Hang on. Major copy and paste some impressions from Bedo and Naid.
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More comparison here.
http://members.iracing.com/jforum/posts/list/825/3316105.page#9032447
If you don´t have iRacing
TL;DR: The ranking order in Barry's review is correct!
Today, Naid, who was one of the reviewers in Barry's review, let me have a go at his 20Nm OSW Lenze wheel. I also brought my AF with me...tools, cables, setups, profiles, and even my racing gloves. That's right, no excuses.
First, and I think this is important.
Naid's Lenze OSW, as tested is a ~$4000 package.
AF Pro, as tested is a $1800 package.
Right off the bat, I'll answer the big questions:
1. Was Barry's review correct, and did the AF indeed fall last in the comparison against an OSW and Bodnar?
2. Was the AF misrepresented and tuned improperly?
The answers to both of those questions based on my personal experience is YES!
I am confident, that if I were one of the reviewers there that day, I too would have probably put those wheels in that order, and while I did not try the Bodnar, I can tell you that the AF would have come last. Naid confirmed for me that the differences between the OSW and Bodnar were marginal. He actually had the Bodnar and showed it to me, just no cables for it, so I wasn't able to try it today. Considering the wide array of hardware he had and the ridiculous D-box motion simulator, and that he knew everything inside and out, and because he is also a very highly qualified technologist, I took his word for it. The difference between the OSW Lenze and AF however, was *NOT* marginal. It was very noticeable for sure.
I was able to provide a tune for the AF which Naid drove with. His feedback confirmed to me that what he experienced at Barry's was most probably clipping and over saturation of certain effects, which made the wheel feel dull in certain scenarios. With my tune, no detail was lost according to his feedback. However, that wasn't enough.
Now, let's explain this seemingly shocking confirmation in more detail for current and potential AF/OSW/Bodnar owners.
The reason why the AF falls short in this comparison is because it simply doesn't have enough power. Period. That's all. It's the only reason, and it turned out to be a pretty big reason.
Does that make it a bad wheel? Certainly not. That's like saying the CSW or the G25 are terrible wheels because they don't generate enough torque.
The AF tuned properly is capable of delivering detail and information in any scenario in the game, as long as there is enough available torque bandwidth. Even tuned properly, and even with the new responsive mode, the AF did not even come close to the torque output of the Lenze, which was 15-20Nm, depending on how its configured.
Why was torque the deciding factor?
Because when you jump a curb at 150mph in the Lotus 79, your Jimmies are so rustled, you swear you were there. That in itself is what distinguished the AF from all other wheels and put it in a league of its own. Also, because you get a much more dynamic range in the types of forces you experience on the track. If you want a proper "experience" driving the DW12 at Long Beach, the AF cannot deliver it as well as the Lenze. That extra headroom in torque is actually quite extra. Is that true for all cars and series? Absolutely not. The AF covers the majority of the cases perfectly fine. However, it won't disorient you if you misjudge and hop a tall curb... or deliver a noticeable level of feedback if you hit a curb while under full tire load. With the higher torque, curbs become a thing you have to respect. That in itself puts a bit of fear into you and drives the immersion up.
Let me illustrate on a relative scale where the wheels fall into in terms of being able to feel the torque:
G25 --> CSW --> CSWv2 -------------> AF ------------>(Bodnar?) --> Lenze
Most cars don't generate that much torque, so why is the extra torque needed?
While all of these wheels operate well below their range 70-80% of the time (confirmed with telemetry many times many posts ago), when you get into those situations in certain cars where the forces get on the higher end, with extra torque, and we're talking additional 10Nm of torque here, give you a much more immersive picture of what the car is doing under load and what the corner actually feels like at speed as if you were experiencing g-forces.
What about the AF tuning capabilities and its new responsive mode?
Even with all of the tuning in the world, and the increased responsive mode, the AF wasn't able to match the torque of the Lenze. Especially when hopping over curbs and all of that. Also, despite the AF giving much detail, it didn't deliver some of the nuances present in torque differences toward the higher end of its power (it was tuned properly, trust me! The only person who can tune the wheel more correctly is Berney himself, and only because he can change the source code. ) Kind of like when there is a camber change, or the wheels alter their grip under load. Not that it doesn't deliver, just that with higher torque, those nuances are more pronounces as there is more torque to differentiate.
