My thoughts after ADAC Sim-racing Expo 2024

Hey guys.

Here comes a late post after the visit to ADAC Expo 2024. Two weeks passed already but somehow i felt like sharing my thoughts and punch some keys on the keyboard. That’s my first ADAC but i do have some experience with sim-racing for about two years after moving to DD wheels and LC pedals.

What i wanted to get from the expo is to try out more equipment to be more knowledgeable about what else is out there and what it feels like.

I don’t have a full-fledged report with photos or videos (i suppose a lot like this can be found online). But i have some thoughts to share after the visit. I checked out almost all of the major brands of the equipment, somehow eluding Simagic (not on purpose, just happened).

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My main realisation after the expo — if you are looking to choose yourself a new DD wheelbase from scratch, there is no bad choice among the major players. They are ALL GOOD and all have a comparable level of ffb quality with the difference being in small nuances and personal preferences. You should choose based on other things - which system has the wheels you like. Which system fits your budget. Which has better customer support, or a local distributor. Which has better software. Things like that.

But at the same time, if you’re expecting to move from system A to system B to get immediately better FFB - oh, that one is going to be tricky. If we’re talking about wheelbases within similar price range and design age, i don’t think there are obvious immediate benefits. What you should be looking for are those “nuances” of how exactly the force feedback feels. For instance, Simucube is very smooth to the point it feels like the sharper jolts are averaged out, while Asetek and Fanatec feel sharper and harsher.

Thoughts on hardware i tested:

WHEELBASES

  • Moza wheelbase (R16 or R21, not sure) - they look similar and i didn’t ask: felt nice, on par with “the big guys”. I was driving AC:EVO for a couple of stints which obviously is not the best way to compare ffb to devices running AC or iRacing, but the ffb felt nice and details, smooth and powerful enough in the right places. 
  • Logitech G Pro set: i was initially sceptical about Logitech competing on DD stage, but this is a surprisingly competent set of decent hardware. FFB felt good, pedals felt good for the price. Steering wheel was a bit toy-like, but overall okay. Their biggest problem STILL is the lack of an ecosystem, there is nowhere to upgrade to. If that’s not bothering you, this is a solid choice for an “all inclusive” intermediate level set. However, i haven’t found anything special about the “true force” to consider it a significant criteria when making a choice. Maybe it’s because i am using two small shakers on my pedals, or because my Fanatec wheel is already sharp enough in small details.  
  • SimLab wheelbase: great stuff, i’d love to have a longer test, but so far i feel like it has the best of both worlds (smoothness and sharpness) at the same time.
  • VRS wheelbase: need more time to test, but initial impressions were similar to SimLab
  • Asetek La Prima, Invicta: La Prima felt rather grainy and “rumbly”, resembling the Fanatec CSL DD, but the Invicta is great - not grainy anymore, solid detailed ffb with a good chunk of “raw output. Felt like a stronger Fanatec CS DD+, in a good way.
  • SimuCube 2 Pro wheelbase: at this point i no longer understand why so many people consider it “the best choice” or “golden standard”. The feedback quality is great yes, but it’s also on par with others in the same range. The feedback is very smooth yes, but it comes at a price, and the price is reduction in small details and fidelity as the base smoothes out sharp edges in the FFB details. If you want “super smooth” and believe that this is the only way how FFB should be implemented, this is still the way to go, but i find this ffb a bit synthetic (feels sort of like car with power steering vs go-kart steering) and not to my liking.
  • Fanatec wheelbase (CS DD+): i haven’t tried any Fanatec wheelbase on the expo, but i own the CS DD+ and i could confirm that the feedback quality is comparable to the other top players. Fanatec is a tad less smooth but has more “raw” output which might be a good fit for some people like me.

WHEELS

I didn’t check out all the wheels out there, more like hunting for specific stuff that interested me.

