There is nothing against what you say. If a customer sees a benefit in it, good. It’s absolutely legal to use these marketing strategies. I only like to call the baby by its name, that is all. And what you say about the Fanatec wheel and the adaptor is a perfect example: you have to spend between 150 and 200 Euro to make it work. Unfortunately some LEDs still won’t work.
Some call the lock in effect a selfish and manipulative way to do business, and it’s never to the good of customers, never. But those happy with it should go on calling it ecosystem.
Concerning the Asetek quick release: they will deliver it to 3d party wheel developers, very kind. Those manufacturers will then have to use the same software, will have to wire their wheels to make them work. Companies like Gomez and VPG can’t use what they developed over years. What you then get from them, in this example, is an Asetek wheel with a label stating: company whatever
well truth be told, we dont actually know yet how the asetek connection will work with third party wheels, they have just indicated that the option will be there to have a specific asetek QR that will work natively with the base, im not sure if that means the third party wheels will be hampered with other bases, i highly doubt that.
i agree that the solution fanatec has isnt the best and is expensive BUT its an option which means you are not strictly vendor locked, you just get the extra benefits by using official wheels and i think thats ok. Thats what everybody wants right, why not have third party options AND wheels that work more closely natively… such as the tahko, the tahko was a good move but i think consumers need more of those options because it keeps us excited about the brand and whats coming down the line for the brand… i expect the tahko wasnt very successful and that might be why wheels are not flying out here and there but that isnt because people dont want official wheels, i think its just down to design preference… the tahko isnt a very nice looking wheel imo, which is where options come into it.
I dont think we need to worry about vendor locking at this point is granite want to expand the ecosystem because third party options are already widely available, it just gives people who own the simucube hardware more things to look forward to, exciting features that may be unlocked by using official wheels such as software control on the fly which perhaps can be expanded upon with other wheels, imagine a wheel released by granite that has a display that allowed full software control within a game… it would be very exciting no?
I would be very interested to hear your take regarding FFB quality of the SC2 Ultimate vs. the Asetek Invicta and Forte - if you ever get your hands on the Asetek products.
I find some of the statements made on the matter in YT reviews “incredible”.
Cheers Markus, I will contact the owner and see if they are willing to send me one for testing and evaluation. I will let you guys know if they agree to do so.
I will contact him this week.
Beano it would be a pleasure to see your review/comparison SC2 vs Asetek (if they send you one) and any other reviews you do in your channel. Honestly though, i doubt Asetek is better than SC2 at least for the part that i am interested in (i.e. the FFB delivery), at best it is on par. I am no expert but i think that hardware wise we shouldn’t be expecting much technological advancement on DD wheels as the products are already matured. So as far as we are looking at products using top quality parts, the differences will rely on the software side, and the company with the better SW will probably prevail.
Now, considering that Simucube is planing to work on revising filters & telemetry and assuming that this will be done properly, then we will be looking at a differentiator which will be a game changer. So even if Asetek is on par (or even slightly better) today, this will probably not be the case after 1 year. My guess is that they will have to do a lot of catching up on the SW side.
This was part of the IP purchase though, its the reason for the acquisition i believe… the reason the Asetek base has a good a start as it does is because they share much of the same software code and took advantage of the knowledge the guys at granite had. So if you look at the software side by side i think its quite evident that the simucube and Asetek bases are extremely similar, many options are just names differently, i have to imagine the coding behind those settings is the same or what would have been the point in the purchase. I also personally have doubts the hardware quality will match the simucubes, its easy to see where Asetek are cutting corners to save money but the question is how detrimental to the experience are those cut corners, its easy to say Asetek uses plastic covers on the front and rear but if the experience is the same but costs less money who cares right?
The question i have for the simucube guys is how long do the guys at Asetek have access to your knowledge and expertise, is it an indefinite partnership or is it a limited time contract? because if its an indefinite partnership then in theory any further advancements made on the simucube software will be accessible by Asetek right?
What can not be changed with the simucube 2 hardware is the motor used and obviously i dont think any reviewer can say one is better than the other without knowing very specific specifications way beyond slew rate but users and reviews can decide which is better on what they feel and it seems many reviews lean towards the Asetek motor in this regard, maybe its just a simple case of being newer, the simucube 2 bases will not be the best forever right, eventually there will be a simucube 3 im sure haha.
But yes in direct response to what you are saying i think the software is something they closely share it would appear and that may likely be the case no matter what, if the simucube software does greatly improve (which i doubt) then Asetek will likely follow or be improving themselves.
It would have been funny if the samples to the reviewers had been 1:1 the same as a Simucube 2 Pro and they simply said that the Asetek had a better slew rate.
