My Sim-Racing Adventure

For weeks, I had been obsessed with getting into sim-racing. I wanted a wheel and pedals, a game, and maybe even a stand to mount the wheel and pedals on. The upcoming October 17th release of Gran Turismo Sport and Thrustmaster's T-GT wheel-and-pedal set was my opportunity to dive right in, and I did.

I initially preordered a T-GT from Amazon, but with their spotty record of delivering hardware on release-day, I canceled my order there and chose Newegg. What a smart move that was. Newegg delivered my wheel on release-day at 10 in the morning before I went to work, and that's with free shipping and no tax. It doesn't get any better than that.

All day at work, I was a little happier than I usually was. I wanted to go home and play GT Sport with my new T-GT wheel. I had already received a wheel-stand before then: a Wheel Stand Pro V2 to mount my wheel and pedals on. When I got home, I went to work unboxing everything and assembling things together. It was a little confusing, but as far as mounting stuff to the Wheel Stand, a simple watch of a video from the official Wheel Stand Pro channel on YouTube helped me out tremendously.

The T-GT, though, had terrible instructions. The wheel comes separated from the base, which is called the servo-base. Putting the wheel on the servo-base was very confusing, but eventually I managed to make it functional. Two days later, I realized that I didn't tighten it. It still worked, and nothing broke or fell apart, but it had been moving around and making noise. I had wondered if I had done something wrong.

After booting up GT-Sport and watching the intro-video, I went straight into Campaign Mode's Driving School, starting with the basics from just driving straight. Playing with a Dual Shock 4 might have been boring, but mundane tasks like this were actually fun with an actual racing-wheel. I spent hours just playing Driving School. I don't usually stay up late, but I did that night.

The T-GT actually makes you feel like you're driving a car. The T-GT sends vibrations through the Wheel Stand Pro and I can even feel it through my feet via the pedals. I can even feel it through the ground and into my chair. It's radical. This is what I have been wanting for a long time.

Now that I have spent over a grand on playing racing-sims, I have decided to not spend money on gaming for a year. The first game I can buy next will be on October 17th, 2018. Don't worry. I have a large backlog and ROMs to discover.

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