However, the AF's tuning capabilities are unmatched by any wheel. Within its available torque, the tuning capabilities allow you to completely alter its behavior and really dial out most things you don't like. Ok, you can't dial in more torque, we went over this, but you can tweak everything from noise, smoothness, inertia, dynamic oscillations, to additional effects from game physics, or even override a game's FFB completely! You can even mess with the torque equalization!!! The list of tuning capabilities is crazy and impressive.
What the new responsive mode did was just intensified the overall delivery of what the AF can deliver. What it doesn't do is add more torque.
Oscillations ARE an issue with the high torque wheels. Are they a deal braker? No.... or at least if you don't drive with one hand on top of the wheel with your chair reclined and drive real slow blasting hip hop music. There are things in these wheels you may not like that you may not be able to tune out period, whereas with the AF you can.
For example. You cannot modify the clarity or chattiness of the higher end torque wheels. With the AF, you can really change how certain forces and effects are delivered. With the Lenze specifically, the small detailed forces were rather muted, however still present and detailed, but smoother.
Imagine that the FFB delivered looked like a sinewave. Imagine that with the AF, you can modify the frequency, how close the peaks are together, and how sharp or dull they can be. What you can't modify in the AF is how tall they are, and that's torque.
More torque yields less detail though, right?
No. That's #%&*$#, and don't let anyone convince you otherwise with "science". What is proven in theory, and which may be true if you paid enough attention in math class to verify it, is actually not felt in reality. The Lenze, which I tested at 19 Amps, did not suffer from ANY detail loss. Going over the high frequency curbs at Zolder produce crystal clear feedback. Nor did it suffer from being able to feel nuances of forces which slowly ramp up as you drive over big humped curbs at 2mph.
But the AF features a 2000Hz super duper encoder/decoder, and the others don't, so why do they produce detail that is just as good as the AF's detail?
I guess maybe you don't need big numbers to feel small bumps. I don't know. All I know is that the only difference between the ability in being able to feel detail is that with the AF you can tune that feel, and with the other wheels you can't.
Whoah, whoah, whoah. If the AccuForce's tuning capabilities are so dope, why isn't that enough to make it a better wheel?
Depends on what you understand from better. I had a more enjoyable and immersive experience with the higher torque wheel. In addition to that, we didn't spend any significant time fine tuning the feedback from the other wheels. It just worked. Out of the box. Like magic. With the AF, I had to get my degree in engineering first, figure out what all the options do, and start messing around until I dialed out a bunch of stuff I didn't like.
As far as a user's experience is concerned, the fact that the Lenze just worked, delivered detail and offered much higher torque variation and as a result more immersive experience, made it a more enjoyable wheel than the AF.
The AF's tuning capabilities did not increase the immersion factor of the simulation, but the added torque of the Lenze certainly did. Torque FTW!
I'm not satisfied with your analysis on detail, please explain further...
The AF is capable of delivering very chatty and high frequency details. With the Lenze, the details were much smoother and more muted. They were definitely not as jolting as in the AF. The kind of detail we're talking about is, being able to feel road seams, road texture, small bumps, and the ruble strips over curbs. The ability of the AF to relate that information and in a way where in the way they're being related can actually be customized, is simply not possible with the Lenze. However, that doesn't mean that those details weren't felt or didn't come through in the Lenze. Yes, that's a huge advantage for the AF, but at the end of the day, the other wheel showed that if you didn't have the advantage of being able to tune that detail, everything was still fine.
The AF is also not as smooth as the Lenze. By smoothness I mean the subtlety of the way the small forces are delivered. The AF can be of course tutned to smooth out bumps and whatnot, but because of its limited torque range, even a little bit of smoothing soon starts to eliminate detail.
So if you want the detail in AF, you can't have it as smooth as you would get it in the Lenze. That's all. Doesn't mean you can't have smooth detail in the AF, but it's just the nature of how different those wheels are.
