Blog

Thomas Jackermeier

Shaun Cole of Insidesimracing.tv made a very good review about the CSR Elite pedals and how they compare to the other Fanatec pedals.

He also explains the benefits of a load cell brake versus a potentiometer brake which is very helpful.

And we received a fantastic score of 9/10!

I just might want to add that the Clubsport Pedals are not just more sturdy because it is all metal but they also come with magnetic and contactless sensors for gas/brake and with a rumble motor for the brake.The CSP bundle with the Tuningkit is sold out in the USA and only available in Europe anymore.

Here is the comparison sheet mentioned in the video:

http://www.fanatec.de/html/pd_overview.html

Thomas Jackermeier

Turn 10 made a nice video about the 4 different ways to play the game.

Of course for everybody reading this here on my blog there is actually just one real option.

Thomas Jackermeier

Here is a nice video made for a German TV channel to compare a ride on the Nürburgring GP track.

Tim Schrick was driving a BMW M5 in reality and the same car in the simulation.

To get an adequate counterpart for this great car, he was playing Forza Motorsport 4 on our RennSPort Cockpit underfloor cockpit.

As the video is in German you might want to know his feedback. The real car has more traction than featured in the game and in general it is much easier to drive the real car than the virtual car. The speed, shifting points and times were pretty close but the missing g-forces make a big difference.

This is actually exactly my feeling as well when I had the chance to make a very similar test with an Audi some time ago. Some gamers mix up realism with difficulty. Just because a game is easy to play it does not mean it is unrealistic. A test like this proofs that driving a car in real can be less challenging to a certain degree. Of course we should not forget that in real live there is no rewind button and much more physical stress for the body so there will alsways be some difference between the worlds. But it is getting closer...

Thomas Jackermeier

Aside from the beta tests we have also selected the testers for the community tests for the Forza Motorsport CSR Elite wheel.

This time, we did not pick those testers but let the community decide to choose members who should review the CSR ELite wheel for them.

The following communities were involved.

1. Forzamotorsport.net

Organized by: Savoury69

http://forums.forzamotorsport.net/forums/thread/4977772.aspx

Winners of the poll:

VVV Worm
Porsche 9146
Soadieman

2. GTplanet.net

Organized by: Sandboxgod

http://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?t=229227

Winners of the poll:

Sonac
Sandboxgod
CrispyChicken49

3. Insidesimracing.tv

Organized by: Darin Gangi

http://www.insidesimracing.tv/forums/viewtopic.php?f=0&t=5526

Winners of the poll:

PAPA
Flunky
rbracer

4. iRacing.com

Organized by Darin Gangi

http://members.iracing.com/jforum/posts/list/1822040.page (members only)

Winners of the poll:

Michael Main
John Molony
Peter Taggeselle

Congratulations to all the winners and a big thanks to verybody involved to make this happen.

We had a small delay on the shipment of the samples but all testers will receive their wheels next week. After the last tester has received his wheel, I will determine the end of the review embargo so all community and betatesters can post their impressions.

It looks to be a great way to do the tests as this is more objective than anything else. A review made by an unbiased community member which has deep knowledge of simracing and is well respected in the community.

Thomas Jackermeier

Finally!

The Forza Motorsport CSR Elite wheel is ready for pre-order from now on. We will fly in products from China by UPS airfreight so that we can ship it in time for Christmas.

This increases the cost of the wheel a little bit so that the new price is 539,95 Euro (incl VAT) or 539,95 USD (excl. VAT).

We only have a very limited amount of wheels available as production is still slow due to increased quality control measurements. We rather give the workers more time to assemble it nicely and save time with the shipping instead of rushing things to the market.

This wheel is a new milestone in simracing and you will discover your games in a complete different way.

Thomas Jackermeier

Darin just finished the video manual how to invert your CSR and CSR Elite Pedals with the optional Inversion Kit.

This should help you to get the conversion done as smooth as possble.

We plan to make such a video for all our products because reading a manual is boring and everybody hates reading manuals, right?

Thomas Jackermeier

Here is some fresh information from the production line in China.

