FANATEC CSL DD REVIEW - Part 2 - Software & Driving Experience

hey guys Will here so welcome to part two of  our review series on the Fanatec csl dd so today   we're going to be taking a look at the driving  experience software configuration and a lot of   the little details that we couldn't cover in our  original review of the pre-production samples so   the previous video we took a look at  the hardware in detail we did a bit of a   i guess tear down as well showed you the internal  workings covered things like dimensions so if you   haven't seen that video already definitely check  that one out and of course i would encourage you   to watch our pre-production review video as well  where we talked a lot about motor characteristics   how the internal workings of this base  actually function now what i wanted to   start this video off by saying which i'm sure is  the biggest question a lot of you guys will have   is the driving experience with the production  model is exactly the same as it was with the   pre-production which i'm really happy about  because i was a little bit worried that i might   have to eat a few words from that original video  but that hasn't turned out to be the case at all   so all you guys that's based your pre-order  decisions off that original video rest easy the   driving experience with the production is exactly  the same so that's really great but nonetheless   there are a lot of things that we do still need  to cover there are a few things that we couldn't   cover in the original video as well things like  the interface between the wheel and the base   the quick release you'll remember in the original  video we had a wheel specifically supplied with a   modified quick release as well and the stem that  was on the wheelbase was pre-production too so   all those limitations have been lifted now we can  show you things like flex in the quick release we   can show you different wheels different weighted  wheels as well and really dive in deeper and   unpack a couple of those things that we couldn't  cover in the original video so let's dive in okay so let's start off by talking about  quick releases now one of the things that i   do really like about the stem that we have  on the csld is it's a little bit longer   than the likes of the clubsport wheelbase 2.5  and the csl elite about the same as what we have   with the dd1 and dd2 what that allows you to do  is have a big enough gap that you can actually   drop a monitor in between the wheel and the base  and because the wheelbase is passively cooled as   well there's no cooling fans you don't have to  worry about blocking intakes or anything like   that and i think this is something that is going  to appeal to a lot of people if you want to see   all the dimensions and all this check out part 1  video of course but i just want to point that out   because i do think that that is an important  difference now some people might be wondering   whether that means they're going to have to  make a whole bunch of adjustments to their   rig to accommodate for that extra length  because obviously that's going to mean   that the wheel is a little bit closer to you  relative to the front of the wheelbase but because   we have t-nuts to actually mount the base to our  rig what that means is we can actually slide the   base a little bit further away than we could with  the club wheelbase 2.5 and csl elite and while you   might not be able to get it in exactly the same  position as you could with the previous bases   if you had one of those you are going to be able  to get it very close so it's not going to be a   case of you're going to have to go out and buy a  new rig to accommodate this and as we said in the   original video as well all the rigs that are  solid enough to handle clubspot wheelbase 2.5   are also just fine to use with the csl dd2 so  don't go thinking that you're going to have to   go out and fork out a whole bunch of money on an  upgraded rig as we saw in that video too it does   work quite well on a more entry-level cockpit as  well but let's talk a little bit more about the   interface between our wheels and the quick release  so what we have here is the qr1 system which is   the original quick release there is a qr2 system  coming soon we don't have any details on that   just yet but as soon as that is released we will  of course be doing a review video for you guys   but as we saw in part one again the quick release  is interchangeable so we can just undo a little   collar here pop this out pop the qr2 in and we're  good to go but we do have a couple of different   quick release mechanisms within the qr1 range  and what we have in front of us here is a mclaren   gt3 v2 wheel with the glass infused plastic quick  release with a locking ring like such and then we   also have a brand new fresh out of the box formula  v 2.5 x which is the xbox compatible model and we   have the metal quick release on this one so i  wanted to give you a bit of a demonstration on   both now we have looked at flex in quick release  and how it relates to the dd-1 and the dd2 in   previous videos so if you want to see that you can  reference those videos as well i'll put some links   down in the description for you but