However, the fact that you CAN customize the detail of the AF, and be able to add so much more other effects, like bumps, engine RPM, make it immersive in its own way even though it can't deliver that high torque.
Sooo, the AF is rated at 13Nm, and the Bodnar at 16Nm, and you said that Naid said that the Bodnar feels more like the Lenze which is 20Nm?
...uhh, yeah. In fact, different motors may be rated the same torque and feel completely different, apparently. So I'll make it simple. Don't go by the numbers, but go by what you feel.
What about safety?
With the AF you can probably hurt yourself a little.
With a wheel like an OSW, especially since it doesn't have any controls around oscillation, you can SERIOUSLY INJURE YOURSELF! Seriously, and that's not a joke. Just like in a race car, and another point for immersion, check! <-- that was a joke.
Should I sell my AF and trade it for an OSW or a Bodnar?
Whoa, whoa, slow down there champ and let's revisit:
AF is an $1800 package, while the other two are $4-5K delivered.
Do the other wheels offer twice the performance for more than twice the price?
I don't know if its twice the performance, but definitely more than one and half times the torque for sure. Torque, it turns out, makes a significant difference to the amount of immersion you get from the wheel. Just because you can tune and refine the hell out of the FFB in AccuForce, the added torque is significant enough to give a player a much more exciting and immersive experience.
So in reality, if torque really is such a deciding factor for performance, then the AF delivers the great performance for its price with the added bonus of being able to tune it like no other wheel before. The other wheels deliver more torque, but for a significant price increase. So all wheels are good value, you just have to decide which is the right one for you.
So are there really any losers in this? Absolutely not.
Should you feel disappointed you got an AF instead of an OSW or Bodnar?
I don't know, do you normally feel disappointed you didn't have to pay an extra $2-3,000?
Do you #%&*$# about owning a $200K Lamborghini instead of a $500K Ferrari? Poor you.
I'm not, and mostly because I can't afford an OSW or a Bodnar, or a $15,000 motion simulation package form D-Box that makes my balls pack up and go inside of me when I crest the hill at the Skyline corner at Bathurst in a Lotus 79. ...and even if I could, my wife won't let me, because believe me, she's had it with my car #%&*$#. We all have one reason or another that limits our wants and forces us to instead satisfy our needs.
The AF is enough. The others just give you MOAR, and you need to pay for it.
But I could build an OSW for the price of an AF because shipping an AF to my country is assrape
Unless you value tuning capability more than torque, then your choice is clear... and I'm jealous. As Naid said, it's not like Berney is running a charity here. He has a business to run, salaries to pay, and invested years of his life to bring something to market for those of us who can't afford a Bodnar and have a great experience. Is he wrong to charge you a premium... you selfish #%&*$# who only throws stones at him every chance you get? Have some respect for the community and capitalism. Unlike communism, It #%&*$# works!
Are the OSW and Bodnar in a different league than the AF?
Yes. The torque difference alone puts them in different leagues. So maybe, perhaps, this wasn't a fair comparison? Then in that case the AF is in a market segment all on its own. Unrivaled!
What is the ideal wheel then?
A 25Nm AccuForce with SimCommander which is FREE. Berney, it's time to make a wheel with a stronger motor. Do it!
...but, ...but
The great thing about all of this, as Naid pointed out to me, if Bodnar didn't come to market, we wouldn't have had such a significant change in the landscape of SimWheel controllers so quickly. All of this is great stuff. We are living in the Golden Age of Sim Hardware. Rejoice, don't hate and insult each other, hug all the children you see on the street (they might be yours for all you know), and enjoy this revolution in SimRacing hardware!
_________________
Another input from Naid Naydenov who owns the Lenze and was one of the three in the barry test
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Well this was a fun afternoon. Bedo, thanks for bringing your complete AF setup! It was nice to once again tinker with some cool technology.
I wanted to share some thoughts on the AF testing, as it was a very different experience from what we did at Barry's during round 1. Doesn't mean there's anything wrong with either method, but it goes to show that the software tuning on the AF can make a huge difference in feel, and that there is no substitute for torque.