We have started the production of the CSR Elite wheels and will start shipping very soon. As soon as the products are shipped we will start taking pre-orders

We should be able to ship a few hundred wheels in time for Christmas.

For the CSW we have started to prepare the material and will start production in a few weeks as well. And I am bringing home some samples of the CSS as well.

Thomas Jackermeier

We have received the certificate of Incorporation for Endor Japan.

This means we will soon be able to start offering our products to the Japanese market. We are now working on setting up the logistics and localising the website and manuals etc.

I would also like to introduce you to Yoshihiko Sugahara which will manage Endor Japan and will take care about customer satisfaction in this country.

The products have passed the Japanese certification as well so we will ship to Japan very soon.

In parallel we do the same for Australia and making good progress there as well.

Thomas Jackermeier

Right in time for the Christmas season we are offering two new product bundles at a special price:

Porsche 911 GT3 RS V2 CSR Edition

911 GT3 RS V2 wheel
CSR Shifter set
CSR pedals

Advantages over other wheels in this price range:

Bigger wheel rim
Genuine Alcantara as used in real Porsche cars
Silent and smooth belt drive
Adjustable steering angle in games like GT5 which do not allow those adjustments in game
ABS vibration to indicate locking tyres
Tuning display to change settings and show telemetry data (PC)
Additional vibration motors in wheel rim
Pedal distance adjustable
Inversion option for pedals
Long pedal plates for better ergonomics and realism
Full metal knob on shifters
Additional sequential shifter
Possibility to upgrade the wheels with CSPs and many other shifter and pedal options in future

Price: 279,95

Forza Motorsport CSR Wheel Value Pack

Forza Motorsport CSR Wheel
CSR Pedals

Advantages are almost all of the above mentioned plus the Xbox 360 compatibility and great new shifter paddles.

Price: 299,95

Both bundles are available as soon as the CSR pedals can be shipped on Dec. 7th.

Thomas Jackermeier

Two weeks ago I got a visit from Björn Gram who wrote an article for the German magazine "Chip".

He came in style with a BMW S1000 RR Superbike and we sat together and had a nice chat about development of our wheels and other things.

This is the article he posted and the video he made:

http://blog.chip.de/xbox-ps3-watch-blog/video-interview-fanatec-csr-lenkrader-20111106/

Thomas Jackermeier

We can finally start selling the long awaited CSR pedals and the inversion kit for CSR and CSR Elite pedals.

Both products are now available in the webshop.

The CSR pedals are already on the way to the warehouse and we will start delivery on Dec 1st.

The CSR P IKIT is already in stock and we can start shipping this week.

Price:

CSR P: 79,95 USD/ € (excluding VAT / including VAT)

CSR P IKIT: 49,95 USD/ € (excluding VAT / including VAT)

Thomas Jackermeier

The Porsche 911 Carrera wheel is already sold out in the USA and now we reduced the price of this wheel to only 129,95€ in Europe

For this money you get:

900° rotation
Large wheel rim diameter (30 cm)
Big pedals with clutch
6+1 h-pattern shifter
Tuning functions

Look no further because you won't find any comparable offer anywhere else.

Thomas Jackermeier

UPDATE

Fanatec wheels are too good to be true?

Thanks to the great feedback. Because of your feedback we have been able to reproduce it. It always happens if you do an extreme clean lap without any countersteering. The most easy way to reproduce it is on an oval.

Special thanks to our members FakeThinkpad and kartman21 who detected the solution.

What happens? The Fanatec wheels allow minimal movements of the steering wheel and extreme precise manouvers so that the game apparantly thinks that the user must be cheating as this cannot be achieved by a human.

The better you drive the more often it happens. It is independent from the steering angle but a clean lap is more likely if you use higher sensitivity like 900°. In theory it can happen with a controller or other wheel as well but so far I was not able to proof that because it is hard for me to drive clean without our wheels.

Solution:

1. Make sure that you make at least one drift with countersteering per race

2. Reduce your steering angle to 270° to emulate the MS wheel which makes it harder to drive clean but avoids the issue more likely.