one of the  things that i've said in reference to these two   different quick releases in the past is that  the amount of flex that you have is about the   same between the two of them what happens is the  flex just kind of moves to a different position   with each of them so what happens is when we  have the plastic glass infused quick release we   pop that on it slides on very easily and then we  rotate the collar around into the locked position what you can see here is there is a little bit  of side to side movement if i hold it like that   you can probably see a little bit better i'm you  know pulling on that pretty hard more than i would   if i were driving and you'll get to see  this of course when we're driving in just   a moment too but you can see the actual quick  release and how it interfaces with the stem   is nice and solid there's no movement there  whatsoever the flex is actually coming   from the plastic interface between the quick  release and the back of the wheel here and that   does feel quite solid and while you know there  is a little bit of flex there that's undeniable   it's certainly not enough that i think it's  going to be a problem for anybody and again   when i'm driving with it i don't really notice it  so let's pop this off quickly now and let's put   the metal quick release version on so pop  this guy on so we simply pull on the collar   slide the wheel on push it in and it clicks into  position now what you'll see with this wheel   is there's still a little bit of flex there but  where that's actually coming from is the interface   between the quick release and the stem so there's  no flex between the back face of the wheel   and the metal quick release but the net result  is that the amount of movement is about the same   between the two and that's what we believe the qr2  system is going to resolve so unfortunately there   is still a little bit of movement there and that  is going to ultimately boil down to the tolerances   of the design of the stem and the metal quick  release so i've got probably about 15 different   phonetic wheels now and there's slightly different  amounts of flex between all of them so you know i   think it's it's kind of hard to sort of say you  know look at this flex and this is what you can   expect from every single wheel because it's simply  not going to be the case there's probably a little   bit more movement in this in fact than i've had  on some of the other wheels that i've tested but   it is there and you know that's basically just  down to the fundamental design you can imagine   because we have a metal ring here we do have  these little ball bearings which kind of close in   and are meant to take up a lot of that slack but  because we do have you know a tolerance there   between the two to allow them to slide together  we're always going to have a little bit of   movement there now we do have a little retention  screw as well which we can put in the bottom   you can see that screws in through here now fnatic  themselves say that you don't need to install that   retention screw what most people share from  their own experience is that it does reduce   the flex a little bit and that's certainly been  my experience in the past as well depending on the   wheel some wheels it makes a noticeable difference  some it doesn't and again it's just down to that   manufacturing tolerance but what i would recommend  is if you are using a single wheel keeping it on   there all the time then put the screw in it's  not going to hurt if you're wanting to change   wheels all the time then don't worry too much  about it again i don't really notice that flex   when i'm driving but you know it is what it is and  we do need to point it out for you guys so about   on par i'd say with the dd1 dd2 but one of  the points that i want to make clear here is   that you don't need to rush out and buy a metal  quick release for any wheel that comes factory   with the plastic one in the case of the csl  dd we don't need to worry about unlocking high   torque mode either with the dd1 and the dd2 with  the mclaren wheel you did need to buy the metal   quick release if you wanted to unlock full torque  or high torque mode on the dd1 and dd2 that's not   the case with the csl dd so my recommendation  would be don't worry about upgrading to the   metal quick release if you are buying a mclaren  gt3 wheel with a csld i don't think you're going   to notice a significant amount of difference and  in fact in some ways i actually prefer this design   because it does clamp down a little bit harder  and it gets rid of any rattle and kind of just   you know moves it across to being a little bit of  flex in the plastic so that's my recommendation   there what i'll do now is i'll go for a little bit  of a drive and let you actually see for yourselves so on to the all-important user experience now one of  the things that's quite exciting about the csldd   is this first time we get to see the new wheel  property app which fnatic have developed to   make fine tuning and settings and adjustments  a little bit easier now a lot of the settings   that you'll see here are quite familiar  from the old wheel properties app but it   is a little bit more easily presented