- 5,051
- Netherlands
Best (mass produced) wheel rim out there bar none! Real envious of you guys.
Fanatec Opens Limited Pre-Orders for New CSL Elite McLaren GT3 Wheel
- Thread starter GTPNewsWire
- 428 comments
- 52,728 views
- 293
- United States
Thanks Buck. I can overlook the map, but someone PLEASE PLEASE tell me those beautiful rotary switches (a huge reason why I bought it) are not completely useless on all the decent racing games on the ps4. I have set up the wheel on gts, pc2, and ac and the the top two rotary switches which I was REALLY looking forward to assigning to stuff like fuel mapping, brake bias, and tcs, are so far completely unusable. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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Silent Drifter
Premium
- 1,330
- Wisconsin
- SilentDrifterGT
- SilentDrifterGT
I only tried it with GT Sport, and so far I don't believe we can assign them yet. GT Sport at least, is showing the Elite Wheel, which doesn't have those rotary switches. I think PD would need another screen for the the GT3 wheel. I too would love to be able to map fuel and TCS to it, as that would be cool to mess with while racing!
- 97
- Italy
I don't have the McLaren, but I have other Fanatec rims, and you can pretty much map every buttons. I use one rotary in IRacing to move the brake bias with both the F1 and BMW rim.
If you want to move to PC, you need a gaming GPU at least, and a proper CPU and motherbase. Laptop are expensive, you want a gaming PC. About the money value, I spent a lot because I wanted a PC for the VR, but pretty much you can get away with a PC around 700-800$. And you can play with pretty much every game with the proper configuration. Since the day I got the PC, so December, I have never touched again my PS4.
There are a lot of of game and you have more way to custom your experience (triple screens, VR, 3rd party app, wheels and pedals combo, ecc).
Depend what kind you like. There are pure simulation, like Automobilista, Rfactor 2, RaceRoom, AC and IRacing.
IRacing is what I play, but because I don't care about the offline, it has the best online enviroment, something that GT Sport tried to replicate in a small way on console, but it is expensive.
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- 50
- Canberra
- JesseDeya
How is it that Fanatec are so good at making wheels, yet so ineffectual at actually making wheels.
TAKE MY MONEY.
I honestly don't know how or why they are so poor at hitting production targets or keeping up with demand. Are margins that tight?
TAKE MY MONEY.
I honestly don't know how or why they are so poor at hitting production targets or keeping up with demand. Are margins that tight?
- 97
- Italy
People think that Fanatec is a big company, it is not.
Simracing is a small market, and Fanatec was targeting that market, in these last few years there has been a bigger demand, because Fanatec bought back a compability with PS4, and also simcade (GT Sport, Forza like game) costumers started to go wheels ruote, way more then before. I have multiple friends (they are casual players) that bought wheels to play GT Sport, DriveClub, Forza series.
So as a small company, they have a way bigger demand and probably they can't keep up the pace. I rather prefer this, then they rush the supply and we may have cheap products. The waiting is worth.
- 3,600
- Middelburg
Even for the largest companies it is hard to match supply and demand if the sales are not predictable, sandbagging and do a louzy job at forecasting. Own experience 
Imagine if you are Thomas of Fanatec. How much McLaren GT3 wheels are we going to sell in batch 1? Run the big data analystics, review historic orders etc etc.
It is really hard to give a reasonable number of sales to the manufacturer.
Imagine if you are Thomas of Fanatec. How much McLaren GT3 wheels are we going to sell in batch 1? Run the big data analystics, review historic orders etc etc.
It is really hard to give a reasonable number of sales to the manufacturer.
- 5,051
- Netherlands
Production is in China. And in between logistics, manufacturing, quality control, certification I imagine a lot of factors weigh in. It is a brand new product though. I do wonder if they have their own factory in China....
Even for the largest companies it is hard to match supply and demand if the sales are not predictable, sandbagging and do a louzy job at forecasting. Own experience
Imagine if you are Thomas of Fanatec. How much McLaren GT3 wheels are we going to sell in batch 1? Run the big data analystics, review historic orders etc etc.
It is really hard to give a reasonable number of sales to the manufacturer.
With pre-orders it should not be difficult to determine target, but I suspect that logistics and most likely manufacturing being the bottleneck. I believe they only finished their final design only until recently.
