Genius TwinWheel F1 Vibration Feedback F1 Racing Wheel for PS2 and PC

I was surprisingly amazed by this, 5 stars for matching and exceeding expectations, 6 stars for doing all that for $30 shipped.Take most of the low-rating reviews with a grain of salt; if you read, most of them are trying to play very old games or are saying things that just don't make sense.I played this with the PS2 and there is no 40 deg. play before the wheel starts turning like one of the reviewers suggests (at least on Gran Turismo 4). Maybe he had a broken wheel, butin my experience the quality control seems to be very good. A lot of them also complain about not enough power for force feedback, but the wheel never advertises this!Force feedback and vibration feedback are 2 completely different things. Some didn't even bother to play with the settings yet expect it to magically work perfectly. It really doesn't take that long,maybe 5-10 minutes in most games, and you usually only have to do it once.Construction:Wheel:The wheel itself is 8 inches in outer diameter and the grip varies between ¾" and 1" thick around the circumference. I thought the small size would be a problem but I've grown to like it; now when I go to drive my real car, the steering wheel seems clumsily big. My hands are about 8" long but I have very thin fingers, and I found it very comfortable. It's about the same size as the wheels at the arcades, and made of plastic but seems pretty sturdy. Since there is no force feedback, the resistance comes from a spring. I would prefer for this spring (torsion spring I guess) to be a bit stiffer so the wheel isn't as sensitive, but nevertheless it works very well. Also, there is only 90 deg. Of steering in this wheel (or 180 deg. From lock to lock), but don't let that deter you from buying this; in almost all racing games the cockpit view shows a steering wheel that turns no more than 90 deg. either direction. This won't be a problem in games like Shift or Shift 2 where the cars are fast enough, but if you use cars like the civic (in Gran Turismo 4) in courses with tight turns, you might prefer to have more degrees of steering as that would actually be more realistic. Otherwise 90 deg. is more than enough.The shifter paddles are mounted to the steering wheel, not the column, and so rotate with the wheel. I prefer them to be column mounted because of how I grip the wheel, but everyone is different. They seem a bit flimsy, and I think if anything is to break off, this will be the 1st. In reality, you shouldn't be pulling them hard enough to break anything. The paddles are just buttons, so you can't map them as throttle and brake pedals like you can on some more expensive wheels.There are 19 buttons including the paddles and d-pad, and the buttons are easy to reach. They are, however, sort of hard to press (and NOT pressure sensitive), so it would be annoying if you had to use the "x" as the throttle.Pedals:The pedal base is 7.5" from top to bottom and 9" across at the widest point, which is close to the bottom. The pedals themselves are spaced 1" apart, which some people may find to be too close, but I find it perfect actually, and I wear size 12/13 shoes (although my feet are pretty thin). The pedals are both 3 1/8" wide at their widest point, and there's about 3.5" of space left on the base behind the pedals, which I also find to be very good. I would actually prefer it to be either about 1-2" shorter so that I could have my heel on the ground, or 1-2" longer with a pad on top so my heel wouldn't hurt/would have better grip.The brake and throttle pedals have the same stiffness which isn't ideal (brake should be stiffer), but both are very easy to depress. Not easy enough that it makes manipulation too sensitive, but not hard enough to stress your feet/ankle. Still, I would prefer them to both be a little stiffer, especially the brake pedal. The bottom of the pedal assembly has 4 circular friction material areas placed around the screw holes that seem to work pretty well on carpet. The pedals are hinged at the bottom and you push mostly down, so the force doesn't cause the base to move. In a 10 minute race with lots of braking, my pedals moved about 6 inches; it was never really enough to cause me to lose control or anything. You could place a dumbbell behind the assembly to keep it from moving.Both cables are 58" long, which is about 5 feet . Make sure to keep the cables coming out of back of wheel somewhat straight so that they don't eventually lose connection with the inside of the base, like what happens when you wrap up a controller too tightly and you have to keep plugging and unplugging it to get it to work.Clamp/Lap Attachment:I was kind of excited about the lap attachment since I like to play some console games, but this is really disappointing. It's easy to assemble, but that's about the only plus. You have 13" between the outside of your left thigh and the outside of your right thigh, which is way too small to be comfortable even for a skinny guy like me. To make things worse, the attachment locks in place by outward thigh motion, so if you need to quickly brake, it suddenly collapses. I was expecting a cloth belt or something that would make sense, but this is disappointing. A decent solution was to attach the clamp to a large, thin book I had. Not ideal, but it worked much better than the lap attachment.The clamp is amazing! There are 4 friction strips on the bottom of the wheel as well as a suction cup, and 3 friction strips on the bottom of the V-shaped bracket that goes on the underside of the desk. This is plastic but the inside of the hole for the clamp screw is lined with what seems to be stainless steel. I thought that was a really nice touch since if you remove the clamp a lot, the inside of the plastic would normally wear. You would think they would do the same for the nut, but strangely enough they didn't. As another reviewer pointed out, if you frequently remove your wheel it seems like the plastic threads on the inside of the nut would wear pretty quickly. Even though I didn't clamp it fully, it worked very well and it took a lot of force to cause it to slip. Furthermore, the shape of the V-bracket made removing the clamp relatively easy/still hard to loosen when you didn't want to. Very nice. The clamp seems to be able to work on desks up to 1 3/4" thick.Compatibility:Seems to work on PSX/PS1/PS2/PS3/Xbox 360/PC!!Vibration works well on PSX/PS1/PS2 games, but not on