a little  bit easier to navigate and it does make things   like upgrading your firmware a little bit simpler  as well so i've grabbed my f1 2020 wheel here and   let's plug this in and actually take you through  the firmware updating process first of all because   this is something that you're going to want to  do when you receive your csldd and whatever wheel   you're going to be using you're going to want to  make sure you download those latest drivers we're   going to assume for the context of this video  that you've already done that and then yeah you'll   plug in your wheel you'll get up and running and  you'll update your firmware so let's get the wheel   plugged in and you can see here we'll actually go  across to the steering wheel tab on our phonetic   wheel property manager here and you can see it's  not showing any steering wheel attached we'll   plug in the wheel click it on and straight away  you'll see a wheel pop up now it's detecting this   as a formula v2 i'm assuming because it's the same  boot loader and firmware and everything that's   inside the wheel itself maybe that's something  that will change with a later driver but anyway   it doesn't really matter but what we're going to  do now is we're going to click across to firmware   update now depending on the firmware that's  installed on your csldd when you receive it   you may need to update that as well but it's going  to run you through the entire process here with   the new firmware manager app so we're going to  click on open on that as well and we can see   here it gives us an illustrated list of all the  phonetic hardware that it detects connected to   our pc now we can see the wheelbase we can see the  motor firmware which is a separate firmware inside   the wheelbase itself the button module endurance  isn't connected so it's not showing up that   the quick release firmware as well which is the  uh inductive coupler ends uh wireless transceiver   that's installed in the base which we talked about  a little bit in part one of this video series and   then of course analog pedals if you have those  connected as well we're running some different   pedals here so they're not showing up but we can  see here we do have a firmware update available   for the wheel now it's important to understand  that the firmware that it's recommending you   upgrade to is embedded or built into the driver  that you've downloaded so don't quote me on this   but i don't think that it's actually connecting  to the internet and checking to see if there's   an updated driver and firmware available it's  just making sure that the hardware you've got   connected is running the firmware which matches  the driver version which is installed on the   pc so you will still need to manually go in and  check that you're running the latest driver and   then once you've upgraded your driver that will in  turn then upgrade the firmware on all your devices   and hopefully that makes sense i think it does  anyway so we're going to click on update here now we get another little prompt here we'll click ok and now we have our firmware flasher running  here now interestingly the little vibration   motors inside the wheel have kicked in as well  i'm guessing that's something that happens   when it goes into boot loader  mode so that's flashing away update process completed the wheel  should reboot now yep there we go   and then it says if we've got any other wheels  we want to update at the same time we can go   ahead and do that i've already updated all my  other wheels so i'm going to click on finished   and we've now got another prompt saying all  phonetic devices are now up to date phonetic   firmware manager can be closed so we're going  to go and close that and then open up our wheel   properties app again click on firmware update and  we can see now it's showing us all of our firmware   being up to date now one of the things that i  mentioned when we did our pre-release review   was that the out-of-the-box experience wasn't  fantastic had to do quite a bit of fine-tuning   to get the wheelbase to initially feel good now  i'm happy to report that that does appear to have   just been a pre-release thing i think maybe there  was some corrupted settings or something there   maybe from some internal testing that had taken  place on that base before it was sent to me but   the out-of-the-box experience with this csld the  production model was absolutely fantastic i did   end up fine-tuning settings a little bit more  and i will do some future videos where i take   you through all of my preferred settings  for all the major titles but out of the box   really really good experience i'd go as far as  to say probably the best experience i've had with   the direct drive wheelbates directly out of the  box without tuning anything so that's great for   those of us who just want to get up and running  as quickly as possible so let's click on the   wheelbase tab we can see our rotation of the wheel  in degrees so we can make sure that that matches   we've got some basic adjustments here for our  false feedback quality one of the new things in   this driver and software package is the addition  of a standard mode for false feedback tuning   in addition