Of course, T10 is working on a patch to solve this issue but it takes time until those things go through all internal testing so please be a little bit patient.

IT IS NO LONGER NEEDED TO ASNWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS:

It seems that we had aerver issue so my last post on this subject was lost.

I would like to ask you again to help us to reproduce the problem so please let me knowthe following.

1. Did this issue already occured to you? (how often)

2. What Xbox console version are you using?

3. What sensitivity did you use when the issue occured?

4. Did you find any setting or solution where this issue did not occur?

5. Did it happen with SEN at 270 (this emulates the MS wheel)? (If yes, how often?)

6. What wheel do you have?

7. Did this happen to you or have you heard of that this is happening with other wheels or controllers as well?

8. What version of the game do you have? (demo, full, NTSC, PAL, updates)

9. Did you make a full installation (disc 1) on hard disk?

10. Did you turn on the Xbox console with the Xbox button on the wheel or with the power button on the console?

It seems that not everybody driving a Fanatec has this issue so there must be a difference. It could bethat setting the sensitivity to 270 would solve the issue but we need to confirm that. We only received one FM4 copy so far and it works on 900 as well on our system but this version is not a retail version.

I also saw a report that saving the difficulty settings after loading the race can avoid the issue.

There are already threads in other forums and I would like to list those for reference:

Video:

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/driving/forza-motorsport-4/show_msgs.php?topic_id=m-1-60613949&pid=997653&page=0

http://forums.forzamotorsport.net/forums/thread/4861891.aspx

http://www.forzaplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?t=32

http://forums.forzamotorsport.net/forums/thread/4879072.aspx

Thomas Jackermeier

For a limited period of time we are now offering the ClubSport pedals with a free Tuning Kit.

We have ordered too many Tuning Kits so this is your chance now to get our top of the line product in a very attractive bundle. No other pedal offers the combination of magnetic sensors, adjustable load cell and ABS vibration.

On a side note: After considering an inversion kit for the CSPs, I have decided that we will not do that for the CSP as it is too complicated to modify and it would be an ergonomic compromise as these pedals were built like real race car pedals which are mounted to the floor. This is how they work best and this is how they were designed to be used.

Side note 2: We do not plan to make any special bundle offers with the CSP and the CSR Elite or CSW at this point.

UPDATE

All CSP orders which have been shipped within the last two weeks can contact our sales team and receive the Tuning kit for free or get a credit note if they have ordered CSP with Tuning kit together.

Thomas Jackermeier

Hmm... I guess the headline already explains what this post is about.

Post your pictures or movies! Tell us how like the new products.

Thomas Jackermeier

Have a look at the public demo of FM4 and some coverage of the 911 GT2 wheel with ClubSport pedals.

It looks like this is the same demo as we have seen at E3, Gamescon or TGS before.

Go download it now!

Thomas Jackermeier

Fanatec and BMW present the official M3 GT2 racing wheel rim which is compatible to the ClubSport wheel base.

The rim was presented at the 25th anniversary of the BMW factory in Regensburg together with touring car champion Dirk Adorf.

I am proud that we are now working with another German premium car manufactuerer who never licensed a racing wheel before. BMW not only makes one of the best cars in the world, the brand BMW is one of the most valuable brands worldwide. It is an honour to be selected to make a wheel rim for them.

We had a close co-operation with BMW Motorsport and they supported us with everything we need to make this wheel.

I have personally a close relationship to BMW as BMW has a factory in Landshut and having 4 BMWs in my garage (incl. 3 BMW Isettas) and I did the Mille Miglia in a BMW which was my best car experience ever. (Followed by driving a Porsche 959 on the Autobahn when I was just 18)

Thanks to Maurice (Simracer92) for helping us to make this video public. You will be able to test this wheel very soon.

Thomas Jackermeier

Originally I planned to show a video here which shows the new GT rim for the ClubSport wheel but a terrible accident happened.

Darin uploaded the video on Youtube and marked it private. He made a handwritten note of the link and faxed it to me before he went to our monthly team meeting on the Bahamas and then will be gone for his annual 8 weeks vacation.

