N E W S Latest News News Archive Submit News Admin Login S E C T I O N S Editorials Previews Reviews Interviews Log Books Hardware Guides Tweaking Screenshots Forums C O L U M N S DBond (11/2) Donkyshots (3/2) Frugal (11/9) Hunter (24/3) NoCharlie (5/4) Stardog (13/2) coda (31/8) A B O U T   U S Staff Bio's Privacy Statement Advertising Info Site Links S E A R C H Web frugalsworld F A L C O N 4 Falcon 4 Articles Falcon 4 Forum Falcon 4 Chat Room M I G   A L L E Y Mig Alley Articles Mig Alley Forum Mig Alley Chat Room J A N E S   F / A-18 F/A-18 Articles F/A-18 Forum S U P E R H O R N E T Superhornet Articles Superhornet Forum E A W EAW Articles EAW Forum R O W A N ' S   B O B Battle of Britain Articles Battle of Britain Forum B 1 7 2 B17 2 Articles B17 2 Forum T W E A K I N G Virtual Memory Tweaks Vcache Tweaks Scandisk Tweaks Defrag Tweaks Modem Tweaks Ramdisk Tweaks PHP by DCi

Thrustmaster Charger Wheel Review - By Mark "Frugal" Bush With high end gear now being common place it seems that the people on low budgets are often overlooked. Sometimes when looking at hardware etc we forget that there are a lot of kids funding their hobby out of their pocket money of people who's family commitments leave little left over for high end kit. As a result I decided to look at TM's low budget Wheel. In the past I've never been a great fan of racing games on the PC for the simple reason that I didn't have a steering wheel. A wheel was a real luxury item for the average PC user costing upwards of £100. Nowadays that £100 will get you a pretty good force feedback wheel but it is still a lot of dosh to fork out when you are on a tight budget. I am now lucky enough to be in a position to enjoy such luxuries but many are not so fortunate. Thrustmaster have come to the rescue with their Charger Steering Wheel. The Thrustmaster Charger is their low-end wheel coming in at about £30. The Charger is quite a compact unit and has no pedals, instead it uses paddles behind the wheel for acceleration and braking. The lack of pedals is not without it's merits as my TM Elite Rudders take up most of the space beneath my desk so this saved me the aggro of having to fiddle about under the desk making room for another set of pedals. However I was unsure of how easy I would find it to use the paddles instead. The wheel itself is a good size and feels pretty solid. The whole unit clamps to the desk with a 2-pronged clamp that is designed to allow easy positioning of the wheel. The clamp itself is very versatile and will even allow you to put the wheel on the corner of you desk should you so desire. Installation was very straight forward, simply a case of installing the software then plugging the Charger in to the gameport on my SBLive and then the Charger Properties Panel automatically calibrates the wheel and sets it as the default controller. One quick reboot later and you are up and running The first game I tested the Charger in was Rally Championship. It seems that my worries about the lack of pedals were totally unfounded. I actually found the paddles easier to use once I got used to them. The feel of the wheel was great, it has a good tension and returns to centre well. The control afforded by the wheel is excellent and certainly does not give away the low price tag, the wheel for my Playstation cost twice as much and doesn't perform anywhere near as well. Funny enough my performance in Rally Championship was actually better with the Charger than it is with the USB Force Feedback wheel that I normally use. This is probably because it is far easier to drive without Force Feedback in Rally Championship. There is a little part of me that would rather use this than the FF wheel as it is actually easier to win without the wheel shaking and bouncing. Also I found that I actually got a slight improvement on my times because I found it quicker to go from accelerator to brakes and back again with the paddles than I do with the pedals. These slight performance gains also carried through to Need for Speed 3 and Sega Rally Championship 2 in fact I found that I actually completed a track that has always beaten me before in Sega Rally 2. If you are motivated purely by the will to win then I would definitely have to recommend this wheel. Whilst this wheel does not afford the overall experience that you would get from using one of the more expensive high end Force Feedback wheels it is definitely a great performer and probably gives the best bang to buck ratio of any wheel around. All in all this is the ideal wheel for the racing fan on a budget. Please comment on this article in the Article Feedback Forum

random screenshot What CPU do you have? Amd XP 2-3000 Intel 2-3 Ghz Intel 1-2 Ghz Amd 1-2 Ghz Below 1 Ghz 30068 votes in total random irc quote: <Paul1212> Frugal never sleeps... he sometimes lose consciousness, though Sponsors H O S T E D   S I T E S Stardog's Sim Shack prop sim news & articles eRAZORS eTeam erazor's falcon 4 exe Mig Alley Skin Central skins & art for mig alley Comanche Hokum Central eech news & articles Falcon 4 Unified Team official f4ut site Cougar World thrustmaster hotas cougar