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Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program Summary [8.5 out of 10]
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The Logitech Driving Force GT PS3 Wheel is an excellent driving wheel with a good build quality at a solid price point that will satisfy any casual or avid racer. Unfortunately not every game makes correct or full use of driving wheels, but the ones that do (e.g. Gran Turismo 5) create a surreal driving experience that will satisfy any driving fan.
For the purist that must reproduce the true racing experience in his or her house, we would still suggest the Logitech G25; it is, however, more than twice the price of the Driving Force GT.
What's in the Box?
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It's a good sized box, about the size of a Logitech 2.1 PC speaker package. As shown on the box there was an instruction booklet, pedals and wheel (with integrated shifter).
What I was really surprised to find in the box, and it might have been a toss-in for some promotion because I don't see it mentioned on Logitech's site, was a full copy of Gran Turismo 5: Prologue. If you already have it, then use this copy (if you get one) as a gift I suppose. If you didn't have a copy, you will be so freaking happy they included one, it does the wheel justice while other games don't:
After spending time with this wheel and especially Gran Turismo 5, I would have to say that you cannot review a driving wheel, or al teast this driving wheel, without having a copy of Gran Turismo 5 to test with. The experience is so much better with GT than it is with other "arcade" racers that it's a night-and-day difference. More on that later though under "Driving Experience".
For anyone that has used a force-feedback wheel in the past 10 years, I think the form factor of these things has always been the same. A life-sized steering wheel attached to a tapered base that is fastened to a table or desk of some kind using clamps or grips of some kind; this is very similar:
As you can see the steering wheel reproduces all of the 17 or so buttons you find on a standard PS3 controller. The red wheel and "enter" button on the bottom right can be used for navigation and confirmation as well as in-game adjustments for games that support it (like Gran Turismo 5).
I'm not sure what the split-circle +/does on the bottom left, I never got it to really do anything in any games.
In addition to the full-sized wheel the base unit includes an integrated shifter. The shifter doesn't have much play up or down as it behaves more like those auto-shifters (flappers) you find on some higher end cars that let you drive in automatic or shift automatically if you want. It just clicks up or down as you are driving and a spring re-centers it when you let go. It doesn't click "up" or "down" into position like a gear shifter, it's more of a toggle action.
Of course you have your pedal plate. I'm a size 11.5" and the plate felt like a nice size, sturdy, good resistence on the brake and gas and my foot never fell off it or slipped off. It's a perfect size.
I did find that the pedals stood upright a bit too vertical, so sitting in a chair and playing, my foot was always cocked up when I was off the gas or break. This made switching from gas to brake with 1 foot uneasy for me and I ended up driving with both feet instead; I just couldn't flip from gas and then cock my foot up enough to clear the brake as I moved it over to the left to push it back down. What ended up happening is that the side of my foot would hit the break as I moved my foot to the left and push the whole pedal pad over.
I would also point out that the pedal pad would be perfect on carpet because it integrates a retractable spike-strip on the bottom of it that can click out, and dig into the carpet. On hard/wood floors like I have, it was moving around a little bit, so I secured it by pushing it up against the table you see in the picture above. I believe there are little rubber feet on it but they don't do as good a job stopping it from moving as the carpet-spike-strip would if it was on carpet.
Keep that in mind if you are on a hard floor and don't have a way to secure it in place, I'm sure putting it on a mat on your hard floor would work fine (like a yoga mat) or something else that will cause it to stay put.
Hooking it all Up
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As with all racing wheels since the dawn of mankind, you fasten the wheel base that everything hooks to, to a table or desk using clamps that tighten to hold it in place:
If you don't have a table or desk that this can be fastened to, you will need to get one if you plan on using this. I lucked out in that our coffee table had a lip on it that I could hook to, but I have a friend that has a low coffee table that he hooked the wheel to that provides a lack-luster driving experience as he is bent over the wheel.
Someone else that came over to try the wheel out didn't have a coffee table at all in front of his TV and was wondering how he would use it; my only comment to him is that he couldn't unless he had something to hook it to.
