The Pedal Choice:
Now that I had a badass Sim Racing Computer setup, all that was left was to jump into the racing programs. Well, not so fast.. I had to get organized on the control systems that I was using.
As you’ll recall from the first post, I went about upgrading my Sim Racing setup from where it was at in 2013. A lot has changed since then! The trusty Logitech G27 still can be a fairly competitive wheel, so I opted to stick with that for now as I jumped back into it. Even though Logitech did a great job on the wheel, the pedals I do have to say are not up to par.. I went ahead with switching those out for the Simcraft Tilton Pedal Setup. We’ll talk about these more in a second.
My old Logitcech Sim Racing Pedals
Importance of Sim Racing Pedals:
The reason I went straight to the Sim Racing pedals to drop my 2nd bit of cash: Braking is one of the most important things when driving. This is true in both real life and in Sim Racing. In the sim, if you can’t get a good feel for how quickly the car is slowing down it makes it extremely difficult to get consistent. You’ll run off track, miss braking points, lock up tires, or run in to people when you’re passing. Additionally, there is a huge time gain/loss in brake zones through trail braking. Having a good feel for how much force is being applied is crucial. I am used to the braking force of a non-assisted braking systems of the GT3, GT4 and GT3 Cup race cars. Due to this I really need a Sim Racing pedal system that gave me that same feel. Enter the Simcraft Tilton Pedal setup:
The new Sim Racing Pedals I got
I went through and looked at a bunch of different options, and ultimately settled on these because of a couple reasons. For starters they look badass – which we all know is very important. Secondly, from all the reviews I could find they give the same pedal feel as a GT3 car. The final reason I decided to go with these pedals is due to the way they achieve this pedal feel. Instead of having a hydraulic system, they use a heavy duty spring. To me this seemed like less maintenance long term because there’s fewer things going on. It also doesn’t hurt that they have a lifetime warranty on all the parts, as well as a dedicated support staff that were super friendly when I called in.
The End Result:
There were a few tricks to getting them setup on the computer, you’ve got to run a program and set high and low points for each pedal as well as a mid point. This allows you some adjustability in how the pedal behaves through the travel which I’ll take a more detailed look into as I spend more time with them. Once I got the Sim racing pedals up and running I could immediately feel a difference. Again, I’m used to a very stiff brake pedal and I got that same feel from this Simcraft Tilton Pedal setup. The biggest difference in my driving that I could tell was how I was more able to manage the speed into the corner with trail braking into the apex.
Side by side of my new sim racing pedals vs. the old ones
With the pedals all squared away I was ready to rock! I'm about 50% of the way completed with getting the sim to where it needs to be - now I felt I was able to be competitive on the servers. I joined up with the GRG E-Sports team who have been working with me through all of this process and started up on the different programs! We’ll go into that in the next portion of this blog series!