to the now called advanced mode which  is what we used to have so at the moment we're   sitting in standard mode we've got basic  function tests as well and if you do click   on force feedback test it is quite violent not  quite so much with the csl ddd but if you've got   a dd1 or dd2 you know what i'm talking about here  let's just click on that quickly and you can see   rattling around quite a bit there rattling  the camera as well and then we have a wheel   center calibration too now when we upgrade the  motor firmware or the wheelbase firmware it will   prompt us to do this automatically through the  firmware manager as well so just in general the   new software is a lot clearer in the steps that  are required to get up and running you don't have   to kind of guess what to do next like you used  to have to with the drivers so it is quite a   positive step forward in that sense so  let's click on wheelbase center cal now   wheel center calibration turn the wheel  to center it and click center so yeah that   looks about centered to me center and that is  it you can see now when the wheel's centered   we've got zero degrees showing up there so  if we click across to steering wheel now   we can see again very similar interface to what  we've seen before again wheel rotation in degrees   we see our hat switch there as well now  interestingly the graphic that we have now   does make it look like a two-stage digital signal  there but it is still an analog signal so don't   be confused by that we can see our adjustment for  our steering angle set to automatic which is what   we're going to want to have it for most things  our vibration strength as well for the vibration   motors if we're running a wheel that has those and  then testing of our steering wheel functions and   so forth as well as our wheel sensor calibration  we've got a tab for our shifter as well if we have   one of those connected and then just skipping  over tuning menu we'll come back to that in a   moment clicking on links we've got some links to  the phonetic shop the forums phantlab of course   which we will talk about in just a minute blog  support page and then some links to the various   different fanatex socials settings we've got  our shifter tab on or off so show or hide   a little bit strange i don't really know why they  need to have that but hey it's there and then our   tuning menu so as we said before we now have a  standard mode as well as an advanced mode and we   can adjust this or change between the modes on the  wheel itself without even needing to go into these   and i'll show you how to do that in just a moment  too but in standard mode we've got access to our   maximum steering angle which again in most cases  you're going to leave set to automatic i do find   sometimes in the f1 games from codemasters i like  to move this down sometimes rally games as well   you might want to set it to something like 540  but otherwise generally speaking auto is just   fine overall force feedback strength our force  feedback linearity mode which is now called force   feedback scale for a direct drive wheelbase i  would recommend you set this to linear by the way   but i will do another video where i go through all  my recommended settings for each of the popular   sim titles for the csl dd over the coming week so  make sure you're subbed so you don't miss out on   those and then our natural damper adjustment here  as well and again i'll explain all these settings   to you guys a little bit later if we do hover  over these settings we do get a nice little tool   tip here as well which explains exactly what  those settings do now on that note i do have   a very detailed video i did quite some time ago  now where i explained exactly what all the phonic   tuning menu options do and how they influence  the force feedback inside the game so if you do   want to just learn more about how all this works  so you can fine tune it yourself definitely check   that video out i'll link it above my head for you  guys right now as well as down in the description   but if you just want copy and paste settings what  i would recommend you do is go across to the links   page click on the forum tab and that will take you  through to some recommended settings if you want a   more direct way of doing this and you can do that  through phantlab as well and i'll show you that a   little bit later on in this video but let's go  back to our tuning menu now and as i mentioned   before we do still have our advanced mode i can  click on that now that gives us access to our   five different presets which we can use to set up  different cars or different sim titles so you can   switch between those profiles directly from the  wheel as well and i'll show you how to do that   in just a moment too but we've got access now to  all of our standard wheel settings which we would   expect to see from fnatic so maximum steering  angle overall force feedback strength force   feedback scale natural damper natural friction  natural inertia force feedback interpolation   filter force feedback intensity effect strength  spring effect strength damper effect strength   and then the mode for our multi-position switches  which just determines how the analog paddles work   on the back of wheels which have those installed  and then our shock vibration strength as well   for vibration motors should we have a wheel with  vibration motors installed so in addition to the   settings that we have available on the tuning  menu inside the driver as i said before we can   also adjust these in phantellab as well as on  the wheel itself now this is a really powerful   feature because it allows you to really adjust and  fine tune your settings on the fly while you're   driving without having to alt tab out really  powerful for getting your settings optimized   when you're first setting up for a new wheelbase  so the way we do this has changed a little bit   with the csl dd and the latest drivers we now  have a simplified tuning menu as well as the   familiar advanced ones so to enter the simplified  tuning menu we tap on the tuning menu button   we're then presented with a adjustment for  sensitivity force feedback strength and natural   damper and that is it so we adjust those to our  heart's content we can simply rotate up and down   so sensitivity is the amount of steering angle  relative to the wheel's physical position   generally speaking this is left automatic but  again i'll take you through all these settings   in a separate video and then once we're happy with  that we can back out again across to the next one   once we've adjusted everything we simply press  the tuning menu button again and close it down now   if we want to get into the full tuning menu which  also allows us to switch between different presets   what we do is we tap on it once tap on it again  and hold it down for three seconds you'll see   it switches across to menu change to advanced  and we can now tab through our five presets   this allows us to have different settings for say  different cars or different sims i generally use   this for switching between different sims more  than cars but really up to you again depending on   how you like to have your settings set so we'll  go to setting number one and we can adjust our   presets in here so again we've got sensitivity  we've got our force feedback setting got four   feedback scale we've got natural damper we've got  friction we've got inertia we've got interpolation   filter we've got intensity force effect  strength spring effect strength damper effect   vibration level indicator and vibration strength  or shock vibration we do have a separate review   video on the mclaren gt3 wheel if you're wanting  to understand how that works as well as all the   other phonetic wheels so check those out if you're  wanting to understand more about that but yeah   really powerful feature being able to adjust these  on the fly and particularly being able to switch   between different profiles something that i  do genuinely find i use quite frequently so   let's exit out of the tuning menu now and let's  take a look at phonetics phantomlab software   so before we go any further i just want to quickly  talk about one thing which i am a little bit   i guess not annoyed about but confused about i  guess would be the best way to say it now i've   been saying for quite some time now that i don't  really understand why we have a separate software   package in fan lab i don't really understand  why the whole lot isn't just integrated together   now phantolab is an optional download you  don't need to install it to get up and running   but it does give you access to a couple of key  features particularly when it comes to these v2   and v2.5 wheels if you want to make adjustments to  your leds and things like that then you will need   to have phantlab installed to do that so for me  i don't really understand why they've put effort   into you know creating a new wheel properties app  and while i do quite like the app and i do think   it's a positive step forward what would have made  more sense to me and what i do hope we do see in   the future is an amalgamation between phantomlab  and the wheel properties software to bring it   all together so it's only one package you need to  install one of the problems i've seen quite a bit   that creates quite a bit of confusion in the  scene is people sometimes will download the wrong   version of phantolab to match the wrong driver and  if it was all just included in the one package and   all kind of just worked together it would make  things a lot more straightforward a lot more   i guess intuitive so that's one little nitpick  that's you know while it isn't a problem it is   something that i would like to see improved in  the future but let's jump in now i'll show you   how phantlab works so phenolab is a separate piece  of software which kind of sits alongside the main   driver and allows us to unlock a couple of extra  features which we can adjust to our personal   preference so we also have profiling here as well  which is very powerful we can set up profiles   for different games and they do auto detect as  well so it will detect the games that you have   installed on your system and automatically show  them up we can also do things like accessing the   forums the online shop support youtube channel and  all their social media so it's quite a powerful   piece of software that gives us easy access  to a lot of different resources all from the   one clean interface we again have access to the  tuning menu exactly the same as we saw before   inside the main driver the tuning menu there in  addition to that though we do have access to a   couple of extra things so dynamic force feedback  this is for feedback that's generated based off   the telemetry data rather than through the direct  input driver so at the moment this allows us to   adjust our wheel damper setting relative to the  vehicle's speed based on the telemetry data coming   out of the game and kind of think of it similar  to the way true force works in the logitech   ecosystem where it's using an additional api on  top of the direct input driver to actually allow   more settings and more effects to be generated and  controlled through the telemetry data rather than   just through the direct input api so i'm expecting  we will see more things added to this list of   functionality over time i think this is quite  primitive at the moment not particularly useful   but the i guess the groundwork is there for more  additional functionality later on now we're going   to skip quickly over vibration we'll come back  to that in a moment when i change out the wheel   we're going to go to led so this allows us to  set different telemetry data which is displayed   on the integrated oled display on the wheel now  this will depend on what kind of wheel you have   installed so if you've got one of the older  seven segment style red displays on one of the   older phonetic wheels it does also work but again  it's going to be limited in what you can show here   but what this is basically doing is it's allowing  us to set priorities for different sets of data   so for example right now we have our speed  being shown as constant rpm is switched off   fuel remaining is switched off gear selection  is showing as priority 1 pit limiter warning   priority two lap number priority three and  position priority two as well and with this up on   the screen now you can see what i'm talking about  so what we're seeing here with the three zeros is   our current speed we're sitting in the pit so  we're not moving when we change gear the change   is going to trigger that gear to be displayed on  the screen momentarily then it's going to go back   to our default setting of continuous speed if we  have our pit limiter on that's going to show up on   the screen as well if we change lap numbers that  will show up as priority 3 and changing position   will show up as well so basically any event that  takes place within the sim overrides the default   setting of speed and we can make adjustments here  as well so say we wanted to have our rpm displayed   instead of speed all we do is switch off speed  switch on rpm and now you can see our rpm as i   accelerate here is being displayed on the  screen we'll change that back to speed for now   there we go so that's switched out and again you  can change the priority here as well so say you   want the gear that you're in to override things  like the lap number being displayed you can make   those changes it all kind of makes sense so let's  pop this wheel off quickly now and let's put the   v 2.5 x on and i'll show you a couple of extra  features that are on that wheel so we can pop   that off and again we don't have to close out  the software when we're changing the wheel you   can see here it's just showing as not having  any wheel connected so let's plug in our v 2.5 pop that guy on and there you go so  now if we go into our vibration tab   you can see we can enable or disable our rev  limiter our engine vibration and suspension travel   vibration and we can adjust the strength and  initial vibration settings for each of those two   now you can use aftermarket software like simhub  for example or thano leds i think as well has   control of this gives you slightly more granular  slightly more fine-tuning adjustment than what   we have in phantolab i feel like phantolab still  has a way to go i think there's a lot of potential   here that's unrealised at the moment but you can  kind of see the direction that they're going with   this and again the settings that are available  will depend on the wheel that you've got connected   as well as the sim that you run you can see a few  options here are grayed out because the telemetry   data is not available in iracing if we open up a  different sim then some of those unlock as well   but if we go across to led again now you'll see in  addition to the telemetry that we looked at before   which is exactly the same on this particular  wheel we now also have the ability to tune all   of our rgb leds across the entire wheel so pit  lane indicator we've got red at the moment you   can see we're in the pit lane so those are lit up  pit limiter enabled is these lit up blue and then   also the pattern that will be displayed when we  reach the rev limiter now we can adjust those by   simply clicking on them and choosing the color  that we want from the little color wheel here   and we can also enable other leds as well  around so you can just basically fine tune   this to be whatever you want you can also set your  thresholds for each of the indicators throughout   the rpm range too so if we quickly drive out  of the pit lane so our pit lane indicators   not showing up and you can see that's  actually a good example of how that works   so it's showing that we're in the pits at the  moment it's a little bit scrambled because i   don't have it properly configured but we can go  through and i can show you how that all works in   just a second so let's drive out of the pit lane  okay there we go so now chuck it back in neutral   and as we rev you can see different colors  showing up on the rev gauge as we max out   we've got that red flashing as we saw before  so we'll jump back into phantom lab again   so we can adjust each of those rpm thresholds  depending on of course the car that we're driving   we can change the colors as well just as we could  before we can change the threshold where it begins   to flash and then of course the interval two then  we also have adjustments here for our flag leds on   the two sides so again this will depend on the sim  that you're running we've got indicators for wheel   spin wheel lock so you'll see this will light  up white when we start to get some wheel spin   if we're locking up a wheel so if the abs is  kicking in or we've locked up a wheel and abs   isn't enabled that'll light up blue when  we're in the pit lane red when we've got   the pit limiter enabled blue and that's what  we could see kind of flashing before when we   were driving through the pits anti-lock brakes  enabled traction control drs allowed drs active   red flag yellow flag blue flag green flag and  white flag so pretty self-explanatory here and   again we can make adjustments to these just by  simply clicking on them obviously the colors are   limited because you don't want to have white flag  being a different color but we can choose whether   we want to be just on the one side or individual  segments on both sides whatever you want to have   you can adjust it here to your preference and  again this will depend on the game that you're   running now let's just quickly unplug this wheel  i just want to change over to the button module   endurance as well just to show you the additional  functions that that gives us so plug this guy in there we go and again straight away it just  pops up no hassle pretty much the same again   in terms of the functionality but you can see  the indicators are a little bit different just   to reflect what we actually have on the wheel  and again if we jump across into the game and   rev up you can see that's functioning exactly  the same and you'll also notice when i plugged   in the button module endurance we now also have  access to the integrated telemetry module as well   so this allows us to display additional telemetry  on the larger oled display of the button module   endurance if you want to understand more  about how that works check out my review   of the porsche 911 gt3 and button module endurance  which i'll link down in the description below for   you and then last but definitely not least we have  our game profile tab so this allows us to adjust   a lot of things that we looked at before relative  to individual titles and as you change through the   different games you'll see the presets will change  here as well so what's available again will depend   on the game that you're selecting let's go back  to iracing for now but we also have the ability   here importantly to save load import and export  profiles too so if you've got a friend that's   created a really awesome profile that you like  they can email that to you you can then import   it in and use those settings and that goes for  force feedback as well as all the integrated   telemetry flag leds and so forth now we also  have a little button here as well for recommended   force feedback settings and if we press on that  that actually loads us directly into phonetics   forums and because we had iracing selected  obviously it's taken us to their recommended eye   racing settings and i would definitely recommend  when you first get up and running with your csl dd   or any other wheelbase for that matter use  these settings as a base point and then fine   tune from there because they do put a lot of  effort into this and i've always found these   to be a really good starting point so if we  scroll through here we can see the podium dd1   as well as the podium racing wheel f1 for ps4  we've got the dd2 settings clubsport wheelbase v2   clubsport wheelbase v 2.5 csl late i'm not  seeing the csl dd in here just yet but i'm   assuming that that will be added before you  guys get your hands on these before they ship   out of the factory so we'll keep an eye on  that but yeah we definitely recommend using   their recommended settings as a base point when  you're starting out and that is pretty much it so conclusions on the csl dd now look honestly  my conclusions are the same now as they were   when we did that initial review based off the  pre-production sample so nothing's changed there   as i said at the top of this video so i wanted to  sort of focus this one on all the things that we   couldn't really talk about in the original video  one of those things specifically was the driving   experience with larger heavier wheels one of the  questions