The base unit is front-heavy with the steering wheel; meaning if you didn't secure it to the table, it would happily fall steering-wheel-first off the table onto the ground. You can't just set it on something and use it; it needs to be clamped down.
Also you will want it attached to something sturdy because you can get to fighting with the force-feedback and turning the wheel and moving quite a bit while racing. This could move whatever you have the wheel attached to in more vibrant racing moments; something I did with our coffee table because it has wheels on it.
For example, if you tried to hook this to a bar stool or something, I don't think that would work out really well.
After getting the base-unit in place, everything plugs to it into sockets in the back of the base-unit, right behind the shifter. You will plug in:
* Power Adapter
* Pedal Plate
* PS3
The wire length between all 3 of these things is pretty liberal, so unless you are trying to spread yourself across your entire living room you should be OK.
The shortest connection is from the pedal plate to the wheel (understandably, since the two will always be near each other) and uses what looks like an old-school COM port connection.
In what I consider the most important connection, the base-unit to the PS3, Logitech was pretty generous. You have a 10' or 11' USB cable to connect to your PS3. In the picture above I am about 10' from the PS3 and that is about as far away as I am going to get without a USB extender.
The power adapter also had a generous lead on it, which I plugged into the wall behind me, about a 5' run total and there was still plenty of slack on that cable.
For those curious, the power adapter is one of those "huge bricks that I have to plug in and will cover a bunch of other plugs" types. The prongs themselves are set high enough on the brick though, that if you are plugging into a wall socket, you can use the top or bottom socket without blocking the other one.
If you are using it on a power strip, I'd suggest making it the last plug off the power strip so it hangs off and doesn't block other plugs cause it will. It's a bit bigger than a deck of cards or there-abouts in size.
Build Quality
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My gut reaction out of the box was "meh" honestly. I have used force-feedback wheels in the past and only once can I remember being impressed with the non-plastic build quality.
However, after using the wheel for a while and playing quite a few games with it, I came to find the build quality above-average. The wheel is solid feeling, it's got a leather-wrap feel to it, the force-feedback is dynamic and consistent and the pedals were sturdy and performed well. If you want to turn the force-feedback up, the wheel can really wrestle with you, so if you like a powerful experience, you can certainly get it with this wheel.
The pedals didn't feel amazing to me out of the box, but playing with them I didn't have any complaints, besides the comment above about how vertical the pedals stand.
The gas is easy to depress but sping-loaded in a firm fashion to make it somewhat hard to push down with your hands. And the brake is firmly spring loaded, but in a smooth, shock-absorber way that makes it satisfying to use and feels more like a real car.
The shifter does feel a little rinky-dink because it's just a plastic knob on a metal pole that is attached to a spring-loaded click-shift mechanism.If you want that tactile feedback, you'll want to get the Logitech G25 Racing Wheel.
If you are a build-quality nut and don't mind paying for you, you really should be looking at the Logitech G25 Racing Wheel; that's more of a direct race-car replica, complete with metal parts, full shifter, clutch, etc. But it's more than twice the price of this wheel (just a warning).
Driving Experience
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First a list of the games we tried (in alphabetical order):
* Burnout Paradise
* Dirt
* Gran Turismo 5: Prologue
* Grid
* MotorStorm
* Nascar '09
The "awesomeness" of this wheel (and I imagine all racing wheels) depends 100%, completely on how well the game you are playing implements it.
Let that above statement sink in... you could spent $900 on a wheel, and if the game you are playing doesn't have a tuned wheel experience, you will likely go back to using a controller.
Gran Turismo 5 is excellent, Grid and Dirt are bad; even though there are a ton of adjustments for the wheel, I wasn't able to find a combination of settings for those two games that made them playable for me with the wheel... there is a certain amount of arcadey lag that occurs between the wheel and what your car does that screws you up in tight spots, sharp turns, etc.
You spend a lot of time spinning out and then spinning out more as you try and get straightened out on the track.