The problem is that I cannot read the link and I need your help to identify the missing letters.

This is the link:

"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=?nuh?qGwOC?";

As you can see, I could not read three letters which are replaced with question marks ("?").

One of the missing letters looks like an "d" or "e" or "f" and the other looks very much like a "p", "o", "g" or "d". Or maybe a "c"?

Another one is impossible to read but I don't think it is a number.

There is one question mark which was implemented in the link already. I think they do it on all videos.

Please HELP ME!

If you are the first to post the complete working link to the video here you will get this GT rim for free. Thanks a lot for your help.

UPDATE:

Wow. That was fast! I wanted to play around a little bit with guys but Simracer92 is a genious. Well done! You really deserved this wheel. And in order to let you drive it asap, i will add you to the betatest program of the CSW.

Thomas Jackermeier

Our RennSport E-motion cockpit was displayed on the worlds biggest car fair, IAA, in Frankfurt.

One of the special guests we had was the DTM champion Martin Tomczyk (AUDI) driving in our simulator on a Porsche 911 Gt3 RS wheel. (All part of the big Volkswagen family now).

UPDATE

Congratulations to Martin as he just became the new DTM champion 2011!

Thomas Jackermeier

We have a new driver available for all our wheel: Version 114

Changelog

new design on the installation pages and user interface (more neutral)
Added CSR wheel compatibility

This version is stable but still beta. Please report any bugs you find. Thanks.

Thomas Jackermeier

This post will show the status of the shipments of the whole CSR product line.

CSR wheel
CSR Elite Pedals
CSR Shifter Set

EU:

Ship to arrive on Oct 4th. Custom clearance in EU usually only takes a few days.

US:

Ship has arrrived and goods are in customs clearance. We expect the goods to be ready to ship in week 40.

CSR Elite Wheel

Production has not started yet. We expect production in November if final tests are succesful. We are still eliminating a few flaws.

CSR Pedals
CSR IKIT

Production will start in late October and shipments to arrive in early December (estimate)

The CSW will be made shortly after the CSR E and we have some special plans how to launch this product.

UPDATE 1

We started to ship out the CSR orders from our US warehouse. The containers arrived in Europe as well so we will start shipping in Europe in week 41.

UPDATE 2

We started shipping to EU customers on Oct 10th and this week most customers should receive their products.

Thomas Jackermeier

Inside Simracing just published the very first review of the new CSR wheel.

We got a fantastic 9 out of 10 for the wheel only.

Pedals will be reviewd separatly but when it comes to pedals you have a big choice of 4 different pedals for this wheel.

Thanks to Shaun for this great review.

Thomas Jackermeier

We just brought up the product pages for the new products online

CSR + CSR P + CSR SS
CSR E + CSR E P

We also have a new comparison chart which explains all the new products (incl. CSW!).

http://www.fanatec.de/html/pw_overview.htm

Please let me know if there is still information missing.

Please check out the media section as well with new pictures.

http://www.fanatec.de/html/index.php?id=411&lang=en

Pre-order dates:

For now we can only speculate but the pre-order of CSR E and CSW will not start before December.

CSR P might come earlier in November.

Thomas Jackermeier

the big day has finally come and here are my recommended settings for our Xbox wheels:

SEN: 900 (On some race cars down to 700)

FF: 100

Sho: 100

ABS: 70

Dri:3

Lin: 0

Dea: 0

Spr: 0

Dpr: 0

The game still has the issue that it only recognizes a 900° wheel properly if you turn on the game with the power button on the console.

The game does fully support 900° although the movement on the wheel in cockpit view is limited. (But hey, yesterday i was driving the X2010 in GT5 and the steering wheel was standing still (!) and only the hands (!!) were moving.)

Hint: Always pick a car which is at least 100 to 150 points less than the competition if you like to fight in single player mode.

Thomas Jackermeier

I am happy to announce that production of the following products is running in full speed:

Forza Motorsport CSR wheel
CSR Elite Pedals
CSR Shifter set

The first containers are already on the way to Europe and the USA and we will have inventory for the launch of Forza Motorsport 4 on October 11th.

