Comparison: New & Old Ferrari FF Wheels

                                                                                                                                        By: GTX_SlotCar  

 

    The new Thrustmaster Ferrari  wheel is very different from the old Guillemot version on the inside, but the outside looks very similar and the molds are the same. I think the changes were to make the wheel cheaper to manufacture, but the end result is very good.
    The wheel mounted gas and brake levers are gone. The silver paint is replaced with gray, molded plastic which I don't care for as much, but that's just personal taste. The new wheel has a USB connection only. The serial plug is gone. Thankfully, it still has an on/off power switch, and as unbelievable as it seems, most popular Force Feedback wheels do not.

 

New wheel on the left, old one on the right.  I like the old painted silver better. I painted the molded in hub screws black for more visual appeal on both wheels.   

 

The clamping system is almost the same, but has been made simpler with just one large plastic screw to tighten underneath. The front clamp and second bottom screw are gone. It holds well as some of the suction cups on the bottom of the wheel have been changed to rubber pads. 

 

The single screw does a good job holding the wheel to the table. 

 

    The pedals are totally different. They connect to the wheel via a telephone-like cable. The pads no longer swivel. The springs are very stiff and the pedals push more downward than the old ones. 

 

New pedals on left, old ones on the right.

 

 

I'd like to see a weaker spring in the gas pedal, but the brake is excellent.  If you prop the front of the base up about 2 1/2 inches, they're very good for racing sims like GPL, giving even better control than the old pedals . My lap times haven't really gone down (much), but are even more consistent than before. Pulling out of slides is easier, and overall, the new pedals modulate better than the old ones, and that's really saying something.  Beware, though, on games like Midtown Madness 2 (I play it with the kids) your right knee will get very sore (for days). It's not a problem on GPL or Nascar 4 /  Heat, though. 

 

Pedals push down, not forward like the old ones. This is okay for arcade style racing, but hardcore sim racers will want to raise the front of the base.

 

 

On the inside, the old and new wheels are very different.  There's only one printed circuit board and the belts are gone completely. That's right, it's gear driven. They're not the precision machined, fine pitched, metal gears that I've repeatedly touted as the best way to go in a Force Feedback racing wheel, but they're much better done than the gears in the MSFF or new Logitech wheels. I don't like the noise it makes when you turn the wheel back and forth rapidly (it sounds like you're cutting wood with a hand saw), but it's a small price to pay. 

 

Old wheel on the left is much more complex than the new wheel on the right. Both use the same motor.

 

 

Also, being gear driven means that there's almost no drag on the system, and therefore, no damping of the Force Feedback, so effects can be quite abrupt. It's reminiscent of driving a cheap, old, loose sports car over a gravel road. You can almost hear the suspension rattle. I'm sure that if I was driving in a modern F1 game, I'd want to set the damping in Windows' controller panel very high. However, it's perfect realism when driving the classic Porsches in NFS:PU, GPL cars and (especially) the new Rally Trophy. I've had a bit of experience with these old cars (60's and early 70's), and this new wheel jarred back old memories. The steering pot is mounted to the side of the shaft with it's own gear to drive it. 

 

Loosening the pot and turning it slightly will help center the wheel if you want to fine tune it.

 

 

At first I thought this was an unnecessary complication and just added  to the gear noise, but then I realized it's using the pot's full sweep of about 270°  with a wheel arc of only a little more than 180°.  That also explained why this wheel has such good steering precision. This is one of it's strongest points.  With the right settings, you can almost eliminate the cogging (notchiness) that's felt in most FF wheels. While each wheel uses the same motor, the gearing in the new wheel is different and translates more of the subtle FF effects programmed into games.  The new Ferrari wheel is even better than the old LWFF for feeling these subtle effects. In short, aside from the fact that the wheel feels funny when it's off and you turn it rapidly back and forth, the actual driving experience is very good. And, as you  put more time one the wheel, that funny feeling (and sound) tends to diminish quite a bit.

On the downside:

  • I like the silver paint on the old wheel better than the color of the molded-in gray of the new one.
  • The shifter paddles haven't changed much, so you'll definitely want to do the modification posted elsewhere on this site or they'll almost certainly break. The factory in China that makes these wheels knows that I have a simple, no cost modification that solves the problem, but they stubbornly try other solutions which never work.
  • When I turn the wheel rapidly back and forth AND the wheel is turned off, my computer crashes. Along with that, the 'power-on' LED lights up while turning the wheel even if it's off. The motor is basically turned into a generator and is forcing voltage back through the circuit board and USB port. I assume that's why the computer is crashing. This is easy to fix, though. Just don't do it.
  • The spring in the gas pedal should be weaker. It's fine for racing simulation type games, but the stress is murder on your knee when driving arcade type games where you're almost constantly pushing on the gas. The pain from a few hours of driving can last all week.
  • The new drivers wouldn't let Monster Truck Madness 2 recognize the wheel at all, but reinstalling the old drivers (vers. 1.23) made everything all right again. I didn't try reinstalling the game, and I don't know if the problem is present in any other games.



On the upside:

  • The steering precision of the new wheel is even slightly better than the old one, which was already good.

  • The subtle FF effects are very good. Better than the old Ferrari and better than the old LWFF wheel.
  • There is much less cogging in the new wheel, but the FF effects are more abrupt (sometimes this is good, sometimes it's not).
  • The new pedals modulate even better than the old ones, which again, were already good, but you do have to raise the front of the pedal base about 2 to 3 inches for comfortable driving. The shape of the pedals makes it so your foot doesn't have to slide up and down on the pads. This is very unusual, but good. The pedal travel is just about right.

    Before final testing, I lubricated the gears. The wheel only requires 8% Default Spring to bring it to center from full left or right. That's the best power to drag ratio I've ever tested on any Force Feedback wheel. My old settings for Grand Prix Legends don't work with this new Ferrari wheel. In many games you might want to reduce the Overall Device Gain and add some Damper Gain, or even some Default Spring. The Force Feedback is so sensitive that you don't run much risk of masking even the most subtle signals.
    Given the choice of using the older Guillemot Ferrari wheel or the new Thrustmaster Ferrari wheel, I'd choose the new one for most games.

UPDATE: January 11, 2002

 I thoroughly removed the old drivers, including 

entries in the registry, and the new drivers installed 

perfectly and work on all games, including MTM2.

 

Regards,

Slot

December 18, 2001

 

 

 

Gary DeRoy