Your mileage may vary and your tollerance may vary, but this was a comment another friend of mine with the Logitech G25 Racing Wheel echoed about those two games as well. Some of the bad controls can lead to road-rage though if you are expecting a perfect-simulation-experience from all games:
I tried this wheel out, along with my wife, our friends and their children. I didn't see anyone "not get it", it's pretty straight forward and accessible to anyone that has driven before. Although the children seemed to pick it up no problem and like the idea that they were racing "for real".
While the wheel does expand the experience of driving, especially if you stick yourself in "first person" perspective in the cockpit of the cars of some of these games, bad response from some games can ruin that experience just as fast.
Conclusion
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After some time with this wheel and quite a few titles, I think I've come to the conclusion that if you are a Gran Turismo fan/junkie, and plan on getting it, this wheel or one of Logitech's others is a must-get along with the game.
If you just like racing games, especially more arcadey ones, you should probably skip getting a force-feedback wheel. The wheels themselves are excellent, but they are only as good as their weakest link. If the game you are playing wasn't tuned for the wheel you are just going to end up going back to the default PS3 controller after a while anyway so you can win races.
It's unfortunate, but with a lot of the problem titles, I didn't find playing with the 20 settings or so for force-feedback in most of them helped at all. Some I couldn't even see a difference between a 1/10 or a 10/10 "Force Feedback" setting.
Areas of Improvement
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As with all our reviews, we don't like to criticize without providing suggestions on how to improve the product, so here are our suggestions for the Logitech Driving Force GT PS3 Wheel:
* Any of the following individually (realizing that all of them together would increase the price too high):
o A clutch on the pedal pad
o Gear flippers on the wheel for easy shifting
o A Shifter that included two well-defined gears and not the small-range-of-motion up/down click-shifter that is on there now so you feel cooler throwing it into gears
* Wireless connection to the PS3 (Is that possible? I don't know how much data is being transfered from the wheel to the PS3)
* A chart or guide that has "Best suggested settings" for the most popular driving games. You can spend a lot of time messing with the Force Feedback settings for different driving games. It would be nice to have "recommended" settings out of the box since the sampling of popular driving games on the PS3 is so small, it shouldn't be hard to do this.
* MINOR: Easier to reach Start button (for pausing) on the wheel. The phone rang while I was playing a few times and I fumbled and crashed 3 times trying to pause the game. I can't imagine getting interrupted while driving is an uncommon thing for a video game. Would have been nice.
* SUPER-MINOR: Working horn button, there is a horn button in the middle, and it lights up and depresses, but none of the games I tried it on did anything. This is super minor, but I like honking a lot before smashing into people.
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I purchased GT5 Prologue and played for 2 days using the Dual Shock controller, while the game was fun, I was having trouble running well on several tracks. Over the weekend, I went to a local store which had GTP5 and the racing wheel setup as a display. After sitting down and using the wheel for about 10 minutes, I knew it was a must have. The wheel itself feels well made of durable products, the rubber on the wheel makes it very comfortable. It also has reduced my times in the races where I have used the wheel. The setup was easy and control layout is easy learn. Some reviews I have seen discount the wheel because it does not have a clutch or shifter with actual gears set out. But with the $100 I saved, I am willing to live without theses features.
There are a few downsides, I was hoping for a wireless wheel, but it connects to the PS3 with a USB cable. However, the cable is a good length and allows you plenty of space to move across a room. Also, you have to plug the wheel into an electrical outlet. While this makes for more wires, it also allows for some great force feedback and opposed to a rumble effect.
I am looking forward to using the wheel with upcoming racing games and some old ones. And my favorite thing about the wheel, it the GT logo that lights up in the center of the wheel.
My advise is to get the wheel if you can. Now if they would only release the full GT5 (with damage to the cars please!)