That means we will start taking pre-orders for these products until supply lasts.

The CSR Elite has just passed the technical approval of Microsoft so we can start the production of this model in a few weeks as well as the CSR pedals and the CSR Pedal Inversion kit.

The CSR Elite got a new colour scheme with rubber coating on the full wheel rim and on the back cover.

We also released the first pictures of the CSR pedals which will be introduced in a dedicated video very soon.

Thomas Jackermeier

At Gamescom I made an interview with ISR about the CSR Elite wheel and some special features.

You can hear from my voice that the show was pretty exhausting but we had a good time.

Thanks to Andreas for the great help (he also helped me with the CSW introduction video) and spending his birthday on the show.

UPDATE

Feature comparison

	CSW	CSR E
Price of base with wheel rim	From 599	499,95
Compatibility	PC, PS3	Xbox 360, PS3, PC
Connection wheel rim to base	Quick release	Detachable system
Hot plugging of wheel rim during gameplay	yes	no
Analog joystick	yes	no
5 way encoder switch	yes	no
Rev indication LEDs	yes	no
Advanced electronic options (bigger LED screen, more dialswitches, buttons etc.)	yes	no
Direct data output plug (not USB)	yes	no
Amounts of shifters attached in parallel	2	1
Steady shifter option	yes	limited (depending on rim)
Choice of wheel rims	Full range	Limited
Pedal compatibility (when connected to wheel)	Only digital (CSP, CSR E P)	All Fanatec plus G25/G27

Advanced Tuning options

yes

no

Thomas Jackermeier

I am currently in China and one of my main tasks is to supervise the pre-production assembly of the CSW samples.

Although I did not plan to reveal so much at this date I could not resist to show you those pictures. Please excuse the bad quality as I only had my mobile phone with me.

Enjoy:

Ooops :-O

Thomas Jackermeier

We already started the beta tests but we need some more people to help us testing the product and also to make a review about the products for your community.

Here are the specific requirements:

Needs to be able to test on Xbox 360 and PS3
Bonus if you can also test on PC
Needs to be able to write a written review or video review
EU, Japan and USA participants only
Minimum age: 21

Basic rules

Please report all issues to Darin
Test period: Until October 15th
After the test period you can send back the wheel or purchase it with a 50% discount
Shipping costs will be covered by Endor
Of course we will give no guidelines what you write in your review. You don't have to be a fanboy to get the chance to test it.
Embargo: You are not allowed to publish anything about this wheel until October 15th
We will store your credit card information as deposit.

If you are interested, please follow the next steps:

Please register here if you are not registered already: http://www.911wheel.de/?q=node/1154

You can only register once!
Post the following information as comment to this blog entry:

Your country / language

Consoles / PC you own

Links to reviews you made

Forums you are most active in

Tell my why you would be the perfect tester

The beta test for the CSW will follow as well but quantities are very limited.

UPDATE:

If you cannot register anymore it means that you probably are already registered. It is only possible to register one time. But this does not mean you cannot participate in several tests of course.

UPDATE 2:

Thanks for the tremendous response. We only have a very few wheels available but the enourmous amount of interest convinced me to make a second round with more testers. Keep posting.

UPDATE 3:

Thanks for the great interest. We have now selected testers and will notify them soon.

Thomas Jackermeier

We finally have enough inventory to offer the 911 GT2 Clubsport edition again.

But supply might not last very long with the upcoming release of FM4.

The PWGT2 ClubSport edition contains:

911 GT2 wheel
ClubSport pedals
Porsche wheel shifter set
ClubSport shifter paddles - Carbon fibre

It is available in the US and EU webshop.

Thomas Jackermeier

We have a rapid growth at the moment and this means we are looking for new members of our team.

If you have a porfessional attitude and like to help us to develop our products and build up our service structure you might like to consider working for us.

So if you live around Landshut or want to move to Landshut you are welcome to have a look at the attached documents.

UPDATE

The job does not require to be German or speak German. If you seriously consider to move to Germany we can translate the job description for you.