- 634
- Sofia
I think that their production line there is with limited production numbers per month. I think Fanatec found their production partner there and they are limited by him. As we speak for China - there you can find production lines run by 10, 100, 1000 etc people. Bigger production number are not related with the quality, because if you need more wheels you don`t rush the workers to work fast with the risk of more faults - you just hire more workers and more production facilities.
Sometimes Fanatec have great start of their products and the demand is huge, but I think no matter of the preorder numbers - their production numbers are fixed.
Sometimes Fanatec have great start of their products and the demand is huge, but I think no matter of the preorder numbers - their production numbers are fixed.
- 293
- United States
Thanks Kimi. Of course I wish there had been a little more transparency about these switches’ compatibility w ps4, but probably like yourself a few months ago, my frustration w consoles limitations have been growing lately and I have found myself daydreaming about vr, better wheel mapping, better online behavior, etc. anyway.
- 97
- Italy
- 293
- United States
Aside from my disappointment with Fanatecs marketing, I would still recommend this wheel for pc users. Build quality and adjustability are excellent (with qr). Which vr do you recommend?
- 97
- Italy
That’s not entirely correct as there are two kinds of rotaries:
Rotary encoders which work as two buttons and turn infinitely in both directions and can be mapped no problem in any game.
Rotary switches as found on this wheel and custom ones work as positional switches and generally don’t rotate infinitely. Not sure how many positions are on these Fanatec ones but on my custom F1 wheel it has 12, each position represents 12 different buttons. Outside of iRacing and a few contols in rF2 and AMS these cannot be mapped to anything even on PC sims.
The games need to be coded with these positional switches in mind as they work completely differently to a normal button. It basically works like an H-shifter where you select a gear and the button is held there.
On my wheel they are actually just so you can change what the SLI display shows on each segment, so switching between lap delta, fastest lap, fuel, speed, revs etc. although now I race in VR so they are of no use anymore. I’d like to be able to use it to switch to a specific HUD/telemetry page but unfortunately none of the sims I have (got them all except iRacing) support it.
Yeh, me too, unfortunately we need devs to support it and I doubt any of them will add it in to current games. We’ll have to hope now that there is a mass produced wheel with rotary switches they support them in new games.
It’s why Thrustmaster just swapped their replicas to use rotary encoders that return to neutral and just click once left or right.
- 5,051
- Netherlands
It should be possible for console to support rotary encoders. They are supported in Gran Turismo since GT5 with the Driving force GT all the way to the T-GT right now. And it isn't "exclusive" to TM by the way. The Rotary dial on the G29 works out of the box and can be mapped in many games. I cant remember what it is mapped too though.
Edit: The rotary dial on G29 is mapped to button 22 and 23
Edit 2: The 2 rotary switches on the McLaren are 12 position switches, so console owners aren't supported.
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Just seen you edited, yes different switches function differently, the equivalent Fanatec encoders are the “funky switches” (hat switch) that doubles up as a d-pad and rotary encoder.
- 293
- United States
The TGT has great rotary switches that turn completely around but they only work in one game and on one console. Also the rest of it is toy like compared to this thing. I expect more from Fanatec. Their products are of such high quality they practically sell themselves. They shouldn’t have to resort to the usual marketing trickery of implying something is completely compatible when they know it isn’t. (in this case rotary switches which are one of its main distinguishing features) I’m okay with it cuz im headed for pc anyway, I just think potential buyers should know up front. A simple asterisk next to “Two twelve way multi-position switches” that explains “Twelve way multi position switches currently not supported on consoles” would have been sufficient. Also I remember these mapping questions coming up before release and the silence from official sources was deafening. Iow they knew..
- 293
- United States
Well it took almost 6 months for gts to even give fanatec a space on their controller page (and they have been cranking out updates and fixes faster than I’ve ever seen) so excuse me when I chuckled at “ASAP” but I’ve become a little weary of waiting for developer support of stuff. I agree and hope you are right though, and only hope they share our sense of urgency.
- 3,600
- Middelburg
If it works the same as the Bodnar rotary switches then games will see it as an axis and that can’t be mapped to buttons in most sims hence the issue, AC and PCars definitely don’t. Must have been one of the random settings in R3E that rF2 and AMS also have as they use stock gMotor controller options some of which don’t even do anything and in those they behave like rotary encoders on a few options which just cycle through some options.
I wouldn’t hold your breath on any current games adding it because it is a lot more effort than you’d think. Having them programmable to anything you want is of no use because to get from position 1 to position 12 means you press every single button in between too.
