Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 May 2016
Having bought the T150 following some considerable deliberation and seeking a better experience with F1 2015 on my PC. I installed the hardware and looked for the driver CD. Happily, the T150 is sophisticated enough to deal with it's own driver installation, so progress
was swift. I briefly scanned the manual, believing initially that the 8mm thick, 176 page, A5 size booklet was brimming with
tech talk about Thrusmaster's glowing new T150 wheel. But, no, only the first 16 pages were the English part, and
this contained only a general overview. "oh well", I thought, "perhaps everything is explained elsewhere".
But no, I found myself heading back to the Thustmaster site for more info. Not much there, so I decided to press on with
getting it going with F1 2015. I then had another diversion. Upon powering up and running F1 2015, a messaging
indicating that the T150 wheel was not compatible with F1 2015 was displayed. Sure enough, when I checked the settings,
F1 2015 had not registered the wheel. Oh dear. Back to the Thrustmaster site again. This time, a driver update became apparent,
and was downloaded and installed. Thrustmaster advised that a reboot was necessary, and rest assured, the installation process
continued and completed following rebooting the PC. Happily, F1 2015 registered the T150. So, this time I thought I had it in the bag. Upon loading
a 'Time Trial' which I had previously completed using the PS3 controller, I thought I would see a massive
improvement in the car handling which I had yearned for. Following the realisation that the controller was basically too small for
my hands, being difficult to achieve precision in steering and gave me cramp following about 40 minutes of gameplay. But this was the biggest let down of all. I had worked with the controller and improvised a device to help me hold it better, and even though the device was now rather ramshackle to hold, the PS3 controller was starting to bring acceptable results, like a podium in Quick Race mode. I thought that the T150 wheel would bring far superior results, but I struggled with the set ups and sensitivities on the T150 Control Panel to get a smooth performance.I am sure I would be able to find my way round the ISS more easily than the T150.
Switching from the controller to the wheel was not straight forward, and I could not immediatley assert my hard won and gleaned set up knowledge from F1 2015 straight to the T150 wheel.
My lap times in time trial were consistantly 5 or so seconds slower using the T150 Wheel, and the physics of the car were changed, with the front of the car tending to slide unduly and oversteer unpredictably on corners. Why this is happening is probably known only to the closed inner circles at Thrustmaster, but it's a dissapointing mystery to me. The difference in car handling betwen the Controller and Wheel is stark and obvious.
Perhaps I would be spending my time more usefully by developing a hand controller that works well for me.
Admittedly, I was getting used to the hand controller's faults, but the learning curve was much shorter and I could easily identify areas and methods for improvement.
F1 2015 is the only game I have tried the wheel with so far, but progress has been dissapointing, to say the least.
I had expected to be able to improve my lap times substantially by having greater control over the precision of steering using the wheel, perhaps by as much as 10 seconds per lap, and I was looking forward to completing a Championship race without my hands turning blue. Yes, I achieved the improved precision with steering easily, but the changed and unpredictable car handling was the biggest eye opener, with a very difficult and largely
undocumented set up procedure. I got better results with the £20 controller than the £130 T150 wheel. Silly me for believing that the T150 wheel would be the better kit!
The most positive spin I can put on this experience is that that it has been 'immersive'. There is a massive amount of entertainment to be had from F1 2015 if only the game and F150 wheel combination could work more reliably.
The negatives seem to outweigh the positives, if you think the T150 should work straight from the box. I found some homebrew Car set up advice for F1 2015 on the Codemasters forum site and nothing helpful for the T150 wheel, but , honestly, it shouldn't be like this!!