Wanted to update this review to mention the product I found to use the Racing Wheel. I tried small tables, a tv tray and an IKEA laptop table. None of them worked because of they were to tall or short and the tables that could be adjusted were to wobbly or slipped. After much searching, I found the Wheel Stand Pro which is made in Poland. Unfortunately, it was more expensive than the Racing Wheel, but it was a great buy. You can adjust the height, angle of the wheel and distance to the pedals. It is made of steel so it is solid and has sturdy clamps to fold it up and store easily. If you are looking for a great way to use your Racing Wheel, I highly recommend you check out Wheel Stand Pro site. Also, shipping was great. They emailed me on a Friday the stand was on the way and I received it on Monday.
Buy Logitech PlayStation 3 Driving Force GT Racing Wheel Now
I have played the GT franchise games since GT2 on PS1. Needless to say, I have plenty of race time behind the "wheel of the iconic Dual Shock series of controllers. With that in mind, I can never go back to those days after experiencing the Driving Force GT.
The build quality is very solid, as is expected with logitech products in general, and feels very good in your hands. It has a good amount of weight to not feel cheap, but is not heavy to the point of inconvenience. The size of the wheel is smaller than an actual steering wheel, but is of comfortable proportions for long racing sessions.
The control layout is very simple, and translates well from the standard controller scheme. Navigating menus requires zero adjustment time. The real time adjustment knob is promising, and will no doubt be a great tool for the full version of GT5.
The pedals are well built, and are on a solid base, which is an appropriate size and weight to be stable during gameplay. The increase in pedal pressure from the accelerator to the brake pedal is a nice touch as well. I remember feathering the gas and brake way back when, using the digital button layout of the original PS1 controller, and being amazed at the improvement by using the analog buttons on the Dual Shock 2. The ability to fine tune the amount of throttle is simply amazing, and is something truly to see seen for yourself.
As another reviewer said, the wheel does come with a number of wires. The usb connector is approximately 2-3 times longer than the standard usb charger that comes with the PS3, making it adequate for most home setups I have enough cord length to play at a comfortable distance from a 60 inch display. The external AC power adapter is not absurdly large, and has plenty of cord length as well.
The existence of these wires is a necessary evil, but is well worth it. The force feedback is outstanding. The wheel fights back when attacking turns at high speed, respond with great detail when you come off the tarmac, and translates the effects of weight shift on high speed straights in a way that simply cannot be done with a conventional controller. It gives me a chill to think what this will be like on the rally courses in GT5!
I cannot begin to do this product justice in words. Simply put, if you have the disposable income, and plan to put in some seat time with GT5, be it Prologue or the full game coming out next year, you must try this wheel. At least check out a demo unit you won't be disappointed.
Read Best Reviews of Logitech PlayStation 3 Driving Force GT Racing Wheel Here
Excellent build quality, very solid with great force feedback(vibration).
Auto calibration whenever plugged into PS3 or a racing game gets loaded or quit. GT5P worked flawlessly as well as the Dirt demo, GTHD, GT3/4.
Full 900 degree turn radius is very nice. Wheel is 10 3/4" in diameter measured. It auto centers as you accelerate out of a turn, making it feel just like a real car. Like after you turn, then let the steering wheel slide through your hands back to center. I thought you had to manually turn it back to center it but it does this automatically. Very nice indeed.
Gas pedal is ok but brake pedal is firm and responsive.
Sequential shifter is great but I use the paddle shifters more and only use the shifter for quick gear changes when I can't reach the paddle buttons fast enough. Such as coming out of a turn and needing to up shift quickly.
The tuning knob is great for those on the fly adjustments when in game and you WILL want to adjust certain aspects when in races. Assuming you know what your doing.
Having the ability to quit to the XMB from in game is great but only works for GT5 Prologue so far. You can also move around the XMB with this as a controller.
Overall, this is an excellent steering wheel for the money. Having played on a G25 as well the only real difference is the 6 speed stick shift and price. Well of course, the leather and metal accents on the G25, too. It's a bit better in feel compared to the older driving force pro in steering, feedback and pedal pressure to me. It's very much like the G25. Remember though, some cars have a 7th gear so it kinda kills the feel of the 6 speed only G25, so you have to shift with the button or use it as sequential to be able to access the 7th gear. No biggy if you like shifting with a stick, but still lame. Also, the tuning knob helps alot if you know how to use it right. So, if you gotta have a stick shift, get the G25. If you want to save some money(about $80-120) and don't care about the "stick shift" too much, then the official Driving Force GT wheel is the one to get.