A rotary switch is only good for pre-configured settings. Take for example brake balance, currently we can just increase or decrease it but on a rotary switch you’d have to always start from position 6 or 7 to be able to change the value in both directions and you’d also only be able to do so a maximum of 6 times. Great for an encoder that rotates infinitely in either direction and has no positional data on an axis.
What a rotary switch needs is 12 different brake balance settings which can be set to each position on the dial. Now when you leave it on position 6 or 7 brake balance will always be 50/50 for example and moving it to position 1 will always be 70/30.
So now you have two additional problems as a dev you need to account for. You need the user to be able to set a neutral position which just gives the default setup for the car, you then also need to either go through every car and setup 11 more setups for the player to assign on every setting you will allow this or allow the player to assign each one themselves.
Then you have the third biggest and much harder to account for issue, user error, someone just leaving the rotary switches in random positions and wondering why the car is driving terribly if you allow it for certain options. Rotary switches are very specialised things and there is really not a lot of things you’d actually want to be adjusting with them. Outside of TCS and ABS how many games actually support user changeable engine maps for example?
That’s of course if you want to use them as intended, they could add rudimentary support for cycling through some settings like HUD elements but again only useful for settings which do cycle rather than increase or decrease a certain amount because then the position you leave the switch in isn’t important.
- 293
- United States
Brains I like you but thats crazy. Its like buying a Porsche with a manual transmission that ends up working like an up down switch and the dealer saying “it still works as a manual transmission and I’m pretty sure someday in the very indefinite future there will be an update..” I know you are trying to see the glass half full.. but unfortunately thats all it is right now. I love the wheel but buyers should know that the support of these switches is extremely limited. Actually I’m still waiting for anyone to report that they actually work as intended in ANY game! That is part of the reason I created a thread about it. Most of the reason was to address Fanatec’s false advertising, but I knew if they DID work someone would promptly correct me. Interestingly the thread was almost immediately taken down as being redundant, which it was, but necessary imo to warn buyers about a significant advertising omission.
- 3,600
- Middelburg
Thanks for liking me, that made me blush
I fully agree. Never thought upfront that a race game needs to support the rotary switch. Maybe my lack of knowledge. Found that out by learning on the job. With that said it should indeed be "nice" or necessary to mention on the website or packaging that specific functions needs to be supported by the game to fully enjoy all buttons.
In my 'half full' thought: will be solved soonish 👍
In my 'half empty' thought: I don't see it happen in current racesims like AC and PCars2 maybe R3E...tell me I'm wrong please. 👎
PS Also read Thomas' comment about clutch mode:
We are working on a new dual clutch mode which will work better than anything on the market as you will be able to save the values for different cars/games. It is currently in alpha phase and we expect beta next week.
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- 293
- United States
Okay I take it back! Lol. My job for better or worse is full of ergonomics and simulators. The second I saw those switches I thought now we’re getting somewhere! Then when I saw they were on the real Mclaren for stuff like fuel mapping and tcs I wasnt surprised. These things were not put there to look cool guys!! (although apparently mine were) Many years of bumping the wrong switch, fumbling for it because it is to small etc all while wearing gloves, vibration, and going 150+ mph is how these switches evolve. Everything about them from placement to size to resistance to number of positions etc has been carefully thought out. I literally bought this rim because no other decent rim has them! And now I know why!Thanks for liking me, that made me blush
I fully agree. Never thought upfront that a race game needs to support the rotary switch. Maybe my lack of knowledge. Found that out by learning on the job. With that said it should indeed be "nice" or necessary to mention on the website or packaging that specific functions needs to be supported by the game to fully enjoy all buttons.
In my 'half full' thought: will be solved soonish 👍
In my 'half empty' thought: I don't see it happen in current racesims like AC and PCars2 maybe R3E...tell me I'm wrong please. 👎
PS Also read Thomas' comment about clutch mode:
We are working on a new dual clutch mode which will work better than anything on the market as you will be able to save the values for different cars/games. It is currently in alpha phase and we expect beta next week.
- 293
- United States
Right before a moderator shut down a “Buyer Beware” thread I created about this wheel (a wheel which I love btw) someone smugly suggested I should have “expected” the rotary switches not to work. Really? Based on what information? Intimate technical knowledge that no currently available racing game properly supports rotary switches? Rumors hidden within a hundred possible threads of multiple forums?
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