Your Guide to Sim Racing

Welcome to Spencer Pumpelly. Here you’ll find equipment reviews, guides for beginners and professionals, and the latest Sim Racing news.

Buyers Guides

The 6 Best Steering Wheels for Xbox One in 2024

The 6 Best Steering Wheels for Xbox One in 2024

Sim-racing has long shone on PCs, with ever more realistic simulations. It has to be said that computers are still the best-performing platform in terms of realism, and it's impossible to compare a system costing between €3,000 and €4,000 to a console costing no more...

The 6 Best Steering Wheels for PS5 in 2024

The 6 Best Steering Wheels for PS5 in 2024

Although sim-racing started on the PC, consoles have played an essential role in its popularity. While PCs offer a more configurable and realistic environment, consoles simplify sim-racing. Some elitist brands offer peripherals, such as steering wheels, only...

The 6 Best Steering Wheels for Xbox Series X in 2024

The 6 Best Steering Wheels for Xbox Series X in 2024

Sim-racing is more than just a hobby. It's become a discipline in its own right, with worldwide e-sports competitions. Moreover, sim-racing is increasingly used in motorsports as a training tool for drivers. And for these two reasons, I believe that this discipline...

The 6 Best PC Steering Wheels for Sim Racing in 2024

The 6 Best PC Steering Wheels for Sim Racing in 2024

A long time ago, sim-racing debuted its PC with brands like Logitech and Thrustmaster, who developed their first peripherals in the 90s. At the time, few titles could benefit from such peripherals, as game consoles had just been democratized. Well, consoles with good...

The 4 best VR headsets for Sim Racing in 2024

The 4 best VR headsets for Sim Racing in 2024

As with many racers, sim-racing is, above all, a passion that allows us to escape, for a moment, from our monotonous daily lives and immerse ourselves in frantic racing on the world's most mythical circuits. It's not just a discipline to pass the time on Sundays by...

The 5 best F1 steering wheels for Sim Racing in 2024

The 5 best F1 steering wheels for Sim Racing in 2024

Today, sim-racing is more than just acquiring dedicated peripherals and setting fast times at Monza. Sim-racing is a passion, a story of sensations, a quest for realism. There's a difference between an average gamer and a sim racer, and it shows in the titles and...

Test & Reviews

Sim Racing Wheels

Thrustmaster TMX: My honest opinion of this steering wheel in 2024

Thrustmaster TMX: My honest opinion of this steering wheel in 2024

Thrustmaster TMX Spencer Pumpelly Advantages & Disadvantages ✅ Good comeback for the price ✅ Comfortable for sim-racing ✅ 900° rotation angle ❌ Very basic plastic crankset ❌ Mainly plastic construction As with many disciplines or passions, you have to start...

Thrustmaster T500RS: My honest opinion of this steering wheel in 2024

Thrustmaster T500RS: My honest opinion of this steering wheel in 2024

Thrustmaster T500RS Spencer Pumpelly Advantages & Disadvantages ✅ Excellent value for money ✅ Excellent force feedback ✅ Excellent driving feel ✅ Good crankset supplied with bundle ❌ Rather noisy force feedback system ❌ Compatibility with certain platforms not...

Thrustmaster T300RS: My honest opinion of this steering wheel in 2024

Thrustmaster T300RS: My honest opinion of this steering wheel in 2024

Thrustmaster T300RS Spencer Pumpelly Advantages & Disadvantages ✅ Powerful and precise force feedback ✅ Minimalist steering wheel with Quick Release ✅ Good build quality ❌ Crankset is rather basic in design and operation ❌ Button location a hair's breadth from...

Thrustmaster T248: My honest opinion of this 2024 steering wheel

Thrustmaster T248: My honest opinion of this 2024 steering wheel

Thrustmaster T248 Spencer Pumpelly Advantages & Disadvantages ✅ Excellent comeback for its range ✅ Breathtaking sim-racing immersion ✅ Different driving modes ✅ Good-quality crankset with bundle ❌ Hardly any ㅤ Sim-racing has come a long way since its beginnings in...

Thrustmaster T150: My honest opinion of this steering wheel in 2024

Thrustmaster T150: My honest opinion of this steering wheel in 2024

Thrustmaster T150 Spencer Pumpelly Advantages & Disadvantages ✅ Good force feedback ✅ Good value for money ✅ Beautiful bundle price ✅ Compatible with Playstation and PC ❌ Very simple pedalboard ❌ Fairly cheap overall appearance ㅤ Today, virtually every petrolhead,...

Sim Racing Cockpits

Sim-Lab GT1 Evo: My honest opinion of this cockpit in 2024

Sim-Lab GT1 Evo: My honest opinion of this cockpit in 2024

Sim-Lab GT1 Evo Spencer Pumpelly Advantages & Disadvantages ✅ Low prices in some stores ✅Well-built, solid chassis ✅Well thought-out arrangement of supports ❌ Difficult to assemble ❌ Seat not supplied with chassis ㅤ Sim-racing is no longer just about having a...

Sim Racing Pedals

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Sim Racing Handbrakes

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Sim Racing Gear Shifters

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Best Sim Racing Brands

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Blog

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Sim-racing: definition

The word sim-racing is made up of two words: “simulation” and “racing,” it’s a category of video games for consoles and PCs that groups all titles that deal primarily with the simulation of motor racing.

