Steelseries SRW-S1 SimRaceway Racing Steering Wheel Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
2,240 words · ~11 min read
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welcome to my unboxing of the Sim Raceway S1 now you might not recognize
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the brand Sim Raceway when it comes to gaming peripherals however you'll
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probably recognize this one so co-developed with steel Series this is a
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racing wheel that uses motion control rather than actually
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being like fixed to object like a table
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or like a huge chair set up so it uses motion control and the hugest variety of
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buttons that I think I've ever seen on a controller to give you a Sim type feel
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and Sim type flexibility and customization without being bolted down
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literally to a fixed Furniture object
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and without taking up a ton of space in your home so motion controlled
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customizable Driving Experience steering shift and pedal control all in your
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hands let's go ahead and see what else they have to say for themselves quick
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rotary dials for driving AIDS realistic racing wheel shifters cool okay
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responsive RPM shift indicator lights customizable steering sensitivity
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rubberized racing wheel Comfort grips and fully programmable 15 buttons and
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d-pad all right so full range throttle and brake controls and a high accuracy
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handheld motion controlled steering package Cod develop with steel Series so
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it includes Sim Raceway the game however saying it includes Sim Raceway the game
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is kind of like saying that it includes oxygen because Sim Raceway is actually
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free to play which is pretty cool um
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online World focused on live multiplayer racing free to play no subscription fee
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simulation grade driving physics laser scan tracks and proprietary skill
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matching technology for closer racing across all skill levels that can be a huge problem with racing games if you
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have that like super legit player that
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just sort of destroys everyone else it's not really fun to race when you're
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actually alone on the track and you have no chance of catching up to anyone or
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anyone catching up to you that's just boring um oh it also comes with $10 of
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ingame currency so yes it's free to play but Micro microtransaction driven so you
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can buy like cars and stuff cool okay my
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understanding is people who like racing games like you know driving the cool car
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in the racing game and you know that sort of thing so I'm not much of a
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racing game guy myself so so don't get me wrong although I shouldn't really
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call it I shouldn't really call it a game outright because Sim Raceway is not
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uh it's more of a Sim than a game so games tend to have more of an arcadey
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style of physics where it's not realistic but it might be easier or or
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more fun for for novices whereas Sims
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tend to be more realistic so it's easier to do things like spin out and crash but
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uh if you actually wanted to to practice I mean some Sims even are used by
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professional drivers to practice a new a new track that they haven't uh that they
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haven't done before uh so if you want a more realistic Driving Experience then
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you definitely want to go with something that uses realistic physics and if I
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could get this package open I would be some kind of a hero man because this is
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unbelievable um oh it should be noted though that just because it's compatible
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and comes with Sim Raceway and comes with $10 of in-game money it is actually
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compatible with any other PC racing game as well so they list a bunch of them on
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the website that it is specifically compatible with but then at the end it
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just says also all PC racing games so
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that is totally never going back in that packaging that much is very clear uh
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what do we got here long periods of repetitive motion using an improperly
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set up workspace oh there's your srw currency cool okay it also seems to come
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with a small instruction guide that's very eco-friendly you know small
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instruction guide so you can tell they didn't cheap out on the instruction guide because it's printed in color but
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that they didn't want to you know overdo the
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paper we have dispensed with discs to save the planet that's right don't
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bother throwing away the CD it doesn't come with one you can just download the
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latest off of haha Sim ray.com downloador Cline there you go getting
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started guide and blah blah blah ah this that's what we want so this shows what
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all of the buttons are for by default and what they actually do this talks a
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little bit about the oh the steering whe allows you to fine-tune some Raceway
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driving AIDS in order to suit your preferences so to change the value of an
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ass assist select using using the assist dial and then turn the assist values
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dial to your desired setting low medium high or off to turn all the assists off
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select all on the assist style and turn the assist value style to off very very
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cool please note that once they've been turned off they can only be turned back on individually so assists driving
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assists you got all kinds of different things uh oh that's some pieces of the
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uh red packaging okay so spin stab shift
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clutch ABS brake traction steer pit invol lock and all lock would probably
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be what you'd want to have it on after you've set everything so basically if you go okay I want clutch assists to be
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high did you set it all like that very cool so I'm going to turn that off by
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default and okay so here's our shifters here's our presumably
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throttle and Brake but give me a sec guys all right so I was right which is a
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miracle because like I said not really into racing games so this is shift up
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shift down this is your break this is your throttle so these are all actually
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easy to reach even for someone like me with relatively small hands however once
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you're on these I don't know that you'd you know I don't I don't know that you'd
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necessarily be able to reach everything so you can see my thumbs can just barely
