Fanatec Eco-System
Thomas Jackermeier
Member
in Blog
I am quite proud of what my team has achieved together with our strong community in the past 20 years.
Fanatec invented the idea of an eco-system and nobody offers a bigger variety of high-end sim racing products than us.
We already have three product lines and will add another one very soon. Almost every component is compatible with each other and we managed to make the first and only true multi platorm licensed racing wheel.
Products like our ClubSport Pedals or the Formula rim became sim racing Icons and our community is growing every single day.
Please keep telling us what you want and we will make it happen.
Comments
Can't wait to get a Fanatec DD wheel in my hands. My wallet is almost ready.
I would like :
-Direct Drive
-A button box
Anyway, congratulation for these years ! I hope the future will be great for you.
Also an F1 rim with a full color OLED display would be a nice thing to have. *hint hint*
Nice !
/
Otherwise ... a "generic" Sparco, OMP or Momo branded wheel wouldn't be a bad addition to the Fanatec portfolio.
I have an original challenge for you and your tech team thomas. I think I have already suggested it in the past already, the hotas market is missing something: an ambidextrous high end hotas.
With VR growing up we currently see flightsim having a rebirth with many old flightsimmers coming back and new people beginning flightsims. I expect this rebirth to get stronger in the coming years when VR market will expand with more affordable helmets and lower hardware requirements.
I myself am an old flightsimmer who is currently coming back due to VR (the addition of VR for flightsim is as good if not even better than for racesim). I spent some time on flightsim forums the past weeks and saw other old flightsimmer coming back due to VR and who often had sold their old flightstick when they stopped flightsims and now need to buy a new one.
As a left-handed guy I have always been frustrated by the high end hotas market that is exclusively focused on right-handed only flightsticks (also because they are doing replicas of stick from real planes, like the A10 for the Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog).
I know Fanatec never went to the flightstick market but this is not that far from the racesim market, and other brands like TM, mad catz, logitech are on both markets. When I see the quality of your racesim products (wheelbase, pedals, shifter) I'm confident your tech team would be able to create an excellent high end hotas, and an ambidextrous hotas (which means custom design I guess) would be a very unique feature which would certainly provide a very good visibility to the product on the market.
Flightsim is certainly narrow market, smaller than racesims I guess, although products lifetime on this market is much longer, when a product has been designed it is there for at least a decade. No need for ffb, most sims don't handle it well and it seem that ffb is mostly interesting for helicopter (although we can imagine a ffb version later).
The goal for such a product would be to create a hotas that can be inverted to switch from right-hand design to left-hand design. I have such a product (saitek cyborg 3D) which has a symetric design and for which you can swap the side of the throttle. But it is low end, full plastic, no hall sensors, no trim, and the thottle is not separated it is part of the base. So the goal would be to make a hotas with separated thottle that can be inverted without compromising the quality/precision/ergonomy of the product. The stick could be symetric or asymetric with inversion (mirroring) possibilty as long again as the mirroring does not compromise the quality.
Can we expect such a Fanatec hotas one day ?
Virtual reality
You already mentionned Fanatec VR oriented product(s) last year and mentionned it again in your itw with gamereactor a few days ago.
I really wonder what is this product you don't want to disclose anything about. But if ever you needed a beta tester for a VR oriented product you could count on me, I'm very interested in VR and exclusively play in VR since I'm equiped (racesim/flightsim).
In the context of VR and related to your current racesim product I had the idea of a better way to control mouse cursor. Current mouse emulation with the mini stick of your clubsport rims is very useful but not optimal. It is slower and less precise than when using a mouse. So I wondered what other solution could help improving that: what about a trackball or sensitive trackpad on the rim ? Track pad sound like the more appealing in term of design, nicer look, no mechanical part, although I wonder if I would not prefer a trackball. I guess it would be easier to find without removing the helmet. Idk, I would need to compare both to be sure, maybe a trackpad would be very good and it could certainly be very well integrated to a rim, without compromising the design.
Clubsport paddle shifting mechanism flaws
As you said your F1 rim is a flagship in your clubsport line. I myself drive moslty with it and can't stop recommanding it for its ability to provide the best ffb details (csw / csl elite) and most precise car control. Although it has 2 flaws that are shared with other rims using the same shifting paddle design:
1) After a lot of hours of use (between 1 and 2K) the small springs of the paddles will break. On my F1 rim one broke, and the other one broke a few hours later, so I'm pretty sure this was just the end of lifetime of those springs. And the problem is your company doesn't offer replacement springs alone, you only offer to buy the whole mechanism system which is a real waste when only the springs have broke and they are easy to replace. I decided to rebuild the springs using metal wire although I don't have the correct wire thickness and hardness so my diy springs make the repared paddles much lighter than the original.
Could we see those springs sold as a spare part ? (and hopefuly not with 15€ shipping fees xD)
2) The pre-load screw is nice but does not offer the adjustability that would really make the difference (in my opinion). I have already talked about it with Peter and even sent him a picture explaining why.
The problem is the small metal strip you keep on the contactor. Because of this strip between the contactor button and the paddle supposed to press on it there is an uncompressible distance between open and closed states of the contactor. And to be able to make fast downshifting you need to reduce this distance between open and closed states, which is only possible by removing the metalic strip on the contactor.
I did that mod myself on my brand new 918 rim because the issue is mostly for rims with long paddle which increase the open/closed distance issue as we manipulate the extremity of the paddle. It is ok on the F1 rim with the short paddles, but is problematic on the 918 and bmw rims. The picture sent to peter show the difference before and after removing the contactor metal strip. I think it should be removed by default for those rims (if you do it keep in mind it requires to make the flat part of the paddle thicker or it cannot reach the contactor button).
High end small diameter round rim:
I have been lobbying for a long time for a smaller diameter clubsport round rim. I was never pleased with the 918/bmw size. The lighter 918 offer better ffb and reactivity (from user to sim) than the bmw, but it is still the same size and I am much less confortable driving race cars with such big rims: the ffb affects my driving more, I'm less precise and less good in term of car control. I always improve my laptimes when switching back to the F1 rim and I'm also much more constant with it over the length of a race session.
The new csl elite line provided smaller round rims. They are very light too so very good at transmitting ffb effects and reactive (inputs by user's hands. A heavy rim is obviously also slower to move by the user, not only by the ffb base). The last one with full alcantara for xbox is currently the closer of your products to the perfect small round rim I'm looking for, but it is still not of the clubsport quality. It lacks mouse emulation, it lacks the high quality clubsport encoder, and I personnaly prefer a lot the clubsport shifting paddle mechanism (especially once modded as explained above).
You told us you have upcoming rims, some for the csl line and you did not tell for the others. We don't know if they are clubsport or aiming at your new podium line. I hope there is a small round rim in one of those non-csl upcoming rims, same size as your P1, still as light as possible, and at least clubsport quality. And as other already said I don't mind branded rims neither. The F1 rim is a good example of excellent custom design (I love this rim ! But it's not round