Thrustmaster Ferrari GT Experience Racing Wheel for PS3 and PC

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This is a great wheel for the ps3. I have burnout paradise, blur, split second, need for speed shift, and motorstorm. It works great with all of them. It has a feature to where you can map any of the buttons to different buttons. The gas pedal is automatically mapped to the R2 button as the brake button is automatically mapped to the L2 button by default. It has different sensitivity settings and a great feel as well as button placement. I also have the logitech gt wheel which is also a great wheel but I find myself using this wheel more. Mainly because it works on all racing games, the gt wheel only works with some games. It doesn't have force feedback which is the only real drawback I have to say about this wheel. I bought this wheel before I bought the gt wheel and I'm glad I did. I have never had any problems with this wheel so far, just make sure you plug it in before you turn on your ps3 with the wheel switched to the ps3 instead of pc. With that said I have plugged it in after I turned on my playstation in the middle of a game while paused and it still worked. Overall great wheel, very universal as far as compatablility with other games, and wheel and pedal unit just feels great while driving.

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If you are dedicated fan of racing games, and specialize in driving in them exclusively, the Ferrari Experience Racing Wheel is the wrong product for you, and you probably know that already. For an average gamer like me, who occasionally dabbles in racing games, the hundreds of dollars needed to get some of that gear is an overkill. I still like to have better control than a standard dualshock gamepad, and amazingly, this racing wheel provides it for the about same price. The wheel itself is solidly built of sturdy plastic, and very well laid out with the paddle up/down shifters and all the action buttons. With the strong clamp, mounting this wheel sturdily should be no problem at all. You can however forget about playing it in your lap, the tension of the bugee mechanism makes that impossible. The wheel is a bit on the small side, and the bungee cord tension mechanism is stiff, but the steering control provided by it far surpasses the dualshock thumbsticks. The pedals are very sturdy as well, and provide a nice amount of control over the gas and braking. They do unfortunately tend to slide around a lot, and I ended up mounting them with velcro. Once I did that, they stayed put. I lucked out, and had an old wooden TV stand laying around that provided the perfect mounting setup for this product. If you don't have something like that, a visit to the local store to pick a cheap one is highly recommended. I also love the programmability that this wheel has. Due to this, it is a much better choice than the Ferrari Universal 5-in-1 Racing Wheel, also by Thrustmaster. That wheel is slightly cheaper, but does not allow you to change much, making it potentially less compatible with games. Spend the few extra bucks, and get this one instead.

I tried and made this wheel work in Burnout Paradise, Gran Turismo 5, and Need for Speed Shift. With the programmable buttons, and the fact that the wheel is detected as a standard PS3 controller, this should work with almost any game. The only thing this wheel can't be programmed to have is the horizontal axis of the right thumb stick, and most racing games (with the exception of Modnation Racers) don't use that axis for anything but camera control.

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The quality of this wheel is simply great. From the paddle shifters to the pedals to the wheel itself, it is hard to believe that they sell this thing for less than forty bucks. The pedals have great resistance and ample amount of travel. Anyone who has ever used a cheaply made wheel knows that if the pedals don't have much resistance or travel, then you can't control the car because you either have 100% throttle or 0% throttle 100% brake or 0% brake. Well, with this system, that is not a problem at all. You can easily ride around at half throttle or apply half brake. The extra resistance for these pedals does mean that you need some sort of mount or ballast to keep the base in place. If you want a cheap solution, do what I do and put a 10 pound weight on the base. There are also screw holes in the base so that you could easily attach to plywood or something else. The wheel also has ample resistance with the "bungie cord" system. You will need to mount this to a table or cockpit, but this is easy because the built-in clamp is very sturdy and works with tables of all kinds. Even the paddle shifters are high quality with ample resistance. I just can't say enough about this wheel. I want to save up for the Logitech G27, but for now I am very happy using this quality alternative at 1/10th the price. BTW, I use this wheel with Gran Turismo 5 for the PS3. It detects the wheel as a regular controller, but this is not a problem at all. Just remap the buttons correctly and you are off to the races... The diameter of the wheel is a little small for my taste, and the force feedback doesn't work with GT5, but those are very minor issues when you consider the price tag.

02-01-2011 Update

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Just rented "Dirt 2" for the PS3 and found out this wheel doesn't work at all with this game. I'm very disappointed. The wheel is still great for the price, but just wanted to warn people about this particular game.

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I should start by saying that this was the first steering wheel I've purchased for my PS3. So I can't compare it to others.

I played "Dirt" and was right away disappointed by the large amount of steering I had to do for the small amount of turning the car in the game would do. So I immediately put it in the higher sensitivity mode. This was better, but still not great. For instance I would turn the wheel 1/2 of the range to the left, but the car would only very slightly turn. Not much more turning of the wheel would result in the car making the maximum turn. So basically the range wasn't consistent.

Then I threw on "Motorstorm". The performance was MUCH better. The range of steering was right in line with the steering range of the vehicle on the screen.

One note: I had to restart my PS3 in order for the peddles to be detected. For some reason when I plugged it into the PS3 after it was already booted it detected the steering wheel, but not the peddles.

So, bottom line, for the price it seems like a good deal!!

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I have had this wheel for about 4 months now, no problems so far. While I don't actually play racing games all that often, the ones I do have work fantastically with the wheel/pedals. The two main games I play are Dirt 2 and Grid, these are both Codemasters games, and the great thing is under their control settings there is an actual preset for this wheel to make setting it up a whole lot easier. I'm assuming all future Codemasters releases will have this preset available as well. The only game I couldn't get to work was GTA IV, they finally enabled wheel support in a patch not too long ago but this isn't one of the wheels they made compatible. Overall construction, it does feel kinda flimsy but it is actually pretty tough...I've put it through a decent amount, it also kinda sounds like some people just get lucky when buying one, some people get very unlucky. Either way if you can't afford a $200 wheel/pedal combo like me but want something you are going to use occasionally then this is a good buy.

Edit Update 12/24/2012 Device is still working fine, I don't use it as much as I used to but nothing on it has broken yet. I have been using it to control vehicles in Planetside 2! (With Xpadder software)