The conclusion of some videos would then be interesting
well yes that would be telling for sure… but i think we can be sure thats not the case since the manufacturers have already declared the motors in use, Asetek using mige motors for example so they are sufficiently different enough for us to know the specs and feeling will likely be different.
I dont even think any reviewers are claiming the Asetek motors have a ‘‘better’’ slew rate, in fact the invicta technically has a worse slew rate on paper (9.4 vs 9.5 of the simucube ultimate)… the part that has everybody confused is the discrepancy on how these things are tested.
I mean, the whole discussion about it is completely irrelevant to me.
I doubt anyone will notice the difference between 9.4 and 9.5.
no ofcourse not, i doubt it aswell but thats why i started the discussion about slew rate because it seems Asetek has tested the simucube 2 pro at 6.3nm/ms when the official spec is 8nm/ms… this raised my eyebrows you know, it offended me as a simucube owner haha.
Thank you, Phillip. I hope they will and I’m looking forward to it.
I doubt it…
My understanding on the IP purchase is that it was a one off thing to indeed help Asetek start and my earlier comment is obviously based on this. We have all seen the reviews and spotted the similarities on the SW side. That is why i said that i would expect both DD wheels to be on par or very close to FFB delivery for the time being. However, as per the discussions in various forum posts, Simucube mentioned that they are planning to work on the SW with telemetry capabilities (something they have already done or doing for the active pedal) at the end of 2023, Of course nothing is known for now on how, what, when, but the message from the Devs is clear that they working on improving the SW.
Of course, if they will have due to the IP, or chose for a reason to share with Asetek any such SW developments, then until an SC3 shows up, both Asetek and SC2 will be similar. I somehow fail to see why Simucube would agree to do that. If i am not mistaken Aseteks are also a tad cheaper than SC2s, so why would anyone decide to go for an SC2 if both products as similar in performance and quality?
‘‘If i am not mistaken Aseteks are also a tad cheaper than SC2s, so why would anyone decide to go for an SC2 if both products as similar in performance and quality?’’
well in this regard, why would anybody choose fanatec over simucube when the simucube is obviously built better, everybody has reasons dont they, there is no reason the Asetek bases can co-exist with simucube bases even if they are very similar in performance and quality. Simucube already agreed to share IP for a very good reason, it was paid for in cash and shares, Asetek doing well is directly a benefit to granite devices.
I know it sounds strange for granite to effectively give up what makes simucube so great but there is always a cost, if you pay them enough money they will give you the secrets aswell 
But you are right, we are just speculating because we dont know the intricate details ofcourse. I didnt know that granite were planning to make massive changes to the software, had no idea, ofcourse we do expect updates and refinements over time but as far as im aware it wasnt going to drastically change, i guess i was wrong :).
Agree on SW being the differentiator, but also their QR is not a small thing and solves a lot of restrictions BT has.
Wondering if they also force everyone online?
If im not wrong, IP deal with Asetek was a one time agreement at that specific time (2019/2020), and for what we knows, the SQR, the control board? and the software was part of the deal.
Software side at that time (2019-2020) is what Asetek has now, but Granite is working hard since then.
If you see some Asetek reviews, you will remember that confusing button that says: “Save to the wheelbase” and now that button is history for SC2 users (part of…) and no need to click on it to save profiles.
Direct Input filters in that time were average at most… And many more little things
as far as im aware i believe the development started on the Asetek wheelbases at around the beginning of 2022, they have said a couple of times that they were able to achieve what they have within 1 year due to the IP deal which sped up development… i could well be wrong on that though, im just going off what they said.
So assuming they are cutting and pasting the software (which i highly doubt as they have indicated it was built ground up for their bases) then it would likely be a far newer software build than being a couple of years old… in fact Asetek released a software update only days ago which indicates they are actively working on it and it is likely completely different to true drive (which ofcourse didn’t get an update a few days ago).
So what i suspect is the case is that the software actually has nothing to do with true drive at all, i believe the software is its own thing entirely and part of the IP deal was to ensure they got the information they needed to build the software to the same standard… for example they dont have the knownledge of how to design filters and so thats where simucube/granite steps in.
The other reason im led to believe that Asetek software is much more than a copy and paste job is because it actually has more going on, you have control for far more peripherals within the software, control over LED’s etc etc. So i dont think there is a worry that its just old simucube software.
How to control and filter the wheelbase is what they bought to Granite in that deal, aka the software here (classic True Drive).
Other things must be made by Asetek in-house, of course
Edit: it would be the SC1 software of that time too, who knows…
who knows bro, its all kept under wraps isnt it, aslong as it works well
It must be servo controller FW, TD is just a UI shell to control it, college intern job level.