Much worse with wheel than keyboard - suggestions wanted.

What view are you using in games?

When I first got my G25, I found it very hard to use because I was using the rear-view, instead of the in-car view. I felt like I'd wasted the money, until I got used to driving in-car. I never felt comfortable using the in-car view with my keyboard, but I find the opposite with a wheel.

If you haven't been using the in-car view, then try it, so the steering feels natural. After a few days, you'll be pulling perfectly timed drifts, with no need to hit anything :)
 
I'm finding it hard too, fine with Flat Out but in others totally useless. I always use the in car view, rubbish with chase cam view.
 
I find you have to play with the steering and feedback settings in each game to get it right for you.

I also had some steering lag in Colin Mcrae, but setting the 'max pre-rendered frames' to 1 fixes it on nVidia cards.
 
Sir Random said:
What view are you using in games?

When I first got my G25, I found it very hard to use because I was using the rear-view, instead of the in-car view. I felt like I'd wasted the money, until I got used to driving in-car. I never felt comfortable using the in-car view with my keyboard, but I find the opposite with a wheel.

If you haven't been using the in-car view, then try it, so the steering feels natural. After a few days, you'll be pulling perfectly timed drifts, with no need to hit anything :)
Click to expand...

One good thing with Sega rally is that it has got me used to the driver's point of view camera angle. I've always played with a chase cam angle, but Sega rally is so tolerant of inaccurate driving (it's like inflating the bouncy tubes alongside a bowling lane for children) that I could have a laugh with the driver position cam without really bad lap times and now I'm used to it. It's a lot more immersive.
Click to expand...

I now use in-car view all the time for every racing game. The only time I've even considered going back to a chase cam is with a couple of the car handling trials in Project Torque, where you have to steer through a course of cones. Chase cam lets you see the car, so avoiding nearby cones that you can't see with the in-car view might be easier. I stayed with the in-car view, though, and my judgement of distance based on seeing the cones as I approached.
 
You really should TRY a decent sim before giving up on the wheel.
If you've been playing with keys, you've probably hated any sim experience you've had.....I couldn't even get the car out of the pitlane in GPL with keys.
Grab the LFS free demo version it's got very good car physics, fairly normal cars, and excellent force feedback, which most arcade racers do not, good FF is what gives a wheel it's greatest appeal.
 
i feel the same way about my wheel :X

i bought it around the time geoff crammonds grand prix 4 came out but could never get used to it, its a ferrari formula one car style wheel.

i was impressed by how agressive the forcefeed back could be on the highest setting but other than that keyboard all the way for me.
 
I don't know, in all the sims I play (e.g. GTR2, rFactor) a lot of the fastest guys use keyboards and gamepads. There seems to be some sort of "trick" that using small analogue inputs sometimes isn't enough to stimulate correct physics such as understeer.

I use a wheel and find it much more fun though.
 
Angilion said:
I've been playing racing games using a keyboard for 25 years (I spent my summer holiday in 1983 picking runner beans for £1 an hour to save up £180 to buy a Spectrum after seeing Chequered Flag :) ).

Last week, I bought a wheel for my PC, thinking (a) it would be fun and (b) I'd be slightly faster in games.

Instead, I am crap. I'm all over the road and much slower. In a time trial in Sega Rally, for example, I eventually managed 4:57 with the wheel, but with the same car I can do the same time trial in 4:21 using the keyboard.

The wheel is a Thrustmaster Ferrari GT Experience. Not brilliant, but not crap either.

I'm obviously doing something very wrong, but I have no idea what.
Click to expand...

I'm in exactly the same boat....well, car.

Been mashing the 'ol keys since Chequered Flag on the Speccy as well! Never used a wheel or controller (apart from consoles) in my life until recently. Then I thought I would try a cheapo Logitech controller for GRID. I'm OK with it now, but as first it was a nightmare. You really just have to stick with it and don't mess with the sensitivity/calibration too much as you'll just be confusing yourself. Soon you'll see the joy of actually being able to progressively and smoothly accelerate, brake and steer instead of the "all or nothing" keyboard style. Just keep at it!

Of course, nothing will be able to top Chequered Flag........so maybe you just need to lower your expectations :p
 
thegoonden said:
You really should TRY a decent sim before giving up on the wheel.
If you've been playing with keys, you've probably hated any sim experience you've had.....I couldn't even get the car out of the pitlane in GPL with keys.
Grab the LFS free demo version it's got very good car physics, fairly normal cars, and excellent force feedback, which most arcade racers do not, good FF is what gives a wheel it's greatest appeal.
Click to expand...

Why would I want to try something I DON'T WANT TO DO for entertainment?

And my wheel doesn't have force feedback at all.
 
Angilion said:
Why would I want to try something I DON'T WANT TO DO for entertainment?

And my wheel doesn't have force feedback at all.
Click to expand...


I only suggested it because I thought maybe you'd just found them no fun at all with a keyboard, and that you may find them much more enjoyable with a wheel.
That's all.
But with no FF, I wouldn't bother.

BTW.....have a look at project Torque, it's very much an arcade racer, with LOADS of online racing, and it's FREE!
 
thegoonden said:
I only suggested it because I thought maybe you'd just found them no fun at all with a keyboard, and that you may find them much more enjoyable with a wheel.
That's all.
But with no FF, I wouldn't bother.

BTW.....have a look at project Torque, it's very much an arcade racer, with LOADS of online racing, and it's FREE!
Click to expand...

They're just not my cup of tea. There's a world of difference between playing a racing game and using a racing sim, although of course there can be elements of both. RBR was mentioned, which I'm assuming is Richard Burns Rally. That's way off to the sim end of the spectrum.

I've been playing Project Torque for about a week. Pretty good fun for free, but suffering from a low number of players. There's only one server and most game types have few people playing them. Then there is an annoying tendency for people to sit in a race "room" marking themselves as "Not Ready", which prevents the race from taking place. That might be partly a matter of unclear interface design - not ready is the default and results in the button being labelled "Ready", clicking on it marks you as ready and results in the button being marked "Not Ready". The chat window covers a large part of the screen during a race and is used only by people issuing inane pre-recorded blather ("Yeah!", "Hi guys", etc). It's also only sort of free - you have to pay real money for most of the cars and it takes many days of racing to buy the other cars with game points, let alone upgrade them. But it is pretty good fun.

EDIT: If anyone wants to gain game points (RP) more quickly, this works:

i) Arrange with several people to be on and the same time to farm RP/XP.
ii) Form a password-locked race "room" in Explorer mode.
iii) All go in it and arrange who is to collect which symbols.
iv) Stick to those in the race.

You then get the collection points, a combo bonus for every 3 symbols and a multiplication of the result dependent on how many people play. You can easily gain RP/XP five times faster than racing, probably ten times. To max it, use 8 people. 3 people take a colour each, the other 5 go for whatever else, change the 3 combo-getters each race.
 
Last edited:
the leader of a room not clicking ready wont stop the race starting in PT aslong as everyone else in the room clicks ready.

its called autostart and takes 10 seconds to kick in
 
I've been waiting in a room for 5 minutes before giving up. It isn't just the room leader - it seems normal for people to go into a "room" and just sit there, not ready. I've also twice seen someone repeatedly going in and out of the room to repeatedly reset the 25-second countdown, so the race can never occur.

Then there's the fact that you can be waiting 30s or more for all players to load after the countdown has finished and you're going to the race.

Anyway....do you know a quicker way to gain XP and RP than bonus-chasing in explorer games? I can get 1000 in a couple of minutes that way, way more than in the same time racing. Three power-up symbols in a row can be worth 168 alone (3*7 for pickup, 63 for combo bonus, doubled for 8 players).
 
you used to be able to get loads in drift mode if you were good enough to constantly drift in a circle on the hanger map but i think it got nerfed so that map is nolonger a circle.

i havent played PT in a long time
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom