F1 2011 Wireless Speed Wheel Test

All I can say is ohhh myyy lol. Oh glorious smooth handling! Oh precise control! I don't know about other games, but this wheel is the absolute minimum you should have for playing F1 2011. While I would LOVE to have a full wheel & pedals rig, I have three major hurdles, the largest of which has nothing to do with cost or space, but ends up compounding both of those things.

See, I have this ergonomic issue that even affects me when I drive a real car, where the angle of my legs in conjunction with holding my feet up to operate the pedals causes debilitating pain in the ligaments on the inside of my knees. Seriously. It's minimal when driving for real, but still there. Now when I use my PS2 wheel rig while sitting in either my AK Rocker racing chair or my other regular chair, it hurts so much by the time I'm done I can't even stand up and it takes a REALLY long time to go away. So, basically, I don't use my wheel rig much. A full racing chair frame rig would put me in an ergo position that alleviates it, but I haven't the money let alone the space for such a thing, nor do I have the money for the full wheel & pedals rig anyway. But we all know playing racing games with a gamepad is bullshit and seriously hampers performance. I got pretty good at it in F1 2011 but its impossible to use without full TCS because the travel on the accelerator trigger is so short that its somewhat like an on/off toggle. Also, I couldn't do things like take 130R at Suzuka flat out because steering with the stick just isn't precise or responsive enough. Weaving my way through long sweeping turns due to lack of precision sucks, and it also cost you time.

As you can imagine then, I was very intrigued and cautiously hopeful when the Wireless Speed Wheel for Xbox 360 was announced. I read a lot of good things in the reviews that came out afterwards, and I decided that I really would like to have it for playing F1 2011, so I've spent a lot of time making it known that I wanted it under the Xmas tree! Completely unexpected, I got an early Xmas gift from a friend, a GameStop giftcard. Jackpot. I decided to go ahead and get it early since I didn't want to deal with the possibility of it being out of stock as we approach the holiday. Xmas rush and all that.


I brought my new Wireless Speed Wheel home last night, and immediately dived into testing it. I want to be clear and reiterate what others have said when reviewing it, which is that the term 'wheel' is somewhat of a misnomer. It is not a stand in for the wheel experience per se. It is a controller with precision tilt control that mimics the mechanics of a wheel. You 'turn' (really tilt) the controller to steer, with gas and accelerator on the respective triggers. That said...WHAT AN IMMEDIATE DIFFERENCE!!! It threw me just a tad at first just because there is no resistance when turning like you would have from a true wheel. Its just floating there. But I adapted to that within one lap. I made a small tweak to the dead zone and it was instantly exactly perfect 1:1 turning. No lag at all. What kind of difference are we really talking about here? For one, I found I could now take the infamous 130R turn flat out, when it was impossible with the gamepad. No joke. The S-curves were MUCH easier too, more fluid and devoid of the weaving and overshooting I got as a result of both imprecise steering and not enough throttle control on the gamepad.  Speaking of throttle...it is important to note that the triggers on this controller are MUCH better. They are sprung a bit less stiffly so your hands don't get tired from pulling/holding them during long races, and more importantly, they have longer travel, so you get much more precise control over the application of both throttle and brake. I'd call it the same amount of control that I can get out of the pedals on my Logitech wheel which is pretty impressive for controller triggers. Besides the handling difference that I saw in terms of just steering and getting on the throttle, one of the biggest signs that I had far superior control was in the rate of my tire wear when using this controller. Being able to get on the throttle correctly, without the over application I was getting with the gamepad, and being able to steer smoothly, made it so that I was easily able to reach the end of my stints, and even go several laps over if I desired, when it was sometimes difficult to even get comfortably to the end of a stint before. Less getting in the gravel and wheel spin makes for happy tires after all. Always a good thing! The wheel also has rumble feedback, albeit a bit weaker than a gamepad or FFB wheel (maybe due to position/size of motor, perhaps in the interests of saving weight), so I can still feel the curbs, gravel, impact with other drivers, etc.

I had everything dialed in, but it seemed that after doing a few Grand Prix race tests, that I was a tad slow, as much as a second from where I should be, which struck me as very odd since I was able to maneuver much more smoothly. Shouldn't I be faster now? I thought perhaps it might just be my usual trouble with being sufficiently fast at Suzuka (in spite of now being able to take 130R flat out) rearing its ugly head. So I decided to hit up Yas Marina as my next testing ground. That is one of my best tracks and I had good baselines from doing time trial and GPs there previously and fairly recently. Though I won my test 50% GP against pro AI by almost 8sec BETTER than my last GP there with the same distance and AI settings, the fast lap and overall lap times still showed that disturbing time deficiency. I went back and looked at the video replay, and I finally saw the problem. I think it is what definitely cost me against the pro AI at Suzuka. I was slow on the jump out of corners. Yeah I was putting the trigger down, but the response was sluggish somewhat so I wasn't getting up to speed the way I needed to. Ah ha. Adjust the throttle saturation in the advanced wheel settings. First thing this morning (didn't have time to finish last night, much to my annoyance) I got up and went back to Yas Marina in time trial mode to see if I could fix the application of the throttle. Upping the saturation increases sensitivity and response. Easy fix. At 50% saturation it still seemed sluggish. Hm. So I tried 95% and...AH HA! That was it! Getting out plenty fast with plenty of power, but not with the 'toggle' effect of the gamepad, thanks to the amount of trigger travel. I was getting away quick like before, sans wheel spin, and reaching 210mph by the end of the main straight when I had DRS open and dumped all KERS after coming out of the hairpin, just like when I was using the gamepad. Before the adjustment I was just getting to 200mph, proof that I wasn't coming up to speed quite fast enough. I also took a 10th of a sec off my best TT time, a 1:37.050 that I had set doing a 'miracle lap' with the gamepad. Improved to 1:36.917!!! Proof that the throttle was now right, and the improved control really IS making a big difference.

The Wireless Speed Wheel RULES, and its a fantastic, affordable compromise for a FFB wheel rig. It won't give everyone the immersion of a rig, but it does give you far greater control of your racing game. Its so superior to a gamepad that its not even funny. I can only speak for F1 2011, but I hear good things about other games like Forza as well. The wireless speed wheel DOES LACK LB AND RB BUTTONS, which makes for some small problems, like fast forwarding time in practice and qualifying. You CAN switch controllers tho, and then switch back. Note that sometimes you have to re-set your custom wheel settings when you do this but its a little thing, perhaps a bit of a hassle if you're doing a long race weekend. I don't think its a deal breaker though, really, considering the benefits vs the gamepad. Just keep your wheel settings written down somewhere handy. Me personally, I'm putting them on a post-it inside my F1 2011 case lol.

Speaking of settings, here's what I finally settled on to suit my style and what felt right to me. I left everything default except the following:

Steering Dead Zone 1%
Throttle Saturation 95%
Changed KERS to X button
Changed Status to B button

It should be noted that I am using an automatic gearbox at this time. If and when I start shifting manually I was thinking of changing the buttons to this:

Shift up - X button
Shift down - A button
Status - B button
DRS - Y button
KERS - D-pad up

One last thing I almost forgot... Some reviews mention that your arms might get tired from holding the wheel up with no support, but I did not find this to be a problem at all. The angle I sit at in my AK chair allows me to easily rest my forearms when not doing turn maneuvers.  I think you can find a way to do this no matter what you are sitting in/on. Besides the wheel itself is pretty light. I found that my gamepad controller hurt my hands/arms a LOT more. Ergonomically the design of this wheel is pretty brilliant. When you are holding the throttle all the way down it just feels like a natural, easy grip on the 'pipe'. I found that fatigue over 50% or higher distance was massively reduced, in spite of the whole having to hold it up because its not anchored thing.

I hope all of you that read this find it to be informative and helpful in deciding if the Wireless Speed Wheel is right for you. I'm sure that all of us would like to have the expensive FFB wheel rig, but this controller really is a fantastic compromise, a fantastic value for what you get out of it, and as such, a GREAT decision on Microsoft's part. It has made F1 2011 so much better for me. Thank you Microsoft for this peripheral! Well done! (but it should have had LB/RB buttons...just sayin...)

UPDATE:
As it turns out, when I went out to do R&D work during Suzuka practice, I discovered that I needed to dial the throttle saturation down to 70%. Needed to have just a bit more of a mellow spot for easing out of turns. It's perfect now hehe. :)