Thomas Jackermeier

At Gamescom in Cologne we are showing the new ClubSport wheel with Formula rim together with the game Formula 1 2011.

Here is a detailed introduction about the features and benefits of the new wheel.

The target audience for this wheel are hardcore Simracers on PC or PlayStation 3.

The development is not finished yet but we are confident to start production this year. We will only take pre-orders if the products are on the way to our warehouses.

The next wheel rim will be announced in middle of September in Regensburg.

It is great to get so much great feedback here at GC and I would like to thank all the people I met here and had nice conversations.

What are your top 3 favorite features?

Thomas Jackermeier

This week is Europes biggest game fair: The Gamescom in Cologne.

We will show the Forza MotorSport CSR Elite wheel at the Xbox booth on the same motion simulator as at E3. Certainly an impressive set up to play this great game.

Hint: Although everybody chooses the Ferrari, I can highly recommend to drive the Mercury Cougar. Big fun!

And we have a world premiere and proudly present our new ClubSport Wheel with FORMULA rim at the Deep Silver booth with Codemaster's F1 2011.

You are welcome to try out the wheel and the great game. (Hint: One car maker has sometimes three cars in the race now)

Later this week, I will make a video and explain the wheel in more detail.

I will be there and happy to meet with you and anybody who sees me on the show is welcome to say hello and have a chat with me.

UPDAE 1:

Enjoy

Thomas Jackermeier

We just started the beta test for our website. There are still many things to change and also we did not start the translation yet as we will be offering German, English, French, Italian, Spanish and Japanese. on the website.

We have selected over 50 testers and I would like to thank everybody involved to help us.

Thomas Jackermeier

In Savannah we also showed a new version of our RennSport Cockpit which is the perfect solution if you want to have the ultimate gaming rig.

The Cockpit is fully assembled and will be delivered in a big wooden crate and ready to go.

Features:

RennSport Cockpit with underfloor box
Full aluminum construction
Carbon fibrebucket seats (different from picture)
Porsche 911 GT2 racing wheel (to be replaced with CSR Elite)
ClubSport pedals
Porsche wheel shifter set (to be replaced with ClubSport Shifter)
ClubSport handbrake
3 x Xbox 360 consoles
3 x Forza Motor Sport 3 and 4
3 x Playstation 3 consoles
3 x Gran Turismo 5
Optional PC can be integrated into the underfloor box on demand
Teufel Motiv 5 high-end 5.1 surround system with integrated speakers in the seat (not shown in these pictures)
Teufel Decoderstation for digital input
Fanatec Quake module under the seat
3 x 26" gaming monitors
Triple screen stand (new design)
3 x Xbox 360 controllers and 3 x PlayStaion 3 controllers with mounting
Fans, network hub, HDMI cables, power extensions etc.

Price:

9.999 USD (excl VAT) in USA

9.999 €uro (incl. VAT) in Europe

plus freight and instruction cost.

Probably the finest racing simulator for gaming consoles on the market.

Thomas Jackermeier

Last week I was traveling to Savannah in the USA to attend the annual PCA Parade.

Over 800 participants brought their cars to Georgia/USA and there were a lot of nice people driving in our new RennSport Cockpit Underloor Edition.

We made a Hotlap competition driving a Porsche 911 Carrera RS of 1973 at Road Atlanta with all assists on except autobrake.

The winners:

Trip Campbell 1.41.483
Denver Sells 1.42.787
Andrew Simrell 1.43.885
Chris Walty 1.44.092
Alex Rhoades1.44.438

Congratulations and have fun with your new 911 GT2 wheel plus ClubSport pedals!

The winners of the raffle will be announced in the PCA newsletter

Thomas Jackermeier

I am pleased to announce that Darin Gangi of Inside Simracing is now workin for Fanatec. He is helping us with PR, marketing, developer relations, development, community support and more.

Darin is a very dedicated simracer and very well connected in the simracing community. He is a great asset for us and I am happy to have him on board.

What does it mean for our relationship to ISR?

First of all Darin will no longer review any Fanatec products or products that are in competition with Fanatec so that there's no conflict of interest. Inside Sim Racing will continue to review hardware and Darin will continue to be part of the show in other capacities.

His first task will be to start the betatesting of the website and this will start this week.

Thomas Jackermeier

In a co-operation with Auto BILD Germany we are showing our RennSport E-Motion Cockpit on almost all DTM races this year.

If you go to these races you can drive in the simulator and show show good you are.

More info and Video of Ekström driving inour cockpit (German only):

http://www.autobild.de/videos/video-schlag-den-rennprofi-1867983.html

UPDATE:

Brunco Spengler:

http://www.autobild.de/videos/video-schlag-den-rennprofi-1868034.html

Gary Paffet:

http://www.autobild.de/videos/video-schlag-den-rennprofi-1868051.html

Summary:

http://www.autobild.de/videos/schlag-den-rennprofi-motorsport-hockenheimring-1864958.html

Thomas Jackermeier

Darin (Edit: It's dark but there is no doubt that it was actually Shaun) was driving some laps of Game Stock Car.

There is no reason why i post this here on my blog and on the video there is absolutely nothing interesting to see for you (except the great game).

Thomas Jackermeier

The Formula 1 driver Heikki Kovalainen of Finland is presenting the German Nürburgring with Fanatec gear mounted on the new PlaySeat F1 seat.

But somehow I am wondering if he was really driving

Thomas Jackermeier

We have a new driver version available which fixes some issues with the random activation of the center spring in games like Shift 2 and perhaps others.

The drivers are stable but still in BETA stage.

Please let me know about the bugs you found or the improvements you discovered.

What else do you like to see implemented in the driver?

PS: We are still working on the SDK for developers and hope to release something shortly

UPDATE:

I have added 109 drivers in case you have problems with 110.

Please note that in 109 unpluging the wheel while the game controller panel is open can cause a blue screen!

Thomas Jackermeier

It is time to say good bye to the 911 Carrera wheel. And in order to make a fulminant exit we decided to make you an offer you can hardly ignore.

For just 199,95 USD (excl. VAT) or 195,95 € (incl. VAT) you get:

A high end racing wheel with 900°, Tuning functions and responsive force feedback
A 6+1 speed shifter
Pedals with clutch
Plus a RennSport Wheel Stand to mount everything

That means you get either a wheel for just 70.- or a wheel stand for just 40,- depending on how you look at it.

Of course all the new pedals and shifters will be compatible to the PWC so if you want to get a great combo now and perhaps upgrade later you should take a look at the webshop:

Europe:

http://www.fanatec.de/webshop/new_eu/product_info.php?cPath=21&products_id=99&osCsid=2b0680b94bd0a683684ce9a9f1b1a593

USA / Canada:

http://www.fanatec.de/webshop/new_usa/product_info.php?cPath=21&products_id=93&osCsid=7dfca65d26c6b755a753e26167f6c135

Thomas Jackermeier

Our ClubSport wheel has not even announced yet but somebody already made an almost perfect replica!

Congratulations for the best DIY wheel I have seen for a long time.

Special Kudos for the gas!

If the maker of this wheel posts a picture of him and the wheel in my blog here, he gets Fanatec wheel for free.

Thomas Jackermeier

In the latest episode of inside simracing, Darin talked to a strange guy who shared some secrets from our hidden laboratories.

After showing pictures of the new ClubSport shifter it came even worse as Paul Jeal of Codemasters jumped into the picture and showed one of the new rims of the ClubSport wheel. (I will not forget that, Paul!)

This leak is unacceptable and I will find this guy no matter what it takes.

This situation is now forcing us to unveil more official information sooner as planned so you can expect more details about the clubSport Shifter and ClubSport wheel soon.

In order to avoid the confusion created by this interview I would like to point out that there will be a CSR elite wheel and a ClubSport wheel. The development is not finished yet and we want to implement as many features as possible from the suggestions made by this community.

But it looks like we can take care of almost anything you asked for .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=g-xDHdOHt44

Thomas Jackermeier

Tim Stevens came over to have a look at the new products and he made a great compilation of pictures and videos of all our new products.

