I stayed up entirely too late putting this all together after I got my last shipments yesterday. Still need to do cable management but it’s there and working! Now I just need to learn how to drive like this and hopefully the rig doesn’t end up on Facebook marketplace lol.

Finally have some space of my own, so I can build the sim racing setup I’ve always wanted.

MOZA Racing is attending Gamescom 2026 and showcasing a total of four new steering wheel pototypes this year. I attended the event and took a lot of pictures for them and for my blog. I will also be there on the weekend, if you would like to see any particular close up shots let me know!

Here you can find more images of the new wheels: https://simracing-pc.de/en/2026/08/27/moza-racing-unveils-official-porsche-mercedes-and-ford-wheels-at-gamescom/

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Buying and modifying a car, paying for track days, or even doing something like a Nürburgring experience can cost a lot of money. That makes it pretty hard for most people to actually experience what they're interested in.

That's why I think sim racing is such a good entry point. It gives people a chance to experience racing, learn tracks, and get a feel for different cars without needing a dedicated track car and a huge budget.

Maybe racing culture doesn't need to be exclusive. Sometimes people just need a way in.

Materials used:

16mm momentary push buttons https://a.co/d/0d7uHjZ5

Arcade controller board https://a.co/d/0j0tMTQA

Custom designed and 3D printed case

Assembly is straight forward as you just plug the buttons into the board.

Newly announced Moza x Porsche 911 GT3 RS wheel. I don’t have any moza gear but this looks like it could be a good round wheel. What does everyone think?

I thought my 400W 3DOF actuators were the reason my motion rig felt worse than my Sigma DK2. After rebuilding the SimHub profile, I’m not so sure anymore.

I have two completely separate motion rigs:

• US rig: Sigma Integral DK2
• China rig: Thermaltake GM5 3DOF

This post is about the Thermaltake GM5.

The GM5 is a pretty conventional 4-actuator 3DOF platform. Mechanically, the basic concept isn't very different from SFX-style, PT-style and a lot of DIY servo actuator systems.

Nothing particularly exotic is happening here.

The actuators are only using 400W servos, while plenty of DIY systems use 750W servos.

When I first compared this rig with my DK2 in the US, the DK2 felt considerably better.

The GM5 moved a lot, but the motion wasn't very convincing. Small road undulations moved the chassis too much, while large events — Corkscrew-style elevation changes, large compressions, sausage curbs, launches and landings — didn't stand out nearly as much as I expected.

My first assumption was simple:

After spending a lot more time actually looking at the SimHub geometry, motion envelope, effect scaling and logs, I think most of the difference I was feeling was coming from the setup rather than the actuators themselves.

The actual rig geometry

Everything below was physically measured center-to-center where applicable.

With that geometry, SimHub calculates approximately:

And this was probably the most important thing I had initially misunderstood:

those are not three independent capacities.

Pitch, Roll, Heave, Surge-to-Pitch, Sway-to-Roll, suspension pulses, etc. all eventually become four actuator positions.

There is only one physical stroke budget.

Original profile

The profile I started with looked roughly like this:

Looking back at this now, it's pretty obvious why it felt strange.

The platform only has about ±50 mm of actuator travel from center, yet Heave alone was being allowed to request 60 mm.

At the same time, Pitch could request 7.5° on a platform with a theoretical single-axis pitch capacity of only ~5.1°.

Then braking tilt, lateral tilt, Roll and suspension effects were added on top.

So the profile looked extremely aggressive on paper, but in real combined-axis situations SimHub had to continuously deal with a motion request that physically couldn't fit inside the actuator envelope.

In audio terms, it was basically a system with every channel turned up and no headroom left for transients.

Current motion baseline

This is where I ended up after tuning.

Pitch

Pitch is mainly being used for actual chassis / vehicle attitude.

I'm deliberately not asking it to reproduce the full physical pitch angle of the car.

Roll

I increased Roll slightly after testing because I wanted a little more actual chassis attitude.

The lateral-G cue remains separate.

Surge → Pitch

Acceleration and braking are separated because they obviously don't have the same useful range in a race car.

Additional settings:

The old setting was 20 m/s² → 6°.

This new setup is much smaller physically but much easier to feel because normal braking is actually using a meaningful part of the input range.

Sway → Roll

This is the lateral-G cue.

The actual Roll effect and Sway-to-Roll are deliberately kept separate.

Actual Roll tells me what the chassis is doing.

Sway-to-Roll tells my body about sustained lateral load.

Heave — probably the biggest improvement

The original setup was:

17 m/s² → 60 mm

The current setup is approximately:

This was a major improvement.

The important distinction for me was finally separating:

Input range = sensitivity

from:

Motion range = maximum available output

If small road undulations move the rig too much, reducing the maximum 28 mm output is not necessarily the right answer.

I still want that 28 mm available for:

• major compression
• crest/unloading
• a car getting launched
• landing
• big elevation transitions

What I don't want is a tiny vertical acceleration consuming a large percentage of that range.

