This guy CRACKED Fanatec!

hey guys will here so I heard it said recently that a lot of sim racing manufacturers create problems and not many of them create Solutions So today we're going to be taking a look at Sim racing machines which is definitely a company that provides a lot of solutions to Common Sim racing problems now today's video is going to be a little bit different from what you might be used to here at boosted media rather than diving into one particular product in a lot of detail and a more kind of review Style video this is going to be more of a showcase kind of giving you a good idea of all the various different things that Sim racing machines offer and how some of those products might be able to help you so we're not affiliated with them in any way we don't even have affiliate links for Sim racing machines Simon the guy that runs the company is just a really great guy who's found a way to earn a little bit of money from his passion which is basically just helping people so I thought that that was worthwhile making a video just to share that with you guys and hopefully you might find a solution or two for some of the problems that you might be having so let's dive in now and take a look at Sim racing machines so let's start off today by thanking the sponsor of today's video which is Micro Center so if you're in the US you probably already familiar with Micro Center as a fantastic place to Source all sorts of electronic stuff from PCS through to TVs gadgets all kinds of bits and pieces what you might not know though is that they also sell an increasing range of sim Racing Products Now They just added a new sim racing rig configurated to their website as well which is a really powerful tool but the thing that I'm most excited about is that finally you guys have a way to get eyes on and in some cases even Hands-On with a lot of the Sim Racing Products that we cover here at boosted media before you actually buy them so at the moment they've got a couple of special deals going on for The Fall season so you can definitely check that out via the links down in the description below they've also got a new center opening in Charlotte in just a couple of months time and then two new stores opening up after that pretty soon as well so check them out via the links down in the description below or visit your local Micro Center today so back to sim racing machines and I thought the best way to start this out would be to give you a little bit of background on the company and how they operate so as I mentioned I've been chatting to Simon for quite some time now gotten to know him pretty well and he just comes across as a really passionate really intelligent and you know just a a genuine person that wants to help people which I think is really important so when you're dealing with Sim racing machines you are going to be dealing with Simon directly he does operate I believe on his own maybe he has a couple of people that are helping him but primarily he's operating on his own at least and look he's just as I said before a passionate guy that's uh loves helping people loves making stuff like this obviously has some very very refined skills in making products like this as well and basically he just looks for problems and comes up with Solutions and then sells those solutions to you guys which I think is really awesome so if you jump on their website simracing machines.com there's an about page which takes you through a lot more detail on all of this but yeah look in my experience at least very very easy to deal with and uh yeah all the products definitely seem to you know carry through that that theme as well as you'll see in today's video the build quality and all of this stuff is absolutely amazing so there's an immense variety of different products we certainly don't have every single product here on the table in front of us today but I I basically chose a selection of things which I think represents what they sell pretty well but again jump on their website to get an idea of everything that they have available so there's a couple of different themes when it comes to products that they sell they sell passive devices like these adapter shims and bent and pieces that allow you to adapt between various different wheelbases and wheels so this for example is a slim Mount that allows you to bolt a wheel with a 70 mm stud pattern Direct to a semic cube base with minimal uh with minimal spacing there so you're not having to move the wheel a whole lot closer to you there's adapters here for adapting NRG stockle quick releases for Mozza and Sim magic wheels for example through to a 70 mm stud pattern another similar adapter here as well all kinds of bits and pieces like that they've got a 70 mm PCD spacer here as well if you need something like that uh even a vrs hub which I thought was really cool as well so you've got a piece here that's bolts to the stem on your motor and then this part goes over the top of it gives it a really nice clean finish and we might dive into some of these products in a little bit more individual detail in future videos if there's enough interest if you guys have enough questions down below so if you do have any questions definitely let us know but then you get into the more what I think is more interesting stuff which is their Electronics now they offer a lot of replacement parts for common uh bits and pieces too so for example if you have a snapped pin on your fitech wheel you can purchase a replacement pin assembly directly from them and again very nice high quality stuff shipped in recyclable packaging as well other than just a little cloth bag which they include too but you can see really nicely presented throughout so all that stuff is extremely useful I'm not going to spend the time now to go through pricing because we'll be here for hours if we do that but you can jump on their website to see the pricing for yourself I personally think that it's pretty reasonable for the quality of materials that you're getting if you were to buy something like that for a uh for a real life race car which would essentially be the same build quality it's all CNC machined and you know beautifully anodized and finished you know you'd probably be looking at you know at least you know half the price again if not twice the price so I think all of his stuff is pretty reasonably priced but then we get into the stuff that I find most interesting which is their emulators and electrical adapters so for example Simon teamed up with Peter from Pineapple grips whose grips for fanatic Wheels were reviewed not all that long ago here on the channel and they came up with a solution to actually mount a acerte wheel to any wheelbase that you want so as you guys know uh from our review videos AC Tech have their own proprietary quick release it does have a pin assembly here which connects through to the wheelbase as a standard USB protocol so what that means is if you remove that adapter and then bolt on one of their adapters you can actually adapt an acch wheel to work with any wheelbase that you want and connect directly via USB which is really cool now there are installation instructions for all of these things on their website too so I'm not going to spend a lot of time today going through installation we will show you how to install a couple of these products a little bit later on when when we get into the fanatic stuff though cuz I think that's what most people are going to be the most interested in so let's dive into that now so we've got a selection of a couple of their fanatic products here which I'm going to take you through there is also one thing I want to call out here a little adapter that they've just made now an emulator which you literally looks like a looks like a baby's dummy in fact and what you do is you slip it into the pin assembly on the uh on the base side of the quick release and as a lot of you guys would know with fanatic wheelbases they actually need to have a fanatic wheel connected to them to enable force feedback so unlike every other brand that I'm aware of at least uh you can't operate the force feedback on a fanatic base unless you have a fanatic wheel connected or at least a fanatic Hub of some description so say a Podium Hub a universal hub or such like now those are of course quite expensive to purchase and uh you know it can sometimes be an unexpected cost some people will buy a Bas and then buy their own third party wheel buy some sort of a quick release and simply just not realize that the force feedback isn't going to work without having a itic branded adapter between the wheel and the and the actual base so that is what we have solutions for here now one thing to Just note here is that these emulator products for fanatic are only tested for PC so they're not guaranteed to work with console at all they are sold as PC only products so there's a couple of different solutions already mentioned the little dummy insert which is one really simple way that also works with qr2 as well what we have here is a replacement stem for a dd1 and dd2 now if you saw our qr2 revieww video recently you would have seen how these guys get installed there's basically two plugs inside the base and what you do is you replace the qr1 stem with this guy and what it does is it gives you a 70 mm mounting pattern here which you can mount your own quick release or bolt a wheel directly to and the electronics inside here are basically an emulator so what that does is it tricks the wheelbase into thinking that there's a fanatic wheel connected that therefore enables force feedback and you are good to go without the need to Fork out for a fanatic Hub which is really cool so obviously then whatever wheel you would connect would either connect your PC via Bluetooth wirelessly or have its own USB connection so you are going to be tethered in some sense there but uh you know really cool way to work around that issue of not having force feedback if you're using a third party wheel so this guy takes the approach of actually converting the dd1 or dd2 base across so you can use it with any wheel directly if you don't want to convert your Bas because you still want to be able to use a selection of fanatic wheels and bolt them directly on without having to stuff around with adapters and things then you also have the option for something like this now you can choose whether you want to have a simplified quick release like what you see here a standard Club sport qr1 or even a qr2 uh whether you want the pro the standard or the light version all five of those Solutions will bolt directly onto this I'll open this up and show you how that works in just a minute and essentially what this is doing is exactly the same thing but from the other side so you mount your wheel onto the base as per normal and uh then it's got an emulator inside it exactly the same as this which makes the base think that there's a wheel connected you then have a 70 mm or 50 mm stud pattern that you can bot whatever quick release or wheel directly to and that gets you up and running the other way from the way this would work so whereas this guy was a solution specifically for the dd1 and dd2 this guy will work with any of the current range of fanatic wheelbases so we got two solutions there for connecting any third party wheel you want to your fanatic wheelbase what if you want to go the other way and use a fanatic wheel on some other brand wheelbase and that is where their adapter kits come in handy so let me uncoil this cable quickly here here and you can see what we've got here is a adapter Hub connected to fanatic's M4 GT3 wheel so this is a wheel that as you guys know is the actual wheel that you'd find in the real life race car and therefore is quite a popular wheel that a lot of people are interested in but don't necessarily own fanatic bases so it's really cool to have a highquality solution like this that allows you to use this uh real life racing car wheel with any wheelbase that you want and I've actually been running this extensively on my simic Cube 2 ultimate for example so what we have here is really clever this is an emulator that actually emulates a fanatic Bas so when you plug the wheel into the PC it actually thinks that there's a fanatic Bas attached to the PC and that allows you to use all the functions on your steering wheel exactly the same way as you would if you were plugged in normally through a fanatic wheelbase so that gives you a basic rundown on the types of different products that they sell again jump on their website and have a look through what might suit your particular needs this is only a small selection of uh you know representative of the basic ideas of the products that they sell jump on take a look for yourself what I want to do now is dive in a little bit deeper show you how we install some of these fanatic adapters and then we'll wrap things up with some conclusions okay so let's take a more detailed look now at the SRM emulator for fanatic wheelbase as it's labeled on their website so there's a couple of different options here in terms of configuration you can buy this guy on its own as it looks here or you can order it with the quick release of your choice pre-installed and that includes the qr2 as well so I just want to quickly run you you through the installation process is very very simple uh just a couple of little things that you do need to be aware of so if you're looking at a simplified qr1 you might be aware that there's a little stem on here a little Peg that activates a switch on the genuine fanatic Wheels to tell it that it's a simplified version so it disables the high talk mode on the dd1 dd2 the adapter from SRM as you can see here doesn't actually have provision for that little pin so you will need to if you're installing your own just cut that off or shave it off you can see here they've shaved that off with uh you know something like a Dremel or something like that looks like very clean and tidily done uh in the case of the qr1 club sport version no issue there's no Peg there but similarly if you are planning on installing a qr2 light then you will need to shave off that Peg obviously with the pro and the standard version not an issue once again so what you'll have inside the box is the adapter like this let's just have a quick look at that as well as you can see very nice anodized aluminium construction throughout nice thick cables as well which is something that I appreciate nice and flexible cables too so no shortcuts taken there uh very very solid no flimsiness you can see they put a coating over the electronics as well to protect those and even just down to the design of the PCB you can see it's all printed with SRM on there these aren't you know generic emulators that they're ordering off alib baraba or anything like that this is all stuff that he designs and has manufactured uh for himself so he doesn't obviously print and uh and populate the circuit boards himself in house but all the soldering uh in terms of connecting it to wiring and you know all that stuff as done in house as far as I'm aware but all really nice high quality stuff no issues with flex or anything like that so let's drop that down here so if you're installing a uh qr1 based system no need to do anything with the pin assembly or anything like that you simply just cut off the little Peg drop it on bolt it in position with the bolts that will be provided and uh you are good to go likewise with the qr1 standard or Club sport edition uh make sure you have it oriented the right way of course you can see one face is a little bit shorter than the other so that matches up perfectly with what we have here and again just drop it on absolutely fine no issues at all to speak of bolts in and everything is good to go exactly the same as it would be on a standard fanatic wheel now with the qr2 if you watched our review video on that again you would be aware that they include this little plastic spacer which replaces the metal washer sitting on top of the pin assembly here and that just gives the pin assembly a little bit more protection so you will want to replace that again you will need to cut off the peg if you've got the light version otherwise it's as simple as just installing that dropping this guy on both it all into position and you'll be good to go so I'll quickly do that now we'll get it installed up with the uh with the standard version of the qr2 so we can do some testing and uh then we'll jump in and take a look at the wheel conversion kit and there you go we now have a fully operational qr2 to any wheel you want adapter okay so now let's take a more detailed look at their conversion kit 6X as it's marked on their website now this conversion kit is pretty cool because it doesn't involve having to open up the entire wheel to adapt this all you're having to do is take off the quick release make a couple of little adjustments depending on what wheel you have we'll take you through that in just a second and you're good to go so it's literally just like a hub stem thing like this again all CNC machine aluminium you can see there's a nice strain relief there for the USB cable which is a nice high quality coiled thick cable as well which you would expect for a wheel which is going to be connected directly through to your PC or to a hub on your sim rig remembering again that this is something that's going to rotate around with the wheel so we obviously want to have something nice and high quality inside the kit as well you'll find a little PCB this is the guy that we talked about before that basically just emulates the uh wheelbase so that is going to slot over the top of that guy if I can line it up again there we go so that is there they include the bolts that you're going to need and uh that is pretty much it all very nicely packaged as well I might just add now for this particular wheel the BMW M4 GT3 wheel this actually came pre-installed with a little plas plastic shim for the qr2 in preparation for those so you will need to remove that either way you are going to need to remove the factory bolts out of this stem because they are going to be replaced with the longer bolts which will affix the quick release through to the back of it so remove this remove the bolts set those aside somewhere nice and safe in case you ever want to revert back and then all we're going to be doing is sliding this guy over the pin assembly obviously being very careful that we don't crush any of the pins so it's literally just going to slide on if you have to put excessive force into this you're doing it wrong so just going to line it up and I will add as well that if you're not confident in doing this yourself not that it's difficult or anything but if you're not confident in doing it uh they do actually sell a selection of Wheels with these guys pre-installed so that is an option for you as well again just check their website for all the details on that so you can see that is now slotted on over the pins we're now going to drop in our long screws again just be very careful that nothing is cross threading if you're having to use excessive force then again you're doing it wrong so these are just going to slot in and you may have a little bit of trouble aligning it just because there's a few different moving Parts here that all need to be lined up correctly so that wasn't too much of a problem for me though probably because I've done it before we go in we're just going to wind these guys down as as you can get you can see that one's just a little bit more resistant than the others were but it is still screwing in without cross threading it all we're then going to grab our Allen key and we're just going to wind those down all the way to the bottom not excessive force on these we're just going to do them up so that they're biting but not uh not under any tension not under any excessive tension I should say and the process here is exactly the same for any other fanatic wheel that you might be installing it on just remembering again the little plastic piece if you have a wheel that that is pre-installed on and a lot of Wheels now moving forward depending on when they were uh when they were manufactured the batches will come with these pre-installed so just be aware of that so we're just going to crank those down a little bit more just to make sure it's nice and tight but not too tight there we go that is not going to go anywhere that's always the important thing you got to slap it and then say it's not going anywhere and then it'll be fine and then uh we slot this guy on over the top strain relief is nice and loose there so again making sure that we line this up correctly there is a long side and a short side so sort it on like so you can see that's now sitting over the entire assembly and we then just drop our original Factory bolts back in for securing to the back of the wheel I like to finger tighten these as far as I possibly can just cuz it saves having to get an allen key on an awkward angle and try to tighten them so wind them down as far as you can again not excessively tight here again depending on the wheel uh will depend on how much uh tightness you want to put in some plastic Wheels you probably want to go a little bit less even though they do have uh metal threaded inserts you're not going to want to crank them super super tight because you might strip out those inserts but you don't need to go crazy here obviously if it's moving at all then it's too loose but that is as simple as that and then if we spin the wheel around you can see the little micro USB connection internally there you might not be able to see it on camera but it is there we're just going to orient our USB cable correctly plug that guy in like so it's going to be a little tricky for you guys to see on camera there but it does go in relatively easily there we go that's clicked in and then we just want to tighten down the bolt on this strain relief just to make sure that that cable's not going to get snagged and uh tear the little connection off the PCB would be nice if they used a USBC connection I'm sure a lot of people will be wondering about that but uh it is what it is once it's secure I don't think it's likely to be a problem so that is nice and tight now that cable is not going anywhere because I slapped it and uh yeah there you go that is a ftic wheel converted across to USB simple as that it's a little maybe a little bit daunting for some people if you've never done anything like that before but really there's nothing difficult there nothing to be afraid of not really any risk of damaging anything I would say if you're careful and uh here you go we got a nice clean 70 mm stud pattern on the back here now one thing just to be aware of here they've gotten this as Slim as they possibly can obviously they need to account for the length of the pin assembly that you guys saw when we had everything apart but it does add a little bit of thickness so this spacer here from the face of the wheel to the face of where you're going to mount your quick release is 60 mm thick if you were to compare that to a fanatic standard quick release you can see it's about the same length maybe a little bit shorter but then of course whatever quick release you're going to be using is going to be added on top of that so it is going to push your wheel back a little bit further than would otherwise be the case there are some other versions of their conversion kits available which uh basically remove that entire pin assembly and can get things a lot Slimmer so if that is something that's particularly important for you again just check their website to uh check out some of the other options that they might have a little bit more involved on the install side but do move the wheel a little bit closer to the base if that's something that you need and uh yeah it's as simple as that we now have a fully USB converted and ready to go fanatic wheel so we're up and running now on our test rig going to show you how the SRM emulator for fitech bases works with an aftermarket steering wheel now the first thing I want to show you quickly here from a mechanical perspective is the complete lack of flex whatsoever I intentionally chose a really solid wheel here in the soek wheel just to demonstrate this so you'll see there's a little bit of flex in the wheel deck itself nothing in the qr2 as you guys saw in our qr2 review recently but more importantly for this video you can see as I'm pulling and pting on that wheel pulling up and down twisting left and right doing all the things that you wouldn't really be doing when you're driving anyway absolutely no discernable Flex you guys can see better on camera than I can from my position here but I can tell you I'm not Discerning any movement at all in the hub itself nothing in the QR and everything is absolutely fine so let's jump in now and talk about the software side of things so if you go into the software it's just going to show up normally uh show that the wheelbase is detected here one thing you might be wondering is because we don't have access to the tuning menu here uh how do we actually enable hide torque mode so we've got the torque key installed what we're going to do is you get the low torque prompt here if you hold the steering wheel 90° in either direction you'll see a little bar comes across the bottom that is the same as pressing the okay button so in lie of having any physical buttons that is the way we do it same with any of their other wheel that's actually implemented at fatex level for the podium Hub I believe so it's not something that's integrated through their own firmware on their emulator circuit there then if we click over onto the steering wheel you'll see as far as the fitech software is concerned it thinks that there's a club sport formula wheel connected and that is what is actually enabling the force feedback so for all other intents and purposes everything just works everything is up and running and there's absolutely no issues there now we're running a soek wheel here which we're going to be reviewing very shortly it gives you an idea of the extra distance that you get there compared to some of the other Wheels obviously every wheel is going to be a little bit different some have bigger spaces than others do but let me just pop this wheel off quickly for you and I'm going to pop on a standard fitech McLaren GT3 wheel with the same qr2 just to give you an idea of the difference there so you can see if we line that up so the QRS are pretty close it's probably about maybe an inch and a half two inches difference there but again it will vary depending on the wheel but I just wanted to give you that visual representation there so we'll pop that wheel back off again you can see straight away it's just detected this as the normal uh GT3 wheel it has actually prompted me to do a firmare update as well so that is how they've integrated that through the software we'll pop this guy back on again and you can see the wheel itself is just connected via USB so we're just running that through uh through simhub obviously that's a topic for another video when we get into the review of this wheel but yeah that is how it works to run any wheel you want through your fitech base with the emulator so that it shows up in the fitech software as a a club sport formula wheel and it all works exactly the same way through fan laab as well so it just shows up as a club sport formula wheel and you have access to all the normal settings for your wheelbase that is that so let's jump over onto the daily driver rig now which is running a semic cube 2 ultimate currently and we'll show you how to run a fitech wheel on a different wheelbase okay so over on the daily driver rig now with the M4 GT3 wheel from fanatic connected via our zero play quick release to our semic Cube 2 ultimate base so not something that you would normally see but made possible by the SRM adapter so first thing I want to point out here obviously you can see there is quite a large extension here the wheel is quite a lot closer to me than it would be with a wheel connected directly to the uh piece here so normally you would imagine the wheel would be bolted to this bit that's kind of what I was talking about before with the 60 mm extension that we have here remembering again that if you do want to have something a little bit Slimmer there are other options available they just have the disadvantage of having to pull the wheel completely apart to uh remove pins and do all that stuff so again check out those other options if that's something that bothers you in terms of flex again absolutely nothing to speak of whatsoever that I can discern at least anyway there's a tiny little bit of flex in the wheel deck as we had before but certainly nothing at all in the extension itself we wouldn't expect to see anything like that so that is all absolutely fine on the software side of things let's have a look at that now so you'll notice straight away uh we have the Bas detected as a CSL Elite wheelbase ps4 version now again we do have to note here that this isn't going to be a PlayStation compatible solution simply because a PlayStation can only detect one particular USB input and obviously you're going to have to plug the wheel in separately from whatever base you're wanting to run so not going to work in that regard whether or not it'll work with various different aftermarket adapters emulators things like that I don't know uh you can do your own research there but this is advertised as a PC only product so detected as a CSL Elite wheelbase obviously none of these settings here are going to do anything because that's not the wheelbase that we're actually running this is just the means for the fitech software to detect the wheel and do all the things that you need need to do there now likewise this does also work with fan lab as you can see alongside here so let's click on the steering wheel now and you can see it's just detected exactly the same way it would be inside the game with the exception that the steering angle input there isn't working so all the settings here work exactly the same way as they do if you were connected via a uh normal fitech base uh one issue that I did have which doesn't appear to be an issue now since I've updated the drivers for the fitech software is I did have a couple of little glitches with the clutch bite Point not working properly and always going to 100% but you can see now here that is all working perfectly normally you can see I release one hand it goes to the adjustment point and then it continues down I can make all those adjustments through the tuning menu in the fan lab software as well so there's no issues at all there uh steering sensitivity obviously has no impact but then all these other settings for multiposition switches analog clutch settings and all those things all work perfectly normally even just the button LED test you can see works there OED display is all functioning as well now with regards to the olded display obviously one of the normal big advantages of The Fanatic ecosystem is the ability to make adjustments to your force feedback settings via the tuning menu on the steering wheel itself now it goes without saying that I'm going to say it anyway that we're not going to be able to make adjustments to our wheelbase from a different company via the tuning menu here but we do still have access to a limited subset of features here through the tuning menu so we still can go through presets here and anything that we've adjusted uh with relation to the settings on the wheel itself we can still adjust here so if I scroll through quickly you can see we've got adjustments for our multi-position switches as well as our clutch bite Point modes and whatnot so we can scroll through here with the BMW button in the middle clutch bite point for our analog paddles clutch and handbrake breake and throttle mappable analog axes and so forth so it kind of just makes sense it's not giving you a whole bunch of settings which don't do anything which I think is actually pretty darn cool I was expecting that it might do that but yeah for all intents and purposes it works exactly the way you would want it to work and everything is all happy and functional so there you have have it guys that's a quick rund down on just some of the products that are sold by Sim racing machine so hopefully if you've got a specific issue there is an adapter here that might help solve that issue really hope that today's video has helped you out as I said before we don't have any affiliate links or any sort of uh connection with SRM at all but I just I I really like companies that are offering solutions to problems and uh you know as you can see the quality of this stuff is really high as well so absolutely no reason at all not to recommend it if it's going to suit your particular need so simple as that guys leave a thumbs up if you've enjoyed the video consider subscribing to the channel as well if you aren't already so you don't miss out on future videos like this one only about 30% of the people that are watching these videos are subscribe to the channel and I know it doesn't make a big difference in terms of what you guys see in your newsfeed these days but it does make a big difference in terms of telling YouTube that the content is valuable so it shows it to other SIM Racers like you guys so that we can help out as many people as we possibly can so we really do appreciate your support there it's a small thing you can do that really does go a long way and it's as simple as that guys check out booster media.net for a bunch more review videos and information uh discounts there available too on certain Sim Racing Products definitely worth checking out but that is it I will see you guys again very soon bye

Channel: Boosted Media

Views: 104,527

Keywords: fanatec hack, using a fanatec wheel on Simucube, Fanatec wheel on Moza, Fanatec wheel with Simagic, using different wheels on Fanatec, Unlock Fanatec, sim racing hacks, sim racing, boosted media, fanatec, simucube, sim racing machines, SRM adaptor

Id: bmLOtRGYdBw

Length: 28min 7sec (1687 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 25 2023