Thrustmaster Rgt Force Feed Back Pro

Written by Larry Fraser - Edited by Olin Coles

Force Feedback Pro Clutch

If you are in the market for a new steering wheel for your PC racing games, odds are you will be looking to either Logitech or Thrustmaster. Five years ago you would have had quite a few choices to pick from, now you are limited to a handful of models from one of two companies. Today Benchmark Reviews will be taking a look at one of those options, the Thrustmaster RGT Force Feedback Pro Clutch Edition. On paper, this new wheel sounds great, but can it deliver when your trying to hold that perfect line through the corners. Let's take a closer look and find out.

The PC Steering wheel market has become a very difficult arena to compete in for manufacturers. Let's face it, it is hard to reinvent the wheel. Setting your product apart from another competitor's product becomes more and more difficult. Couple that, with the fact that the PC racing market has taken a hard hit from the Console racing market and it is no wonder that most of the manufactures have dropped out of the game. Unfortunately for those of us who would rather race on our PC rather than a 360 or PS3 we are often left with an afterthought both on the software and the hardware side. Both game developers and wheel manufactures can save money by developing a product for the console and then porting it to the PC. While this may be fine for the console market, it really sucks for us PC gamers. We end up with a racing game that feels more at home with a gamepad than it does a wheel or we get a "rumble effect" from the wheel rather than true force feedback.

Fortunately there are still a few wheel options that were designed with the PC racer in mind. The Thrustmaster RGT Force Feedback Pro Clutch Edition is one of those wheels. Thrustmaster has taken a backseat to Logitech's new G25 wheel over the last couple of years. While the Clutch Edition wheel may never be in the same league as the G25 it does offer some very nice features not usually found in a $100 wheel.

Thrustmaster RGT Features & Specifications

The list of features for the Thrustmaster RGT Force Feedback Pro Clutch Edition reads very nice. Thrustmaster has really made an effort to give the gamer quite few options usually only found on the more expensive wheels.

• Exclusive "5 axes" modes

• Axe 1 : Wheel

• Axe 2 : Accelerator

• Axe 3 : Brake

• Axe 4 : Clutch or Left cockpit progressive view

• Axe 5 : Handbrake or right cockpit progressive view

• 3 Pedals

• Realistic, professional foot control

• Life-like resistance on the brake pedal

• 2 pedal positions available: "double-cutch" or "cockpit"

• Advanced drivers can set up the pedals for 'heel and toe' downshifting

• Large robust aluminium pedals

• Oversized tube + full rubber grip + 270° turning angle

• Metal axis + ball-bearing steering mechanism

• Belt-driven gear system (= Smooth & silent gear changing)

• Large and sturdy clamping system (suitable for tables up to 5cm thick)

• Function buttons on wheel

• 10 actions buttons (with 14 locations)

• Navigation Cross button (To customize your vehicle)

• Twin wheel-mounted progressive levers + twin wheel-mounted sequential levers

• Exclusive Force button on the wheel

• Activates/deactivates Hardware Center Return"during race

• Powerful Force Feedback licensed by Immersion (Touch Sense Technology)

• FFB can easily be toggled on and off with the press of a single button

• 2 "Sequential Shifter System" options (choose between « Rally » or « GT » styles)

• 1 full-size sequential gearshift stick

• 2 new reinforced wheel-mounted sequential levers

Thrustmaster RGT Closer Look

When your looking for a new wheel for PC racing you really need to ask yourself what features are important to you and just how serious about PC racing are you? There are always extreme options out there for those who have both the desire for the best and the bank account to afford it such as the ECCI6000 which I doubt I will ever have the opportunity to own. For the rest of us, we must decide whether we are looking for a wheel so we don't have to use a keyboard to play our racing games, a wheel that feels right when driving, or are we looking for a wheel that will allow us to get the most out of our PC racing experience.

For the most part, there are four tiers of PC wheels, the $25-$60 range wheels that are better than using the arrow keys on the keyboard but really never give you a true driving experience. The $90-$150 wheels that can give a very nice driving experience but really never let your forget your are holding a wheel made of plastic and rubber, the $250-$400 wheels that can offer a very good experience in both performance and realistic feel (metal and leather), and the extreme wheels that may easily set you back more than $1,000 using parts that would feel at home in a real race car.

The Thrustmaster RGT Force Feedback Pro Clutch Edition is priced just over $100, so in order for this wheel to be acceptable I would require it to give a very enjoyable driving experience and help my game performance. Given the price of this wheel I should accept the fact that it does make heavy use of plastic parts and a rubber wheel.

