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Idiot's Quest: The Search for the Holy USB Steering Wheel Randy: "Kiss yesterday goodbye…sniff…sniff …and point me toward tomorrow…" Gary: What are you warbling about, you big cry baby? Randy: I'm just saying goodbye to my trusty old ThrustMaster T2 steering wheel and pedals. Gary: Oh geez, sorry man, I know how you loved that wheel. Did it break or something? Randy: No way man, "Wheelie" as I called her… Gary: That's original. Randy: …is tough as nails. It's just that I got a new G4 mini tower and I don't have an ADB connection anymore. Gary: Now that's sad. We had some good times with the ol' T2. But we never could get it to work with 4x4 Evolution. Randy: And I don't think we ever will. I'm selling it with my trusty Umax s900/G3 400. And I hope the next gamer that gets her, drives her as hard as I did. Gary: Ummm, that sounded almost perverse, but I digress. What are you gonna do now? Randy: I'm going USB, baby! Gary: Don't call me baby. Randy: With games like Driver and 4x4 Evo coming out a USB wheel is a must. Gary: Speaking of Driver, pre-orders are now being taken for it's release. I placed my order with Onvia.com for a pre-order price of only 25 smackers. Randy: $25! Keep talking to the readers while I place my order. By the way, the public demo is available as of yesterday. You can download it here. Gary: Huh, well..uh…So the old T2 goes with the old system. What USB wheel are you going to get? Randy: Aye, there's the rub. I figured their would be literally hundreds of USB steering wheel and pedal sets to choose from. Gary: Sure seems like it. Since you can use Alessandro Levi Montalcini's stupendous USB Overdrive Uber Control panel to drive just about any USB device know you don't need a steering wheel manufacture to include Mac specific drivers. Just grab a wheel and go. Randy: One would think, but not every USB steering wheel can work with USB Overdrive. Gary: Doh! Randy: One of my first choices for a new wheel was Logitech's cool WingMan® Formula™ Force GP. It's USB and it's a force feedback wheel! Gary: Except that Macs don't support force feedback technology. Not currently anyway. Randy: And that's the problem. So as a result USB Overdrive can not control Logitech's wheel. And it's a shame too, because it's a pretty slick wheel, but back to the search. Gary: Well I was musing over Saitek's R100 USB wheel and pedal set. Saitek makes the coolieo Cyborg 3D joystick that's USB. After reading a Gameweek.com review of the R100 wheel that said…and I quote:
Randy: Cool! That sounds great. I'll order one up. Gary: Whoa there, camperino! Don't go getting your pantloonies in a bunch yet. I did, in fact, go order one up. And when it arrived at my door I was totally bummed to find out it was PC gameport only. Randy: Doh! and Doh! Gary: And I read the review on Saitek's own product review's page! So don't get the R100, and, hey, Saitek…fix your site! Randy: Humm. Man who else is making USB wheels? Gary: Well when I'm stumped I take a look at allUSB.com to see what everybody has to offer. It's a great listing of just about every peripheral manufacturer that is offering a USB product. Randy: Good tip. Gary: About the only other company that makes a USB wheel that we could find from our brief search at allUSB.com was one called AVB. They make a USB wheel that looks more like a flight yoke than a steering wheel, but it could be usable under USB Overdrive. Randy: Of course it is force feedback as well, so there is a real good chance that it won't. Gary: After all that hunting, and even one return to an ecommerce site that will go unnamed, Amazon, we still had to find our new wheel. Randy: You said it would go unnamed. Gary: I didn't say that. You did. Randy: We really like Amazon, by the way, and it didn't seem like the mistake was their fault, so what are you gonna do? Gary: Yeah, whatever. Anyway after all of the research and tedious online shopping, there was only one company that makes a USB steering wheel and pedal set that specifically says it is Mac-compatible. Thrustmaster. Randy: They make several wheel sets ranging from about forty bucks, and on up, closing in on $200 for their force-feedback model. Gary: They have a cool one called the Pro Digital 2 Racing Wheel that runs for about sixty bucks, has a shifter on the side, two paddle switches and four wheel-mounted programmable buttons. Why are you looking like you are doing math? Randy: I was trying to come up with a clever comment about coming full circle with our wheel, or something like that. That would be clever, right? Gary: Don't make me kill you. Anyhoo, our wheel is on the way and next time around we will report on how the thing works with all of our favorite driving games, like 4x4 Evo, Driver, and Carmageddon 2. Randy: I'm going to try it with MacMame and Night Racer. Man, I love that game. Gary: Idiot.
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