PC. This is most likely a driver/software problem since the wheel got stuck in vibration 1 time when I plugged it into the PC, so I know the hardware works.Amazon doesn't have this listed, but if you look at Genius' official website, PS1 games are also officially supported. I can confirm that the wheel is compatible (although in a limited sense) with PS1. I tried it with Need for Speed: High Stakes, and Gran Turismo 2, playing the game through a PS2, but results should be similar to PS1. I say limited because on Gran Turismo 2, for some reason the steering wheel works fine but I wasn't able to use the pedals as analog, they would only work as on/off switches like using square and x. I tried to adjust this in the options by setting the throttle and brake to analog (hoping this would map it to the brake and throttle pedals), but it just disabled their use completely. Also, the vibration function caused the cars to upshift.Need for Speed: High Stakes doesn't support analog throttle, only steering, so I didn't run into the same problems as I did on GT2. However, I couldn't use the paddles to shift since they were mapped to the x and square buttons, but having it on automatic actually didn't take away from the experience at all.As the manual indicates, the "mode" button is the equivalent to the "analog on" button on the PS1/PS2.On PS2, it works beautifully with Gran Turismo 4 and you can see the sensitivity on the HUD in race. The throttle and brake pedals seem to work in 5% increments, but that could just be a limit of the display in the games (most likely). Even if they truly only work in 5% increments, for almost all cars it won't be a problem since 5% throttle won't be likely to break traction, unless you're using an extremely modified RWD car, with say 1500 WHP.On PC, I couldn't enable vibration. When I plugged the wheel in, Vista 64 bit automatically detected drivers and I was able to play the game, but even after installing drivers from the CD, playing with the game settings, uninstalling, downloading drivers from the website, etc., I couldn't get vibration to work. I tried installing 32 bit drivers thinking the games were 32-bit, but that didn't work either, and neither did trying to map the wheel as a controller. I was a bit disappointed since most of my racing will be done on PC, but it's not a huge deal since my speakers/ screen give enough feedback as to what's going on with the suspension/tires. The thing is though, I know Shift 2 supports vibration because it works on my Xbox 360 for PC controller whereas it does not for a lot of other racing games I have, so I'm not sure what the problem is.I suggest you download a free copy of BMW M3 Challenge (from the BMW website or others) to test this wheel. You can really see the sensitivity of the wheel and pedals. Apply the following settings:Steering sensitivity: 12%, Steering deadzone: 2-5%Throttle sensitivity: 20%, Throttle deadzone: 0%Brake sensitivity: 20%, Brake deadzone: 0%This game also works very well with Live for Speed demo, although you have to adjust the settings (of course).I suspect this wheel could work on Xbox 360, because when I plugged it into the USB port of my PC and played Shift 2, the game automatically mapped it as a game pad. Plugging it into the USB port for an Xbox 360 should do the same, although I didn't try it. Same thing with PS3. The original Xbox controller port is actually just a modified USB 1 or 1.1 port, so you could probably modify it and the wheel would then work with every modern gaming system.Note that I do NOT condone modifying controllers or other software/hardware, and doing so will void your warranty and may cause physical and/or property damage! I am not liable for any damage incurred. Also, don't expect to get tech support on the Xbox/Xbox 360/PS3 since they are not officially supported.Shift 2 settings:It's very important that you calibrate the wheel correctly or the car will be hard to control. This is the main reason for bad user reviews of Shift 2 on websites like Amazon actually. The game is amazing by the way. There are about 28 presets for all kinds of Logitech and Thrustmaster wheels, but this wheel doesn't show up. Set it as a custom wheel and apply the following settings. To get to the menu, go to Options, Gameplay, Adjust Controls, 2nd window within the control window that you can toggle with L1 or R1 with the Xbox controller, or K and L with the keyboard:5% steering deadzone20-30% steering sensitivity depending on taste0% throttle dead zone20-30% throttle sensitivity0% brake dead zone20-30% brake sensitivity(This wheel doesn't have a clutch so I leave the settings as they are)0% speed sensitivity for drift AND normal100% steering lock for drift AND normalI think speed sensitivity is the non-linear increase in force at a given position from neutral (wheel centered) depending on car speed. This is common in street cars where the power steering assist decreases as the vehicle speed increases since a lot of help is needed for parking, but cars become less stable at high speeds so less assist makes the wheel less sensitive. Honestly I don't think it affects this wheel since it has no force feedback, but some forums suggested to set it to 0 anyway. Even if you do have a wheel with force feedback, you should set this to 0% in the GT1/F1 races at least because those cars don't have power steering. You also shouldn't need to set the steering deadzone to 5% (should be 0) since my wheel came perfectly centered with no deadzone, but it helps control the more twitchy cars (Lotus Elise/Exige). Although this isn't as realistic, it helps. These settings have worked really well for me.I play with medium AI difficulty, no steering or braking assists, traction control and stability control off, ABS on, best line on.Misc.:As others have mentioned, the included manual is only 1 page printed in 22 different languages, and isn't very helpful. It tries to tell you how to set up the clamp/ lap attachment, but the diagrams are way too small to convey any meaningful information (for the clamp at least). It does however tell you some things that would be impossible to know otherwise. By pressing select and right or left on the d-pad, you can increase and decrease the sensitivity of the wheel, respectively. I think it's better to adjust the sensitivity from the game, but on a lot of console games where you can't do this, this could be useful. I didn't have to use it in Need for Speed or GT2 however.