While not leather, the wheel still feels nice in your hands. It is approximately 9.5" in diameter and has a very solid feel to it. It is almost identical in both diameter and thickness to the Logitech Momo wheel which makes sense given these two wheels are in direct competition. The wheel does include the addition of an instant off feature for the Force Feedback, although I struggled to get this feature to work properly. The strength of the Force Feedback is more than adequate. While not on the same level as the G25, it more than enough to give you an enjoyable driving experience.

The pedal unit is what distinguishes the Clutch Edition from both the Momo and the Standard RGT Force Feedback Pro. Just as the name implies, you get the addition of a clutch to the pedal unit. The brake and clutch pedals have a fairly stiff resistance while the gas pedal is a little looser. While the addition of a clutch could definitely add to the realism while driving simulators such as Rfactor and GTR2, I feel that the addition of a clutch without including a gated shifter seems a little out of place. On a negative note, the pedal unit is very light and will slide all over the place regardless of whether it is on carpet or a hard surface. The bottom of the unit has a few rubber grip pads whose only purpose may be to avoid scratching your floor as you are constantly trying to slide the unit back in place. Given that this problem seems to be a common one among pedal units from just about every wheel, I have a feeling it comes down to reducing shipping weight rather than designing the pedal unit like it needs to be designed. Weight is about the only thing that would really keep the pedal unit in place.

Detailed Features

One feature that turned out to be a huge plus for the Thrustmaster RGT Force Feedback Pro Clutch Edition is a feature I initially didn't give a second thought, the four paddles. While every mid to high end wheel now comes standard with shifter paddles, Thrustmaster goes one step further here. This wheel includes not two but four paddles behind the wheel. The top two are your standard digital shifter paddles that can be used to shift gears or assigned any other button function. The bottom two are analog paddles that can take the place of gas and brake. While it is true that you can usually assign the gas and brake function to a digital paddle, the result is an all or nothing function. You either have 100% gas or 0% gas. With an analog paddle, the more your pull the paddle, the more gas you apply just like the foot pedal. I had honestly never given a feature like this much mind. My thoughts were along lines of why would you want to use that when you have actual pedals you could be using. The benefits became very clear not during my testing but when my five year old Daughter requested to give it a try. She enjoys racing games on her computer and has her own wheel, but has always struggled with the pedal unit. I've always had to assign her digital paddles to the gas and the brake. With the analog paddles she was able to get around the track with ease. They allowed her the partial throttle control that she never could get with the digital paddles.

The steering wheel base is held in place by a single screw clamping mechanism that utilized the same four rubber pads that are found on the pedal unit. (with similar results) I found myself constantly trying to tighten the single tightening bolt with increasing fear that I would eventually break it. I never was able to get the wheel locked in place to a degree that I would be comfortable with. It always had a tendency to work loose from my desk. This can be frustrating when your in the middle of a race and you have to worry about reseating your steering wheel base. I suffered at least one smashed finger during a race when I tried to make a quick adjustment to the base and got my finger caught between the unit and my desk. Needless to say I didn't do very well in that race. I will say that it is no worse than the mounting mechanism on my Logitech Momo wheel, just still in need of much improvement.

The pedal unit is connected to the base unit by a single wire that splits into two RJ25 style plugs just smaller. One of these wires plugs into the back of the wheel base and the other into the base of the shifter. Given that the shifter is not designed to be disconnect from the wheel I really don't see the need for the double plug. I have to imagine that this could have easily be accomplished with just one plug.

The unit is powered by a standard wall wart which plugs into the base of the wheel unit. You will also have a USB cord coming from the base of the wheel unit to be plugged into your computer. The end result is three wires coming out the back of the wheel unit. I realize that this is the standard configuration and is most likely the simplest design given the location of the wheel motor, however I would much rather have the USB cord and the power cord coming out of the pedal unit with a single cable connecting the pedals to the wheel.

The negatives I have mentioned should NOT make you run away from the Thrustmaster RGT Force Feedback Pro Clutch Edition given that they are common in all wheels in mid to lower price tiers. However, the addition of the clutch pedal and the analog paddles are usually not included in a product of this price.

Testing & Results

Thrustmaster RGT Testing Methodology

While testing a wheel may sound easy, relaying the results of your tests can be a difficult undertaking. Any input device is very subjective to the individual user's tastes. What feels good to one user may feel horrible to another user. You may like your wheel to be very light or very stiff, you may like your Force Feedback to be very strong or turned off entirely. You may like a large center dead zone or no center dead zone for your wheel. Combine those preferences with the fact that racing games almost never feel the same and you can start to see the difficulty with writing a wheel review. I decided to list not only my test system but also my personal preferences below in hopes that you can at least get a feel for where I'm coming from when I say I liked it or didn't like it for a particular game. Keep in mind that some of the games that I give a negative feel result may be more about the inherent control for that game rather than a negative towards the Thrustmaster wheel. I will try and make note of those particular games during my results.