At Barry's, we took the recommended approach: started with a default profile, did some laps, auto-tuned, and tweaked things from there based on my preference (subjective). The end result was a very smooth wheel with defined but somewhat weak details. Yes, I could feel curbs, grass, and road surface variations when driving in a straight line, but they were being overpowered mid-corner by the spring effect, and that did not feel how a real car feels.
Then Bedo comes over and while we play with the Lenze, he mentions that the AF is lot harsher (chatty). I was like, REALLY? Since my observation was completely opposite.
Then we swap over to the AF, and he does his tuning magic. I asked him to configure it exactly how he likes to use it at home. So, a lot of effects are then disabled in Sim Commander. We start with a very basic and very raw profile, far from the defaults. Then we tweak from there until it feels "right". The result? Well defined effects that don't get overpowered mid-corner. But also VERY HARSH. There is constant chatter in the wheel and this sandy feeling. And I thought the Lenze was chatty?! This is like that, but times 10. The Lenze actually feels super smooth compared to the AF when tuned this way.
So which AF setup was better? If I had an AF and no other wheel choices, I would tune it somewhat towards the smooth side, because I don't like harshness. The constant knocking in the wheel can get on my nerves. The AF with its very raw setup is a good example of that. The Lenze also does it, but to a much lesser extent. I could not feel it in the Kollmorgen, so that may be the ticket, just need to figure out if the Kollmorgen sacrifices detail in order to achieve that. If it does, then this would be equivalent to damping, in which case the Lenze would make more sense, since you can always add damping or smoothing in the software.
Another thing was very apparent too. Regardless of the wheel settings (smooth vs raw), there is a huge difference in torque between the AF and the Lenze. The numbers are irrelevant, 13Nm vs 20Nm doesn't even begin to describe it. The Lenze feels literally 3-4 times more powerful. That's while running 19A in the Argon. And the experts can correct me, but I don't think it's pushing 20Nm at 19A. Maybe closer to 18Nm. I can only imagine what a handful it will be at 29Nm when properly powered. All this extra torque makes the whole experience a lot more alive. The small details are there, in a straight line, in a slow corner, fast corner, low forces, high forces, doesn't matter. I can be turning a corner at 150mph with the forces cranked up to the max, hanging on for dear life, and still be able to feel any small bump, or precisely when the tires are starting to lose grip.
And finally, preference can be very subjective. Low forces vs high forces, smooth vs harsh, people will like different things. Seeing how Bedo likes definition and harshness, I offered him to try the Lenze in its raw form: no effect filters, no damping anywhere, no setpoint smoothing in Granity. And he loved it. Apart from the crazy oscillations in the pits. I prefer a more toned down experience: overall effect filter at 5, 20-40% damping with 10% saturation, and setpoint smoothing, although lately I've been driving without CIS and it is starting to feel good. Maybe it's time to bring a Kollmorgen back into the picture
Point of the story, what a fun way to spend half a day! At the end, it doesn't matter which wheel is better. What matters is that we have plenty of choices, and that we can have a good time with this hobby of ours.
So let's do this again. Maybe someone in the area has a Mige? Speak up and we'll make sure to invite ourselves to your house.
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hang on even more
I would say this. Within the torque range of the AF, the AF can outperform any other wheel. I say "outperform" only due to the fact that you can tune how the AF relates those forces, because on the same scale up to 13Nm all motors should be able to reproduce that torque. You can adjust the volume and intensity and the smoothness, as well as add/subtract any effects and even override what the game is doing. Hence you get more choice, and with more choice you can tailor to your personal taste. If that makes you faster, or more comfortable, then you outperform a scenario where you don't get to choose and tailor.
Most cars with power steering should output steering rack forces that the AF can easily capture and let you tune to your hearts content. While with the OSW or Bodnar, you get what you get. Thus with the AF, you can achieve the same, or at least very close feeling, and change it to suit your taste.
For forces over what the AF can capture, you can easily compress those with the AF and still get the information and all of the detail, but the feeling of torque range will certainly not be the same as the more powerful wheel.
The latest torque related improvements in the AF (force boost) aim from a technical aspect to boost forces past clipping (13Nm) up to 20%. I personally did not notice this as a major or even obviously noticeable difference. Others are reporting the opposite and really like it. I like it too, but I can't say that its close, or even closer to the torque ranges of the more powerful motors when steering rack torques start to exceed what the AF can map to in a 1:1 fashion.