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Just got this wheel the other day from Amazon, and I can say that this is the best wheel I have used to date.
I previously used a Thrustmaster Enzo, which while it had strong force feedback, had a bad dead spot, and wasn't very easy to drive. Also, the pedals needed to have a 50lbs dumbbell set behind them so they wouldn't move. Also, the feedback was rather clunky, but better than nothing.
Next, I moved on to the Logitech Momo (which is essentially a Driving Force Pro for the PC; same motor, gears, and bearing system). A better wheel than the Enzo in some areas; the pedal setup was miles better, with the (probably) patented carpet tack thingy found on most Logitech Wheels, but also not as strong a feedback motor as on the the Enzo. Also, the force feedback never felt as fluid as I would have liked, and as a result I sometimes didn't have the confidence I should have when trying that overtaking maneuver at speed.
Which brings me to this wheel, the Logitech Driving Force GT. I purchased it mainly because my girlfriend has a PS2, has GT4, but doesn't have a wheel, and my Logitech Momo wasn't recognized by the PS2. As I'm sure you all know, playing GT4 without a wheel just simply won't do. Also, I'm buying a PS3 as soon as GT5 comes out, so I thought I might was well kill several birds with a single stone.
This thing is the bee's knees. Yes, it works on your PC, in case you were wondering. So if you've got anything other than the G25 wheel, get this one, and sell the one to cover your losses. I play racing sims a lot; GT Legends, GTR2, rFactor, LFS, and just for fun (not really a sim), Test Drive Unlimited. On the PS2, just GT4. I haven't purchased a PS3 yet mainly due to the fact that the ONLY game I care about for the PS3 is GT5.
So now that you know that it works on your PC, PS2, and PS3, I'll try to let you know how well it works.
I've used the fabled G25 wheel before. It's $300, and I'm not so willing to shell out that kind of money for a video game controller, but yes, it is nice, and is one of the best force feedback wheels you can purchase. Well, this one uses the same force feedback motor, gears, and sample rate, and cost less than half as much. It is miles ahead of my Logitech Momo. 900' of rotation I thought at first would be a gimmic, and something I wouldn't ever use... wrong. It makes the fine control of the car that much more realistic, and therefore makes driving quickly and precisely that much easier. It makes for a totally immersing driving experience, which is what a force feedback wheel controller should be all about.
The wheel is thinner than the Momo, but a lot more comfortable in hand. It's also much larger in diameter than the Momo or Driving Force Pro, which really helps with the overall feel. I also found the build quality much higher than the Momo and Thrustmaster Enzo wheels I have used. The wheel simply doesn't budge under load, whereas the other wheels you could flex the wheel up, down, and sideways while driving. Most of the buttons on the controller can be mapped in the PC, but not all. More than enough though.
The force feedback is forceful, but really, REALLY precise. There is a lovely deadzone right at the middle that just smooths in to progressive feedback, and there is no sudden feedback area, it's just so smooth. I can't say enough about the force feedback; simply awesome, very much like driving a real car at speed. The amount of data sent through the steering wheel is just awesome. You can trail brake going into corners, use the throttle to turn the car coming out, and it never feels unnatural or forced. It just feels fluid, and really gives you confidence to drive faster, find a better line, brake later, and get on the power sooner.
For those reviewers who said the wheel has too much feedback? Go to the gym. If you're having problems turning in with this wheel, it's you, not the wheel. The pedals are the same as on the Momo, and while not world class, like on the G25, they do the job, and again have the retractable carpet tack system found as found on the Momo, which makes it completely immobile on carpet.
So in conclusion, if you have the older Driving Force Pro, sell it. Get this one instead; it's in a different league. The fact that you can use it on three different platforms is a huge plus in my book as well. I promise you won't be sorry, and will be grinning like an idiot for weeks to come.
