Forza Motorsport 2 for the XBox 360 came out last week; Microsoft’s answer to Gran Turismo turns out to be a pretty good game, and figuring that I have not played a serious driving sim with a racing wheel, I went out and splurged on a Microsoft-branded wireless racing wheel.
The thing is solidly built: nice faux leather on the wheel, tight clamp to the coffee table glass, and responsive foot pedals and paddle shifters. As with all custom peripherals, though, the biggest obstacle to recreating an arcade (or in this case, a driving) experience is how to feasibly mount the device in front of the TV. Driving wheels are especially a challenge given the need for a sturdy wheel and space for the pedals; we were barely able to get it onto the coffee table, and it required sitting on a lowered “gaming chair”, shifting the table onto its side, and bracing a heavy filing box behind the pedals to keep them from sliding.
Eventually, in the course of cleaning the living room, the utility of random furniture and the resourcefulness of three guys provided an ingenious, if not just a tad ghetto, solution. Consisting of one part Ikea rolling media center, one part doorstop, and one part training weights, we devised the following portable XBox driving box, perfectly aligned for on-the-couch racing, pedals held to the floor, on wheel for maximum mobility when time comes for a movie or a non-racing game.
The awesomeness in pictorial form:
