Fanatec Forza Motorsport CSR Elite Force-Feedback Wheel Coming Soon
September 27th, 2011
If I buy or play a video game on a console, you can bet that it will be some sort of racing game. I save all other game types for my PC. The thing I like best about racing games like Gran Turismo 5 on the PS3 is that many of them work with force-feedback racing wheels. There is no closer thing to a real racing session on a track than a quality video game and a racing wheel with force-feedback.
The thing that has kept me away from the Forza franchise more than anything is that I wanted a good force-feedback racing wheel, and finally there is one. The Fanatec Forza Motorsport CSR Elite Wheel is licensed by both Microsoft and Turn 10. The wheel even has the Forza logo on it.
It will connect wirelessly to the Xbox 360 and will connect to the PS3 and PC with a USB cable. The wheel has the force feedback effects I want with a pair of 110w motors and vibration motors in the wheel rim. The wheel has a carbon fiber center and real Alcantra on the rim. It doesn’t come with a shifter or pedals, but you can them as accessories from Fanatec, or the pedals you might have for a Logitech G25 or G27 racing wheel with an adapter. Pricing and launch date is unknown.
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Categories: Video Games
I had a question, uh, are the feedback motors stronger on the elite wheel, than the regular csr wheel? Forza is the only game that I play, and I would settle for the regular csr wheel if they had the same strength feedback … I do want the elite wheel, don’t get me wrong, the new game (forza 4) comes out in a few weeks, and I don’t want to be empty handed, if you know what I mean: )
The Elite wheel has two Force Feedback motors while the regular CSR wheel has only one. I imagine the force feedback will be much better with the Elite.
My wife bought me the GT3RS V2 wheel at the end of November where she payed through Paypal. By the time I opened my $600s worth of wheel, clubsport pedals, and stand they were already out of warranty. No big deal with the rights to the Porsche name and german engineering behind this product I am not worried. After all the inital excitement of putting everything together I get the game fired up gran Turismo 5, power up the wheel, then put it into Playstation mode. I have not touched anything other than the power buttom and putting the wheel into playstation mode at this point – yet I hear a faint sound as if the circle or back button is being depressed. From here I navagate or try to navigate through the GT5 menu to get into a race. The problem is as fast as I move foreward the sound keeps going and backing up my menu choices to the previous screen. Once I make some blazing fast choices and get to a practice track it’s time to race – I press the accelarator and get going but for some reason the brakes are being applied even though I only have my hands on the wheel going straight and foot on the gas pedal. If you look at the heads up display where the brake meter shows how much brakes are being applied you can see the brakes are going crazy on and off. So I stop the car on the track and let it just sit there. Without touching anything, mind you the wheel is in PS mode, the brakes are going on and off and I am NOT touching anything. From here I google just about everything I can about the wheel etc and have no idea what causes this problem but I do find a video of the circuit board that shows the plastic button under the playstation back/circle button. Maybe this is the problem I don’t know. All I know is that this product that is more expensive than most of it’s competition has never worked since I opened the box and it is supposed to work with GT5 on the PS3. From here I start calling Beverly Hills Endor where they never answer the phone and their operator system guides you to leave voice messages with anonymous departments that never return your calls. After repeated e-mails I find out my e-mail has been sent to germany where they have no obvious intent to exchange this broken from new product. After my very detailed description of the issue they request video and tell me he needs more proof. Mind you if my wife purchased another competitors product from Amazon an exchange would have been made for a new properly working product and I would be playing right now instead of being mad and blogging a warning to all of you potential owners. As a customer I feel it should not be necessary for me to help resolve their own quality control issue or help with his suggestion that if he has further proof he can send me a part for me to do the repairs or I can then be approved to return the product for repair and get the same supposed repaired product in return. I am not even sure if they intend to pay for the shipping to them if I am given the choice to send it to them. The bottom line is this may be a great working product when it works but if you get one of the poorly built ones good luck to ya – they will not accept any responsibility and you will need to jump through many hoops before you have the luxury of getting something that works from the time you open the box. If Fanatec cared about their reputation they would have assumed responsibility, this would have been exchanged, and I would be a happy customer. This is not the case.