Test System

Motherboard: Asus P5K

System Memory: SuperTalent 4,4,4,8 (4x1GB) DDR2

Processor: Intel Q6600 at 3.2GHz (8x400Mhz)

Video: MSI 8800GTX OC 610Mhz Core


Hard Disk: Western Digital WD1500 10,000 RPM SATA

PSU:PC Power and Cooling 750W

Operating System: Windows XP Professional SP-2

Hanns-G 28" LCD at 1920x1200

Reviewer's Preferences

• Prefer games like GTR2, rFactor, Colin McRae Rally 2005

• Dislike games like Sega Rally, and most of the NFS Underground style series.

• Prefer a tight control feeling with little to no dead zone.

• Prefer the game allow me to steer out of spin rather than have the feeling of twisting the car on a center pivot point.

• Huge fan of Rally racing games but have not enjoyed the control in D.I.R.T.

• For the most part if the game wasn't designed to be played only with a wheel, I probably won't like it.

Force Feedback Pro Clutch Results

I figured I would first start with the simulator style games and work my way down to the Arcade style. My testing consisted of a very simple controller setup in which I check to see if the game actually recognized the wheel by name and if so, did the default control settings need configured. If the game allowed, I would set the force feedback setting to maximum. Other than configuring the button and pedal assignments, no time was spent dialing in the handling of the car. I would then make note of how the clutch worked, how the Force Feedback felt, and how the control felt in general. My reference point for a comparison is a Logitech Momo wheel but for the most part I tried not to make a comparison and just state if the control felt good or bad.

rFactor: Wheel was not recognized by name. No default profile available. Required custom configuration to get all pedals working. Clutch worked great in the game. Good Force Feedback. Good control.

GTR2: Wheel was recognized by name. Required custom configuration to get all pedals working. Clutch worked great. Force Feedback felt good. Good control

Nascar Sim Racing: Wheel was not recognized by name. Required custom configuration to get all pedals working. Clutch worked great. Force Feedback was good. Good control.

Richard Burns Rally: Wheel was not recognized by name. Required custom configuration to assign controls to pedals. Force Feedback test didn't work. Couldn't get Force Feedback to work at all in the game. Clutch setup fine in the control settings but didn't seem to have any option to disable autoclutch that I found. I checked on Thrustmaster's website and they do list support for both Force Feedback and Clutch with RBR so I may just be missing a simple setting here. Control felt ok but very loose given no Force Feedback.

Race 07: Wheel is recognized by name. Required custom configuration to get all pedals working. Clutch worked great. Very strong Force Feedback. (Would actually twist the wheel out of my Daughter's hands) Wheel actually felt very good in this game with great control.

D.I.R.T: Wheel is recognized by name. Required custom configuration to get gas and brake working while wheel is still set to 5 axis. Clutch does not work in this game. I guess you could say Force Feedback technically worked however I think I would rather turn it off than feel a wimpy rumble and shake every now and then that seemed to have nothing to do with my driving environment. It felt very disconnected from the game. Steering felt very loose. Control was ok but not good. (I'm not a big fan of the vehicle control in D.I.R.T so it may not be the fault of the wheel so much as my dislike for the game. Perfect example of a great game made for the console and ported to the PC as an after thought.)

Xpand Rally Xtreme: Wheel not recognized by name. Required custom configuration to get pedals working. Great Force Feedback. The Force Feedback in the game really made it enjoyable. Driving on gravel or in a rut really felt like you were on gravel or just hit a rut. Good Control.

NFS: Pro Street: Wheel was recognized by name. I ran into an interesting problem with both Pro Street and NFS:Carbon. The brake pedal would cause the menu to constantly scroll. I would have to hold in the brake at any menu in order to stop the scrolling. The only way I could get the pedal configured properly was to use the clutch as the brake. Thrustmaster does have a notation that this wheel must be operated in the two axis mode for NFS games so I guess using the clutch is out of the question here. Force Feedback ok but a little on the light side. Control was actually very good. One problem with the Thrustmaster wheel vs the Logitech wheels in the NFS series has to do with the need to push a nitrous button quite often. The button placement can seem a little out of place when reaching for that needed boost. The G25 wins hands down here and the Momo has 6 easy to reach buttons.

NFS: Carbon: Wheel is recognized. Same problem mentioned above with the scrolling menu. Force Feedback is ok. Control is ok. (I'm not a fan of this game at all so honestly didn't spend more than a couple of laps testing it. My Daughter did run a few laps with it though.

