Installation/Configuration
Installing and configuring the S1 depends entirely on what game you are planning to play. For example if you are planning on playing Simraceway with the S1 (and I highly recommend you do, it’s free!) all you have to do is plug it in. You won’t have to install any software or drivers, nor will you need to configure anything to get going in game. I have never seen such an integrated and easy to use solution for any wheel. Typically you would have to install all of the software and at minimum let the software know what game you will be playing. I shouldn’t be too surprised though, this is similar to our experience with SteelSeries mice and their onboard memory. It obviously helps to be working directly with the game developer, but I have seen wheels made for other games that still lacked the simplicity that the S1 had.
So it works with the game its designed to work with, what about other games? Well you still won’t have to install any software. Plugging the S1 in did the trick with windows picking up the needed drivers. When you get into game (for our testing we used F1 2011), you will have to go into your settings and bind each of the controls to buttons and functions on the S1. Once I figured that out it really was simple. My only complaint was that in F1 there wasn’t a way to be able to map the direction pad on the S1 to control the in game menu. This would have made the world of difference and because of this issue I still had to keep my keyboard close. When binding keys in games other than Simraceway you can use every button and paddle but you won’t have any luck using the knobs. Two of the three knobs are specific to Simraceway, with the sensitivity knob still working independent of any software.
As a whole I was content with setting up and configuring the S1. At its best (in Simraceway) its simply plug and play and at its worse (every other game) it’s still easier than setting up any other wheel on the market. The lack of software makes configuration less complicated.
They also included around 10 feet of cord to make reaching your PC easy.