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make it to the paddle and then just
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barely make it to some of these however most of this stuff you shouldn't really
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have to use in game so let's have a look at what all the buttons are so the
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conveniently located buttons that I will realist istically be able to press no I
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can't reach that one can't reach that one that I'll realistically be able to
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press with my fingers on the paddles shifting and breaking and or look right
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and look left so that's yeah okay that's pretty that's pretty basic um the stuff
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that I realistically wouldn't be able to reach but most people probably could are
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things like speed limiter and request pit it should be noted that things like
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speed limiter so this is for when you're in the pits are not necessarily available on our all cars but because
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this is a racing accessory it does have
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the uh it does accommodate uh some special options that aren't available on
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all cars like launch control which gets you off the line if the car supports it
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and boost which it boosts your speed if
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the car supports it so so things like that so uh if you have larger hands than
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me remember guys my hands are super small then you should realistically be
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able to reach this probably this uh you should be able to reach boost as well as
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lights I just can't quite make it there so what else do we have so we got look
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back rear braak balance front brake balance launch control which we covered
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HUD which I think is fairly self-explanatory shows you the HUD or
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doesn't share the HUD Horn uh this one now this button actually has very cool
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functionality what it does is it makes it so that the car will actually lift
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off the ground and then it does like a complete rotation and then it will flip
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the wheels from the top of the car down to the bottom like from the bottom of the car down to the top of the car like
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Transformer style and it will go along the road like no actually just hold H
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the horn so that honks the horn um this is for navigating menus so you got like
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enter select uh your d-pad as well as your back button so you can actually I
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mean that's one of the biggest frustrations with the with most racing wheels uh well the only real racing
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wheel that I've really used in the past G25 was that you actually still have to
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have a keyboard handy for a lot of games because you can't navigate anything um
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bearing in mind I didn't have the uh the shifter plugged in so I think that has
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navigation buttons on it but there's a lot of accessories to plug in whereas
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this is just one piece that you can like store in your coffee table and not you
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know worry about it being in the way all the time right okay uh camera view
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changes all of that stuff aha so steering sensitivity you can change it
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anywhere from 180 degrees to 360° and then this we have already
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covered so let's see what El steel Series has to say for themselves here
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like I said guys I am not a racing efficient AO so this is um something I
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do need a little bit oh actually no wait come back this is cool so the rubberized
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grips here are awesome these are these are like the stickiest rubber grips ever
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without feeling like it's sticky you know how sometimes you're just like oh
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it feels like um you know Silly Putty uh it's not like that they feel very very
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nice very it would be very difficult to accidentally drop this controller the
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rest of the unit has like a soft touch feel which is also very nice it has a
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braided cord we should have a look at how long the cord is actually that could
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be relevant so you're not going to be plugging this in from you know a super
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long way away it looks like about a Linus ARM span and a half which for
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those of you who work with real measurements is probably about 10
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ft okay or 3 m for those of you who use
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like real real measurements like not Imperial measurements um so ready set race okay
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full range you can okay you can change it you can okay I would definitely
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recommend going to steelseries.com and having a look at what they have to say
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about it because the unit itself feels very solid without being too heavy and
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this gives you some idea of all the customizability that is available here's
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a quick list of a bunch of games that support it dirt dirt 2 GTR uh live for
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Speed never heard of that Need for Speed I've definitely heard of that one it's very mainstream um used by the pros
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interesting tested and improved by professional racing drivers including
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Dario Fran
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chitty wow that's kind of cool I mean it's one thing when there's
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like a mouse that's like approved by Pro Gamers but when you have like a we
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that's approved by pro drivers who like actually have to like risk their lives
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to do what they're doing and they say it's okay then that's uh sort of
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meaningful actually prefer a neutral setup okay you can compromise between
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this and this so I think the point of all of this is
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the convenience factor so not having the
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bulky setup the customizability
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factor yeah it's kind of neat I mean it's a lot better than holding like a
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Wii remote so the PC is still light years ahead of
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consoles in terms of that the one drawback from my mind is lack of forc
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feedback so personally I like I have a hard time with racing games already if I
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don't have forc feedback I have a much harder time with racing games however if
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you just want yeah if you just want the convenience factor if you don't care
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about the force feedback and you want something that you can just kind of pack
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up and take with you somewhere very conveniently then this might be the way
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to go so thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look at the s from
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steel series uh the Sim Raceway branded S1 don't forget to subscribe to L Tech
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