Steering wheel + driving simulation game recommendations (original) (raw)

36 minutes ago, linusrules1911 said:

I’m looking at a price range up to $100

No. Not happening.

I did a similar thing, though I spent something like ~$600 on a wheel + pedals + shifter. Outside the general movements of shifting, it's a terrible method to try and actually learn to drive a car. At least a manual car. There is basically zero realistic clutch feel or simulation in pretty much every sim game. Project Cars 2 and BeamNG.Drive are the most realistic for clutch, but without clutch feel it's a pretty moot point. You can't really do a smooth city driving start in any of these games, it almost always results in a stall. In a number of cases the sim doesn't even actually stall and the RPM just drops to zero.

I legitimately learned bad driving/shifting habits from getting a wheel first like slamming gears into place and dropping the clutch. Very rough shifting and it took a few months to learn it proper. After you know how to actually drive a car the sim can start to complement it. It's also harder to know the limits of the car since you have limited vision and can't freely look around.

If you intend on driving an automatic (and they let you test with one) it's laughably easy. Best I can recommend is finding out what the driving test requires and go down with a parent or someone to an empty park or parking lot with plastic trash cans for obstacles. Hell, do the same with a manual if that's required.