First off, it does work. No issues with drivers.Steering sensitivity and dead zone were a pain to adjust, never quite got it perfect. Too hard to control cars in racing sims and arcade games. Wheel is way too small even for my little hands, about 7 inches across (small dinner plate or side dish plate). Paddles are too close behind the part I like to grab, was always hitting them accidentally. Since the paddles just mimic buttons 1 and 2 I was not able to assign them to nothing so I could ignore them.Peddles were weird. Never got comfortable pushing them. Floor unit cant dig into carpet or stick to hardwood so it was always sliding around. Peddles themselves too small and too close, often hit both at same time. Top unit mounts easily and sticks in place, did not try the lap holder but it seems decent enough.Well built, just doesnt respond the way I like and wasnt able to adjust to desired levels. Its probably fine for Mario Kart and GTA and Carmageddon. But for arcade racers it falls short and for sims its not even close to adequate. Good deal for the money anyway.

I would give 4.5 stars if I could, just for value for money alone, but since that's not possible, I'll stick with the 4. Why? It's a great device, but not perfect. Please keep reading.After reading a lot of reviews for gaming wheels, I eventually decided to go for this one. I'm glad I did. Sure, there are better wheels out there, but you can add $150 on average for those. I had to outweigh my gaming habits, time against the money spent, and space used. I don't only play simulations when gaming, and I don't have all too much time due to work and other projects I'm working on, so for the occasional foray into simulation games, this is perfect. I don't play racing games, and I solely use this for Euro Truck Simulator 2 right now (and ATS eventually, when released).A lot of reviews stated that it only turns 90 degrees in each direction. This is correct. It won't matter though once you have it calibrated to your liking. I will admit, it took me altogether probably a good hour to get the settings right (for my taste), but once you are at that stage, it's fun. Someone said they crashed their truck right away, so did I; stick with it though, once you get the hang of it, you'll love it. Granted, this wheel does not have a clutch and separate gear shifter (only shifting paddels behind the wheel), but I use the "real automatic" mode in ETS2, and for that it works. The foot pedals are nice, responsive, and although I wear a US size 12 to 13, I do not find them too small. I usually am barefoot though at home; with shoes it might be a different story. The foot pedals do not slide on my carpet.As for the wheel itself, a couple of buttons I cannot seem to get assigned (they overlap with the rear paddels), but other than that, it works well. The wheel circumference is small-ish, but even though I have big hands, I can use it fine. I'm glad it doesn't use up more space, because that is a somewhat valuable commodity around my computer.Overall I would say this: If you want a quality product at a great price, don't care about force feedback (it won't work in Windows 7) and if you're not the uber-hardcore-simulation gamer that needs the ultimate realism short of actually driving a real truck, then this is definitely something you should consider. I do not regret the purchase. Driver installation is plug'n'play, the wheel gets its power from the USB port. You might encounter issues with USB 3, but I have not tested this. My two front panel USB ports are USB 2.0 and it works fine with those.If I had to pick three things I would change (but this does in no way mean that it makes the wheel non-functional) then it would be:1) Make the cord interchangable and don't have a split PS2/PC wire (one end PS2, one end USB). Give me two cords that I can plug in either end.2) Make the "spring" in the weel that centers it less stiff or strong. Granted, for racing that may not be a bad thing, but maybe 25% less would be ideal.3) Change the fitting meachnism to the desk a little, so that it's not so stiff to remove. I can't keep the wheel mounted permanently, since I use my PC for everything from work to gaming.Those are minor things though and nothing that is, in my opinion, a must have.