll run fine on my PC but I'll try.
 
Glad to see you bought your first wheel ouruamover. for future referrence please refer to *THIS THREAD*
 
Well, I just succeeded configuring the wheel for Vivanonno...And then all of a sudden, with RR techno at high volume, a steering wheel + pedals and my 17" 16:9 Sony monitor...I felt like in the MX-5 RR cabinet...jejeje
I enjoyed a lot !!!

It's a bit tricky to configure it...If someone is interested he can find the info here:

http://www.google.es/search?q=cache...rt/gt_force_viva.htm+vivanonno+GT+force&hl=es

Basically you download logitech drivers, then disable pedals as axis, and finally on settings.xml (vivanonno config file) you write:

<joystick><axis handle="X" gas="-Z" brake="-RZ"/><button coin1="8" coin2="9" clutch="10" shift1="12" shift2="14" shift3="15" shift4="13" shift_up="1" shift_down="0" test="7" service="2" view_change="5" pause="4"/></joystick>

One of the nicest gaming experience I have had at home (arcade).
 
ourumov said:
Well, I just succeeded configuring the wheel for Vivanonno...And then all of a sudden, with RR techno at high volume, a steering wheel + pedals and my 17" 16:9 Sony monitor...I felt like in the MX-5 RR cabinet...jejeje
I enjoyed a lot !!!

It's a bit tricky to configure it...If someone is interested he can find the info here:

http://www.google.es/search?q=cache...rt/gt_force_viva.htm+vivanonno+GT+force&hl=es

Basically you download logitech drivers, then disable pedals as axis, and finally on settings.xml (vivanonno config file) you write:

<joystick><axis handle="X" gas="-Z" brake="-RZ"/><button coin1="8" coin2="9" clutch="10" shift1="12" shift2="14" shift3="15" shift4="13" shift_up="1" shift_down="0" test="7" service="2" view_change="5" pause="4"/></joystick>

One of the nicest gaming experience I have had at home (arcade).

so wait a minute...are you getting actual force feedback from Ridge Racer andRave Racer via Vivananno to your wheel? I could've sworn there were no force effects written in the Viva emu...
 
Oh OK thx for the clarification :)
 
Ourmove hw are yo liking the wheel dude?
 
I tried it with epsxe and it was a total disaster. It doesn't work very good with any of the games I tried: RRT4 and GT2.
I also tried it with the model 2 emulator and SGT24h but my computer is crap and the emu runs to slow...

I am looking for something to try it more since ofr now, Rave Racer is the only experience I trully liked. If you have any racing suggestions I am all ears...
 
isamu: Whatever happened to that wheel that you ordered online a few months back? You were raving about it before it even arrived...
 
IM000552.JPG


heres mine. i need to do some more tinkering with it before gt4 releases tho. Need to change the angle of the wheel, and find some way to fix the pedals.
 
mashoutposse said:
isamu: Whatever happened to that wheel that you ordered online a few months back? You were raving about it before it even arrived...

if I remember correctly it didnt turn out to be all that. I think it had a dead spot and no true force feedback. cant remember all the details but I do remember asking him about it.
 
I bought it and sold it to a GAF member. It wasn't true FF but it wasn't all THAT bad either. Just a little to plasticky.

There is some interesting news on the Thrustmaster 360 Modena GT FF wheel however. From a guy on the Xbox Forums

there is a force feedback wheel for the Xbox, the modena 360 force gt, no headset though and it works with rallisport challenge 2 (only a few games produce the force effects if they find the wheel, rsc 2 does, toca does a bit, sega gt and gt online do, pgr 2 does not) it doesnt do choke and clutch but it does cause the wheel to turn if you hit a rumble strip and simulates the wheels being knocked left and right on a gravel road quite well....

Also as its motor driven centralisation it gives a better feeling of center than the other ones that use the old elastic rope centralisation method.

I would recommend this wheel, the only draw back is no headset socket, but all the ones ive used with a headset port feel cheap and dont give a sturdy feeling, they feel too loose.

The interesting thing abou this comment, is that according to him RSC2 supports true FF, something that is a little suprising. Also, the fact that Sega GT also has true FF may mean that Sega hopefully may implement it into OutRun 2. Getting a FF wheel to work with the Xbush is not a problem, albeit a bit expensive...but getting devs to put true FF code into the game is like pulling elephant teeth.
 
Apologize for the bump but ourumov....are you still using vivanno? I can't seem to find any information on it. Where are their forums?

Also what kind of frame rate are you getting in RR?

Do you have full textures enabled?
 
ourumov......have you tried playing RR in Viva with a NeGcon? Does the twist axis work?
 
1. The framerate was 30-40 fps...Keep in mind my system is a Pentium III 667 Mhz with 192 MB RAM and a Geforce II MX....Also known as crap from the sXV...The minimum specs are a Pentium 3 1Ghz and tons of VRAM for textures in full mode. Anyways it was playable.

2. I don't own a Negcon nor a Jogcon so the answer is no...It should work though with the right USB adapter...
 
Thanks for the replies. Are you planning on upgrading your PC to play vivanonno at full speed?

If not, why not?
 
I am planning to upgrade my PC in order to keep a web browser, Visual Studio and Photoshop running at once...
VivaNonno is secondary :P
But yes, as soon as double cores appear I'll consider it ;)
 
Heh heh, I hear ya man. I am going to be shopping around for a notebook that will run RR in Viva at 100% fullspeed. Looks like they want you to have an nVidia card instead of Ati :(

Oh and according to that ini file you posted, neGcon is supported...YIPPEEE!!
 
I am gonna buying a laptop soon and am trying to figure out if Vivanno will allow me to run Rave Racer with full no reduce textures on a GeForce 6800GO with 256mb ram.

OurUmov...didn't they say that a card with 256mb vram should yield the no reduce texture results?
 
Now I have a "decent PC". An Athlon 64 3200+ that runs Viva Nonno at 100 FPS :P
But most important, makes Metropolis Speed Racer playable as well !!!!!

And the answer is yes, 256 MB VRAM are needed for no reduced textures. I am still waiting for a decent GPU..
Both X800 and 6800 seem weaksauce to me...
 
ourumov said:
Now I have a "decent PC". An Athlon 64 3200+ that runs Viva Nonno at 100 FPS :P
But most important, makes Metropolis Speed Racer playable as well !!!!!

HOLY CRAP that's awesome!!! If you're getting a 100FPS on an Anthlon 64 3200 I outta get somewhere around 150-200fps on an Alienware P4 3.6Ghz Laptop with 2GB DDr3 ram and GeForce 6800Go w/256mb.

And the answer is yes, 256 MB VRAM are needed for no reduced textures. I am still waiting for a decent GPU..

6800Go has 256mb Vram :D

Both X800 and 6800 seem weaksauce to me...

eh? see above :)
 
ourumov said:
But most important, makes Metropolis Speed Racer playable as well !!!!!

whoa whoa WHOA... Stop the fucking press!! MSR is a System 22 game and is emulated in VivaNonno? Dude I think you may have been smoking the ganja a bit too much :D
 
PanopticBlue said:
MSR = Dreamcast

But he's not referring to that. We're talking strictly about Viva Nonno here.
 
j00 know what I'm saying PanopticBlue?
 
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