Video game fans will be familiar with titles such as Forza, Gran Turismo, Need For Speed, Dirt, and many more. These games are trendy because they’ve been around for many years and have significantly evolved. For example, the Need For Speed series is well known for its arcade-style games, where fun is the game’s name. Here, you don’t have to worry about your car because the only thing that counts is first place on the podium. Other video game series are the opposite of NFS, such as Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport, with titles much more focused on realism and racing simulation.

The main aim of sim racing is to offer an immersive and faithful motor racing experience but on the small screen. As a result, numerous players and peripheral manufacturers have taken the sim-racing market by storm, offering products that blur the line between simulation and reality. We’ll look at this point in more detail later.

Types of simulation

In sim-racing, there are three primary schools of thought:

The arcade type is the entry ticket to the virtual motorsport discipline. Here, the basic principle is to have fun and pass the time by driving exotic cars as fast as possible on freeways, country roads, and even in town. We have several top-rated titles in the arcade category of sim-racing, including Need For Speed and Forza Horizon. With these games, you’ll have access to a wide selection of cars, each more beautiful than the last, with the possibility of upgrading and customizing them, all set in breathtaking environments (especially on Forza) and sprinkled with a rhythmic soundtrack. There’s no need to worry about the condition of your car, as it doesn’t take any damage, except perhaps cosmetic damage.

The sim-arcade genre is more advanced than the arcade because you have titles that take up motorsport competitions like F1. Unlike NFS and Forza, you must care for your driving, vehicle, and season in sim-arcade games. The most popular titles are Gran Turismo, Forza Motorsport, and F1 2022 (as in other years). In the sim arcade, drivers must manage fuel, tires, engine, bodywork, etc. Fine drivers and strategists will be rewarded with guaranteed victories but still with room to maneuver. Oh yes, if it’s too complicated, no one will want to play it, and that’s only logical.

The simulation type is the best for aspiring racers, and it’s on titles like Asseto Corsa and iRacing that real racing drivers train. For this guy, it’s simple: a digital retranscription of what you’d find in an actual car race. You’ve got qualifying, damage and car management, fine-tuning of suspension, brakes, tires, and the whole shebang. And I’m not even talking about the physics of the cars, which are identical to the real thing: the vehicles behave as if you were behind the wheel at full throttle at Monza. Simulation racing is the ultimate in sim racing, and aspiring drivers turn to the titles in this category.

The most popular sim-racing brands

Like Apple and Samsung in the smartphone market, some trendy sim-racing brands occupy three distinct segments. You have the entry/mid-range segment, with manufacturers like Logitech and Thrustmaster offering inexpensive products designed to give you good value for money on arcade or even sim-arcade titles. This segment is characterized by reasonably old-fashioned technologies, notably corrode/gear drive bases, which do the trick for the average rider looking for fun.

One notch above, we have the mid/high-end segment with brands such as Fanatec, Moza Racing, and Simagic offering premium peripherals with very high immersion and advanced driving realism. These peripheral manufacturers are world-renowned, and their products are highly regarded in the industry, with a large fan base worldwide and experienced racers turning to them most often. These brands offer products that are, admittedly, more expensive than Logitech and TM but are still relatively affordable for what you get in return. Regarding technology, you’ve got the best: Direct Drive base, Load Cell Pedals, aluminum steering wheel, and so on.

Finally, we have the brands that operate in the very high-end segment, with players like Simucube and Heusinkveld representing, as far as I’m concerned, the top manufacturers of sim-racing peripherals. Here, the watchwords are realism and sensations, with no limits. These manufacturers use premium materials for their products and invest heavily in research and development to create new technologies that push back the frontier between virtual and reality. As for price, it’s expensive – costly. With Simucube and Heusinkveld, you can quickly get a device costing over €1,000, and a complete setup will cost you an arm and a leg. But that’s the price for the best sim-racing products, like an active pedalboard with a motor simulating the force needed to brake.

Sim-racing setups

A sim-racing setup comprises all the peripherals you need to race on the small screen. For a standard format, you’ll need a steering wheel, a base, and a pedalboard to participate in the races in a somewhat immersive way.

  • Standard setups. You’ll need a base, a steering wheel, and a 2- or 3-pedal pedal board to race. These setups are standard because they include the essential peripherals for sim racing.
  • Specialized setups. These are setups specially designed for a particular motorsport discipline, such as F1, GT3, rallying, etc. These setups include discipline-specific steering wheels, a pedalset with 2 or 3 pedals, a shifter, a handbrake, a dashboard, RevLEDs, and more. Customization has no limits on these setups except for the rider’s needs and the ecosystem he’s on. For example, Fanatec’s ecosystem is highly customizable, with numerous compatible peripherals from the brand’s catalog.
  • Advanced setups. Advanced setups are based on the specialized ones and add a cockpit (standard or dynamic simulators), monitors, several brackets, and so on. This is the ultimate in sim-racing regarding immersion, products, and realism. Thanks to specific cockpits, you can also have so-called “hybrid” setups perfect for two motorsport disciplines, such as F1 and GT.
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