that we had because we were originally   only able to test with the mclaren gt3 wheel  and the wrc wheel which are both wider than a   lot of other phonetic wheels we didn't really  know how the force feedback and the strength   would translate with heavier wheels so i've done  quite a bit of testing today across a range of   different wheels including larger diameter smaller  diameter all the way up to the 320 millimeter and   notoriously quite heavy version one of the bmw  gt2 wheel now what i can say is that definitely   does add some dampening to the fidelity that  you feel in the force vx i would definitely say   if you're planning on running a more expensive  heavier wheel on this csldd then you definitely   are going to want to have the boost kit 180  i think it's definitely reinforced that point   i did find running at five newton meters you know  it did just feel a little bit lacking and those   of you who may have upgraded your logitech g27  to a larger diameter wheel or somebody who may   have been running say a big heavy porsche 911  gt3 wheel or bmw gt2 wheel on a csl elite will   know exactly what i'm talking about here and the  kind of difference it makes to the feeling but   definitely still an excellent experience with the  boost kit 180 using those larger wheels and didn't   run into any issues with compatibility or anything  like that everything that we plugged into it just   worked straight out of the box with no issues  but really i think that was the only missing   piece of the puzzle from our initial review of  the pre-production unit everything else i stand   by what i said in that video 100 haven't noticed  anything else that i think's problematic but one   thing i do want to add is that you know having now  had the benefit of a couple of months of hindsight   you know living with the pre-production  csld for about a month and testing it   as well as using this for a couple of days now  on the rig um yeah absolutely impressed just as   impressed as i was then my feelings towards it  haven't kind of diminished over time i'm every   bit as impressed now as i was then and i do think  that the csl dd represents absolutely fantastic   value for money that at the moment at least is  unparalleled in the sim racing industry so that's   it for now what we're going to do from here is  put together a range of force feedback settings   videos of course we do have those presets which  are recommended by fnatic which as i said before   are a great starting point but i'm going to take  you through a little bit more detail on exactly   how the settings work and how they relate to each  of the popular sims and the settings that i use   specifically so i've been thinking about how to  i guess conclude this video best and i think the   best way to say this is i'm lucky enough to have  a dd1 a dd2 and a sim cube 2 ultimate here in the   studio and you know even having those wheelbases  i'm happy to leave the csld on the rig for a   little while to test it out and really kind of put  it through its paces more long term i want to do   a couple of other driving styles that i'm not so  familiar with like drifting and sort of see how it   performs there uh do a bit more rally as well of  course we did test that out in our initial video   but we couldn't really do it with a wheel that was  really suitable for rally style driving so we're   going to spend a little bit more time doing things  like that as well producing some content there but   yeah look the fact that i'm happy to leave this on  the rig and i don't really feel like i'm missing   out on anything major in doing so over wheelbases  that cost many times more than what this does   really speaks volumes i think and is probably the  best endorsement that i can give this product i   really do think that it's exceptional value for  money so again if you haven't already do check   out our original review of the pre-production  unit that does go into a lot more detail around   the driving experience motor characteristics and  all the things that we kind of skimmed over today   because we didn't really need to go through them  again and do stay tuned as well make sure you're   subbed so you don't miss those settings guides a  little bit further on down the track but thank you   very much for watching guys if you do want to pick  one of these up we do have some links down in the   description which go a long way to helping out the  channel as well as any other accessories that you   see on the rig and yeah guys thank you very much  for watching as always we'll see you again soon bye

Channel: Boosted Media

Views: 61,005

Rating: 4.9510202 out of 5

Keywords: Fanatec CSL DD, CSL DD, CSL DD Review, Fanatec DD, Best value sim racing wheel, best sim racing wheel, CSL DD vs DD1, CSL DD vs DD2, CSL DD vs ClubSport Wheelbase 2.5, CSL DD vs CSL Elite, CSL DD vs Thrustmaster, Fanatec vs Logitech, Fanatec vs Thrustmaster, Fanatec vs simucube, Fanatec vs Simagic, Fanatec vs VRS, CSL DD teardown, CSL DD tests, Sim Racing Garage, Sim Racing Garage CSL DD, best value DD, Direct Drive, Fanatec Direct Drive, Thrustmaster Direct Drive

Id: N6dPZJH7Yzw

Length: 35min 20sec (2120 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 09 2021