Don't miss that:

http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/09/forza-motorsport-csr-and-csr-elite-wheel-and-pedals-hands-on/

Thanks Tim.

Thomas Jackermeier

I am proud to announce that Fanatec is making the official racing wheels for Forza Motorsport.

http://www.forzamotorsport.net/en-us/Forza4_Wheels/

We will expand our product range with several new products of our new CSR line of products:

Forza Motorsport CSR wheel
Forza Motorsport CSR Elite wheel
CSR shifter set
CSR pedals
CSR Elite pedals

The CSR line is positioned between the Porsche wheel line and the ClubSport line of products.

Both new wheels are multiplatform and come with improved force feedback technology.

The CSR Elite wheel has an entirely new base which will bring realism to a new level as the full metal construction allow extremely precise FF sensations and the new DirectSensor technology will allow a much more precise steering control than on any other wheel which has the sensor mounted on the motor.

It is similar to digital cameras. You can have 12 MP but it means nothing if the lense is no good. If the sensor is monted on the motor you will have the slack and interference of the whole belt drive system which destroys any high resolution you might have.

The CSR shifter is made with a knob fully made of metal but unlike the Clubsport shifter it is not fully made of metal. We made it less noisy as well.

All new products will be available by the end of the year although development is not finihed yet so I cannot give an exact date.

We will keep our fully modular ordering system so the pricing depends on the options you take. It will range between 320 and 700 for a set with pedals.

More info to come...

Thomas Jackermeier

Virtual.net is showing a picture of a prototype of our new high-end wheel.

http://www.virtualr.net/brand-new-fanatec-wheel-spotted/

I was there and of course I took pictures but I was wondering how long it will take if somebody else noticed that we are actually showing our new wheel there.

The Audi rim is a replica of the A1 ClubSport Quattro (nice name btw) show car which was created for the show.

Audi asked us if we can develop a very special wheel and cockpit for this event and of course we need to support a bavarian car company.

We have no plans to produce the rim in mass production but we might do other projects with Audi in the future.

Now bring it on. Who can find more pictures of our Audi cockpit and our new wheel base?

Thomas Jackermeier

Here is a very nice and detailed review of the Porsche 911 GT2 wheel which includes a comparison to the PWTS as well.

The review is very wellpresented and very professional made. And on top of that he also likes the wheel.

Thomas Jackermeier

It looks like Thrustmaster made a decent product with the T500RS and I congratulate Thrustmaster for beeing back in the market for serious wheels.

My first steering wheel was the legendary T2 wheel so it brought me into this business somehow.

Although our current line of products can keep up very well with the new competition I think that the T500RS also deserves an adequate response from Fanatec.

So I would like to ask you what should such a wheel look like if we would start to develop it.

I am interested in things like

Compatibility to what platforms?
Shape and style of wheel rim
Steady or moving shifters?
Materials used on rim and base
Colours
Name
Adjustability
Licensed or not?
Dimensions, weight
Strength and speed of the FF motors
Ho wmany buttons, switches, joysticks etc?
New Tuning functions?
Compatibility to peripherals like CSP, Shifter etc.
Backwards compatibility to older games on PS3 or Xbox
Price range
Specials?

Please consider that all features cost something and you usually get what you pay for. But of course we want to keep up with our policy of outstanding price performance due to direct distribution.

This project might take a long time for us but we need to get started somewhere so please let me know what you like and we will do our best to deliver it.

Thomas Jackermeier

We finally have the RennSport Wheel Stand V2 back in stock in sufficient quantities.

It is available in teh EU and USA. The new V2 version comes with the adapter for the G25/G27 shifter adapter included and also withone pedal stopper.

You can also adjust the angle of the vertical post in two positions if needed.

All open orders will be shipped now.

So we are now just waiting for the ships of the PWGT2 to arrive in Eu and we can deliver all products of our portfolio.

Thomas Jackermeier

It was time to reduce the price of the shifter set which includes the H-pattern shifter and the sequential shifter to 29,95 €/$

The ClubSport shifter will be announced soon at a price of 99,95 so we want to keep enough distance between the two products.

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