Perhaps to help you in your shopping, ask yourself this:
Is the ability to tune and dial the FFB more important to you within a 13Nm range than being able to feel even wider sensation of forces? Remember, with all wheels you will get the same information, except the stronger motor will deliver it in a more expansive range.
Or you can think of it as following:
The AF is a very technically advanced wheel and can really cater to anyone who is serious about competing and winning because of the advantages the software tuning provides. Game specific plugins, telemetry feedback, etc... Key here is potential advantage, not necessarily complete immersion and realism.
A more powerful motor will give you a wider range of feeling which can be felt in fewer cars (high downforce open wheelers without powersteering). However you have no say in customization, and if there are FFB issues, like oscillations you have to use the limited dampening tools to dial those out. Limited in comparison to the AF of course. Though, whose say is it that wider torque range is more realistic or not? You're pretty much bound to the accuracy of the simulation's FFB output, and few sims do it the right way because most of them have to cater to wheels that don't even come close to even capturing anything in a 1:1 fashion. You're probably safe with rFactor 2 and iRacing. I don't know about the others. Plus iRacing seems to exaggerate steering forces on some cars. Nobody seems to really know how accurate they are. So maybe a more powerful wheel will better reproduce something that might be wrong and you can't really change that. Maybe?
Also,
Is technical support and the advantages of a vendor product important to you? Do you trust that years of R&D, and custom components that were engineered together and paired with software tailed for them will yield a more favorable experience for you?
What about price difference?
Another one.
one of the great benefits of an open source project is that if you're not happy with something, you can just fix it yourself!! ..that's the theory at least. However, given the amount of freedom available in pairing hardware, I can only see interest in this project increase. On top of that, because it is open source and volunteer based, the total price for a DIY package should reduce, or match up to vendor pricing but with more expensive components. Whether or not that means more in terms of quality or performance, it's hard to say.
At this point, I can't say you can go wrong with either choice.
While AF's tuning abilities are nice, as I've mentioned before there are usability issues associated with it. It's little things that add to a lot. You will have to live with the SC software like it or not, and probably invest a good amount of time in tuning it and tailoring it. At the moment Berney is working on some cloud based auto-tune feature, which I hope it uses some super advanced math formulas with statistical analysis to figure out the optimal settings, and not just an average of what everyone is doing. I don't know, but the point is, he's working on improving the tuning process.
At the same time, the barebones OSW driver settings just seem to work fine without any significant investment of time to make the wheel feel just right.
So is all the tuning effort and magic software really beneficial? Will it make you faster? I don't know, but it certainly gives you the option of choice.
In my opinion, the killer feature of SC is the ability to read telemetry from a game and supply its own FFB. So if you play a game with crappy FFB, but that game outputs good telemetry, then SC can work wonders for you. The only game I've encountered where this is applicable now is Assetto Corsa. Though I haven't exactly met anyone with an OSW complaining about AC's FFB being crappy or noisy.
Again, the software offers more choice.
...
Now for my own personal speculation, because after trying to stay as objective as I can, I think I'm allowed to speculate a little bit....
I think most users will not like to tinker with settings, and if the user experience of SC is not polished, where profiles are applied automatically, etc... most people will just grow tired of having to set settings. The primary goal of a sim user is to race, not tinker with wheel settings. There is no known paradigm to date where this has been the case. No other wheel on the market has allowed users to tinker with so much settings until their heads explode just to get the wheel to feel right.
I say this because I have over 10 years of experience designing user interfaces for applications, and my personal experience in observing and watching users has been that they generally just trust a default option. If defaults need to be tailored and customized by the user, most people are just going to ignore it. This is a very common paradigm when studying UX.
If the OSW project just works out of the box, then it will be more user friendly and more people will just like it better, even if the AF can be configured to outperform it.
So, is there a perfect wheel here? I don't know, but with all of these options of DD wheels there definitely doesn't seem for anything to be serverly lacking, DIY, or non-DIY.
So buy whichever. (Plus, the more competition, the better. ).
End quote."