If you ever played Papyrus’ seminal Grand Prix Legends then you’ve read his name. Rich began working as a tester on NASCAR Racing (1994) and was with Papyrus at the end. In this interview, published in 2022, we discuss his time at the legendary studio and the design of Grand Prix Legends, including initial feelings of hurt at not being asked to join iRacing.
As a direct ancestor of iRacing, the ‘Grand Prix Legends engine’ had multiple stock car racing false starts, before eventually releasing as NASCAR Racing 4. The original NASCAR 3, cancelled and replaced by one that used NASCAR 2’s engine, is barely remembered.
Yesterday in a livestream that you can currently watch here, Thrustmaster announced and showed off their brand-new T818 Direct Drive steering wheel hub, designed to compete with Fanatec as the current market leader and currently only listed with PC support. I’ve been waiting on this announcement because my force feedback wheels are within the Thrustmaster ecosystem and I was curious, mainly, if I could keep my wheel rims. Turns out that you can.
The price looks reasonable (599 GBP / 649 EUR / 649 USD), although there are cheaper offerings I am very happy to see an upgrade path for Thrustmaster tech, including pedals, which are fully compatible. I did wonder, after Logitech launched their version, whether they’d price similarly.
The only thing stopping me from getting my hands on one right now is that they are currently not for sale in the United States and they don’t have stock here for me to buy one. They also don’t have stock to send me one for review at this time (I wanted to do a direct head-to-head with the Logitech PRO – as Logitech did send me one for review). They say that because they produced the hub in France, shipping to the United States is delayed and will only be available in March, 2023.
Check out their profile page for the product for more information and a pre-order link. The livestream will probably be deleted from Twitch at some point… I have downloaded the stream and will upload it to my own channel if they do not mirror and preserve it somewhere else.
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