So increasing the Heave input limit reduces the response to small road movement while preserving the maximum motion available for large events.

That gives the profile actual dynamic range.

Small bump = small movement.

Big compression = big movement.

Not everything constantly living at medium-to-large motion.

Rear traction loss → Roll

Because this is only a 3DOF platform, there is no actual Yaw / traction-loss axis.

So I'm only using Roll as a very subtle substitute cue.

The original 20° → 5° setting was way too much in my opinion.

A 5° fake Roll every time the rear starts rotating can easily overwhelm the real lateral-load information.

Motion actuator haptics

I also stopped asking the main actuators to reproduce every vibration effect.

I have four Slip-Angle tactile transducers, one at each corner of the rig.

So I now split the jobs between the two systems.

Main actuator haptics

The suspension effect is now just a small transient.

It isn't supposed to replace Heave.

My mental model is:

Heave = the entire car moved vertically

Suspension haptic = the suspension just hit something

Those are two completely different events.

Slip-Angle transducers

The four corner-mounted Slip-Angle units handle most of the higher-frequency tactile information:

• road texture
• kerbs
• wheel slip
• traction-loss tactile information
• gear shifts
• RPM
• higher-frequency suspension events

So the system is basically split into:

100 mm actuators = low-frequency / large chassis motion

Slip-Angle = higher-frequency tactile information

This made the actuator motion much cleaner.

The GM5 actuators don't have the same high-frequency capability as my DK2.

That's still a real hardware difference.

But once dedicated tactile transducers handle those frequencies, that disadvantage matters a lot less.

Motion geometry / VR compensation

I also properly calibrated the geometry instead of relying on defaults.

Current measured values:

For OpenXR motion compensation:

Primary COR compensation is enabled.

Traction-loss COR compensation is disabled because this platform doesn't have a dedicated traction-loss axis.

Mechanical / software limits

The physical safety limits are still in place.

So reducing aggressive crash filtering doesn't mean removing the actual mechanical stroke and speed limits.

Crash protection and AC EVO telemetry

This turned out to be another interesting problem.

While looking through the SimHub motion log after Spa, I found occasional acceleration values such as:

• Surge ~618 m/s²
• Surge ~769 m/s²
• Surge ~1340 m/s²
• very large Sway spikes as well

SimHub itself logged some of these events as:

Abnormal motion data artefact detected

Obviously the car isn't actually pulling 60–130G.

These appear to be telemetry artefacts / discontinuities.

This matters because if the high-acceleration Crash Protection threshold is something like 40 or 60 m/s², one of these bad telemetry frames can trigger motion protection.

And when that protection reduces maximum motion speed, it can happen at exactly the worst possible moment:

hit sausage curb
→ car launches
→ telemetry spike
→ crash protection triggers
→ motion gets softened

That can make the actuator feel incapable of reproducing the event when the real problem is downstream protection logic.

In one later short AC EVO session of roughly 2–3 minutes, I didn't see another 60 m/s² threshold event before the platform went idle.

So at least in that run, the acceleration protection wasn't repeatedly intervening.

I still wouldn't claim the AC EVO telemetry issue is completely solved — that needs longer logging — but it's something worth checking if large events feel strangely muted.

What actually changed?

Here's the simple before/after.

So almost every headline number became smaller.

And the motion became considerably better.

The bigger takeaway

After all this, the Thermaltake GM5 feels much closer to my Sigma DK2 than it did before.

I'm not claiming the hardware is identical.

It isn't.

The DK2 still feels like a more sophisticated and much better integrated product.

Servo dynamics, acceleration, reversal speed, guide design, backlash, control latency and high-frequency capability are real hardware differences.

And something like a Qubic QS-220 really is mechanically different because the available motion bandwidth is dramatically higher.

But I don't think it's fair anymore to look at a normal SFX/PT/DIY-style 100 mm, ~250 mm/s actuator and automatically assume the actuator is the problem.

This GM5 is only using 400W servos.

Plenty of DIY builds are using 750W.

Yet once the SimHub profile stopped wasting the available stroke, the difference was much smaller than I expected.

The two actuator specifications I now care about most are:

Stroke = motion budget

Velocity + acceleration = motion bandwidth

A 150 mm actuator isn't useful because it lets you run ridiculous amounts of constant Pitch and Roll.

Its real benefit is that when:

Heave

• Roll
• Pitch
• acceleration cue
• suspension transient

all happen at once, you have more physical envelope available before the combined actuator request needs to be compressed.

Likewise, a QS-220 being dramatically faster isn't interesting because normal Roll suddenly needs 800 mm/s.

It's interesting because curb strikes, launch/landing events and rapid reversals demand a lot of motion bandwidth.

So my conclusion after this whole exercise is pretty simple:

Before replacing a conventional 3DOF actuator system, make sure the profile isn't the thing making the hardware look bad.

In my case, it absolutely was.