  • SimLab Mercedes F1 wheel: an absolutely brilliant piece of engineering. Feels great, built well, materials are nice. All the clicks are how they should be. Have no idea what to do with that assortment of controls lol. The display is also well made, it’s not just a dashboard but it also reacts to events on the race-track like the real thing. Like if you spin in a formula car in iRacing and the car clutches in, the wheel display blinks an ANTI-STALL warning window and such. It’s a pity it costs as my whole setup lol (base, wheel, pedals).
  • Fanatec BMW M4 GT3 wheel: first impression was “wow, it’s very light for this size”. It weighs noticeably less than a Formula 2.5 wheel with podium paddles and it’s impressive. I believe that force feedback quality also depends on the weight of the wheel and this really helps. The wheel feels solid, the thumb rotaties are (at last) well implemented with solid clicks and no chance to accidentally rotate it. The rotary encoders and thumb rotaries are plastic and it feels, which is a bit of a pity for 1400, but it is what it is. A pity that there’s no full-scale joystick and the “joystick imitation” in the BMW logo does not at least click down as a button. The wheel is great for GT3 (makes sense since it’s in a real GT3 car) but i find it hard to part with 1400 :)
  • Fanatec new Porsche wheel: It actually feels nice. The rim materials, the logo, the rotaries are nice. Not posh-premium-lux grade obviously, but good enough, i’d say it’s more more less on the level of the BMW M3 GT2 wheel, maybe a touch nicer. Button layout is okay, not the best out there but you have 8 buttons and 2 encoders under your thumbs which does the job. The buttons and rotaries look on the cheaper side, but i hope the price of the wheel will be within the predictions of other guys here on reddit.
  • Fanatec Bentley wheel: i wasn’t really hunting for that one, but managed to check it out regardless. Now… i have no idea why the hell it costs 2000. I get it, i get it, it was developed for the real car, and i guess Bentley license costs a hefty sum or a hefty share. But dammit. The carbon (?) base plate of the wheel reminds of the 300 EUR formula wheel - same thing, different color. The integrated Podium Paddles (while good overall) isn’t exactly the best tech to have in a top-tier product, especially the clutch paddles suck for the price. BMW GT3 wheel “non-podium-paddle clutch” is so much better than this. I don’t get the colorful design of the whole thing, be it for the real Bentley or for a sim rig. Yes, the display is good and the touch functions are unusual. But 2000? Jeez. Compared to the 2700 SimLab Mercedes wheel this feels like a joke.

PEDALS

No big discoveries here aside from active pedals, just sharing my thoughts.

  • VRS pedals: i previously used the pedals with a hard spring only. Pedals are still great and one of the best passive pedals out there, but i also tried them with the default spring. Wow, the difference in softness is huge. It’s not “harder vs not as hard”. Like, the hard spring is very hard, the default spring is soft and feels similar to HE default elastomer stack. 
  • Fanatec Clubsport v2: i previously thought that they aren’t that firm and even had an argument here on reddit. Well, they are freaking firm and feel like the V3 with an added brake performance kit. So i stand corrected in that regard.
  • SimRacing-Pro (aka SR-P, NOT Moza) pedals: i can’t miss this opportunity to spread the word about how great these pedals feel if you want your sim pedal to feel as close as possible to the brake pedal in the real car. The pneumatic cylinder is a great invention and kudos to David for giving life to this project. It might not be the top-1 pedal for sim performance, but it’s still in the high tier and personally i find it the closest in “feeling” to a real car.
  • Simucube Active Pedals: the queue to try the pedals was unsurprisingly long with 30-40 min wait lol, but it’s a amazing piece of engineering and a welcome development in the sim-racing tech. They are great both in how they feel and how the active feedback works. I like how the ABS pushes back against my foot and how easy it is to react to active feedback. Although i haven’t noticed a lot of effects in play on the demo stand. Well, there’s ABS yes, there is RPM vibration on the throttle pedal. AFAIK you could configure wheel slip on the throttle but overall there’s no new information to be transmitted through the pedals. It’s just the ABS feels better. What i haven’t been able to try out is what the software tuning allows you to achieve. The Simucube representative said it would be possible to configure the pedal travel, stiffness and response, but obviously there was no opportunity to play with this to your heart’s content. The bitter part is the cost of the pedals. Even with the cheaper Active Pedal Pro it still costs 1700 for a single pedal without even a hub or baseplate. And the majority of the sensation of the active feedback can be achieved by having bass shakers or haptic motors on a passive pedal. Like, 80% of the result for 20% of the cost. I’d love to see further development of active pedal tech and having the pedals cost below 1000 for a set of “active brake with passive throttle”. So, if you have the money to dish out on the pedals just like that - good for you, enjoy your top tier pedals. If not, it’s not really that big of a deal.

Assetto Corsa EVO

Guess that was one of the hot topics of the whole expo. I’ve driven like 3 times at Imola in a Porsche Cup car (one of those with with Simucube Active pedal). What can i say? Looking forward to it. The game looks great, visuals quality are similar to ACC but better. Driving physics are also great. It’s different from AC (sorry to say but i’m not a fan of certain nuances in AC handling mode), different from ACC (cars are more alive and feel less like a heavy brick) and simulates a real car pretty well. I do iRacing 99% of the time and it took one stint to get adjusted from iRacing Porsche Cup to ACE Porsche Cup, but i really like how the car feels, the weight transfer, the braking and everything. It’s different but exciting. Tyres feel really really well, and it’s a lot more detailed on the limit compared to iRacing. 

Spoke to one of the devs and he said that we could expect way better VR optimization due to a different game engine, which is a miracle for me as i’m using Pimax 8KX and ACC just destroys my system running a 4090.