Thrustmaster RGT Final Thoughts

I have been using the Logitech Momo wheel for quite awhile and while I enjoy racing games, I'm honestly not that good at them. I've sold quite a few of the G25 wheels and would love to have one but just can't justify the price for the limited amount of time I spend playing racing games. While I have never been let down by the control of the Momo wheel, I have never been impressed by the Force Feedback on it. I must admit I was pleasantly surprised by my in game results with the Thrustmaster RGT Force Feedback Pro Clutch Edition. While the control was for the most part right in line with what I'm accustomed to with my Momo wheel, the Force Feedback was a huge improvement. On games that I routinely will turn off the Force Feedback I found myself enjoying the effects. Xpand Rally Xtreme was one game that this wheel just brought to life for me. And with the added bonus of having analog paddles for a smaller driver or if you just don't want to use the pedals, this wheel really is positioned in between the Momo and the G25. I would have liked to see a gated shifter with the addition of the clutch. Using either the paddles or the two way shifter with the clutch just seems lacking to me. I realize that companies usually charge a large premium for the gated shifters but is it honestly that much more expensive to implement? The stick is already there along with the first two button contacts. Seems like it would just be a matter of adding five more button contacts and a gate. I"m sure I'm over simplifying it though.

Bottom line is I actually really enjoyed playing with this wheel. I never found myself blaming the wheel for not making a turn or holding a line. I may have a hard time keeping it though, given how my Daughter is already eying it. After comparing the RGT to the Momo, I would love to see Thrustmaster take on Logitech's G25 wheel with a new high end product.

Force Feedback Pro Clutch Conclusion

The Thrustmaster RGT Force Feedback Pro Clutch Edition seems to be a product caught in the middle. On one hand, Thrustmaster has done a very nice job of offering features usually only found in a much higher priced wheel and in-game performance is very good overall. On the other hand however, in order for Thrustmaster to sell this wheel close to the $100 price point, cost must be cut somewhere. The use of plastic in both the pedals and the paddles, the lack of a gated shifter, and a rubber steering wheel are all evidence of this cost cutting. While most of these deficiencies can be overlooked given the price, I really wish they would spend more effort on a secure mounting system for the wheel to the desk. I am fine with the rubber wheel, I am ok with the plastic pedal and paddles, would have loved to see a gated shifter, but the real problem is it ruins the experience when you are right in the middle of a race and the wheel unit comes loose from your desk. In Thrustmaster's defense, the Logitech Momo is really no better at staying attached to my desk. Fix the mounting system and include a gated shifter and this product would win our Golden Tachometer award.

Here are my thoughts on the review ratings: Wheel was boxed in a nice, clean, informative box. Appearance is nice and satisfactory for this tier of steering wheel.

Construction of the wheel feels solid, plastic parts give some concern as to durability. Pedal unit is very light and will slide around. I have a feeling I would eventually break the tightening bolt trying to make the wheel stay put on my desk. I did have something loose rattling around inside the wheel. Everything seemed to work but still a little concerning.

Functionality is right in line with this tier of wheel. Very similar in feel to the Logitech Momo with the added features of a clutch and analog paddles. Huge benefit if purchasing for a smaller driver. Control was actually good to very good for most of the games I tested. Force feedback is sufficient, neither lacking nor overbearing. The added feature of disabling the Force Feedback on the fly is a benefit although I often failed to get this button to work properly.

The Thrustmaster RGT Force Feedback Pro Clutch Edition is a very good value at just over $100. This is right in line with the Logitech Momo and given the added features it becomes a better value over the Momo. While it may never be the wheel that the G25 is, it is less than half the price of the G25.

For the average gamer looking for a good wheel I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the Thrustmaster RGT Force Feedback Pro Clutch Edition especially for the smaller driver. Those looking for a top tier wheel will have to realize that in order to get a top tier wheel you will have to pay the top tier price. The Thrustmaster wheel was likely never intended to be a top tier wheel but has done a very nice job of offering some of the features usually reserved for those wheels.

Pros:

+ Very nice Force Feedback
+ Priced similar to the Momo with more features
+ Clutch feature works very well in most games
+ Solid feeling wheel
+ Good control in gameplay

Cons:

- Pedal Base will slide around on you
- Wheel will work its way loose from your desk
- Lack of gated shifter makes clutch feature less impressive
- Plastic paddles may be prone to break
- Issues with Need For Speed Games

Ratings:

• Presentation: 9.00

• Appearance: 8.00

• Construction: 7.50

• Functionality: 9.25

• Value: 9.50

Final Score: 8.65 out of 10.

Questions? Comments? Benchmark Reviews really wants your feedback. We invite you to leave your remarks in our Discussion Forum.

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• Thrustmaster Run-N-Drive PC/PS3 Wireless Gamepad
• Thrustmaster Dual Trigger 3-in-1 Rumble Force Gamepad

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