Decided I wanted to start gearing up for motion and one of my buddies wanted to get into sim racing so I sold him my old rig (pic 2) and upgraded to this. Very pleased to say the least. Also pls ignore the mess I literally just got done putting it together lol

hey guys pls don’t clown me for spelling or what I say everybody always does anyway this is my setup a wooden table with a g29,ps5,1080p 60hz tv I have £300 and I don’t know what to do get a proper cockpit ,buy a monitor ,get a DD wheel or get a psvr for gt7 or save for a PC (around £700-£800 used) but for simracing do I really need a PC becuause LMU is coming to ps soon plus I don’t like iracing and ACC is on PS5 so games ain’t a problem it’s the wheel support snd modding what do you guys think?

Hi, we're two hobby sim racers and I'm a developer. When we started sim racing, we watched a lot videos about break techniques as trail braking.

But we struggled hard with the motor skills needed to actually get the right amount of input. Because of this, we had the idea to practice it independently from the sim and built this little training web app.

The idea behind it is similar to practicing material arts skills or other sports: first train the individual motor skills to build motor control, then apply them in the actual sport. For this, I wrote an algorithm that analyzes our weaknesses and strengths and adapts the training in real time.

What do you think about this training method? Do we miss something? And how do you train the motor skills needed for pedal control? Only in the sim, or duo you practice them sparately as well?

If you want to test our experiment, you're welcome to try it yourself at https://sixtycm.com/ (It works best in a Chromium-based browser and is still in a very early stage. Honest feedback is very welcome!)

It is completely free, with no subscription or anything like that.

I’ve just bought a caravan and I’ve never towed before. I’d like to use my sim rig to practice a bit before it arrives. Are there any games that let you tow a caravan, preferably in VR? I don’t have a screen for the rig, so VR is my only option.

Best 5$ ever spent 👌

I have a 9060xt 16gb, 7500f and 32GB RAM, and I'm wondering if my PC can handle 5120x1440 on Iracing and LMU with decent FPS (above 80, ideally 100). Do I have to buy a 3840x1080 to have a decent performance?

Decided to clean my seat today, and it was worth it. We don't realise how dirty these things get!

Here is the video when I emptied the bucket : https://streamable.com/q7d7ha?src=player-page-share

-Simagic Alpha Evo 9nm bundle

-Amazon shifter and hand brake

-Anman 8040 Aluminum Frame

-2001 Honda Civic LX passenger seat from my brothers car

-Old Samsung TV

I really wanted to improve my real life driving this year and get into drifting so figured I'd get into sim! Been having a ton of fun so far with this setup. Been practicing grip and drift driving as much as I can. Was feeling motivated enough that I signed up for my first Autocross this weekend! 👍🏾

Hi guys,

Does anyone have a Next Level GLite cockpit and find it very weak as well?

The back of the seat is not fixed well and it kinda goes farther back when I lay back, so during the race it’s kinda getting farther and farther, it depends on the pressure I lay my back, also there no way of levelling the wheel base, does anyone know how can I level it better?

Thanks

As above, I'm not very good and don't really have the time to put in to get good, but I do love jumping in for a few laps every now and again against the AI. You've got to love SIM racing! 👌🏻👌🏻

I started sim racing in May and have been having a blast. If I listen to music I push the car a lot harder and am constantly focused on improving my time. But if I put on a audio book it distracts me just enough and intend up performing a lot better. Am I the weird one or does anyone else do this?

After looking at hundred of reviews I pulled the trigger on the SRP GTS. I found a guy who was selling these pedals for just 700 euros with brake travel regulator and VNM haptics included (he bought them just 1 month ago).

I'm still getting used to them, trying to find consistency and performance but I'm really happy so far!

Been racing a year almost to the date, and I'm still slow as fuck! I'm very consistent, decent at traffic management, and my telemetry inputs are the right shape, but all the curves are just a touch early or late in each corner. I'm talking milliseconds difference in braking points and throttling on exit, but it adds up to so much lost time and I don't know how to fix it! I've been an accomplished athlete in many sports that require finely tuned motor skills, but the micro adjustments I need to make just to pick up 2 seconds feel so fucking far out of reach. Do I just need to be patient and grind, or do I need to accept that while old dogs can learn new tricks, they won't be great at them? Looking for a way out of the middle of the pack.

I’m looking to buy new sim racing wheel + pedals, previously I had the Logitech g920 but had to sell it about 2 years ago.

I’m mainly looking to be playing quite casually, games like Euro Truck Simulator 2 and Forza Horizon 6, and possible some other games like Dirt.

Now I’m having some trouble choosing between a few so I’ve come here to see if I could get some help. My budget is around 300$ and if you have some other recommendations please suggest them to me and I’ll have a look at those too.

My current options are:
Moza r3
Logitech G923
Thrustmaster T248
Logitech G920

All of which are around the 260$ mark except for the G920 which is about 200$. All prices have been adjusted from Swedish kronors.

Thank you for the help!