INTERVIEW PART 1

Here are the question, asked by our visitors.

BHMS: Any chance of developing a wheel for the XBOX?
BRD: We have outline agreement to create a version of our Speed7� pedals that will be compatible with X-Box and PS2. The only issue at this time is to satisfy ourselves that the steering wheel support available in these consoles is going to be satisfactory. Our experience to date is that these consoles do not adequately support steering wheel and pedal devices.

BHMS: Is BRD making any plans to do more product/focus on the PC sim hardware market?

BRD: PC controls will remain our primary focus and all developments will be for PC first and other platforms second.

BHMS: What is the progress of the speed 7 force feedback wheel. It was stated on the Interactive website that it should not be expected before the end of 2002?

BRD: This is in progress. Development has been delayed because of a big F1 simulator project we were working on last year. There is a lot of work yet to be finished but the results are very promising. We will be making a separate announcement giving some specific details in the next couple of months, but we have to be realistic and say that we will be looking towards October/November 2003 before we have a product to sell.

BHMS: What is BRD looking at as the target price for the speed 7 force feedback wheel?

BRD: At this stage I can not be specific, we have a target price which we are aiming at but time will tell how close we can get to this as there is still quite a lot of development still to be done.

BHMS: Does BRD plan on increasing its participation in the the american sim market, do you have or will BRD be setting up an american distributor?

BRD: We see the US market as a very important market. We are in fairly advanced stages of discussion with a US company about setting them up as our distributors in the US. We hope that we can announce an agreement within the next couple of months.

BHMS: Many other sim wheels are using 6 to 8 programable buttons on the wheel, these are useful in the games to update the driver on race information such as lap times and driver positions while maintaining car control. Do you see these controls being incorporated into the newer developed wheels crafted by BRD?

BRD: Certainly. The current steering wheel products we have are built on the original game port architecture and as such are limited to 4 distinct buttons. Whilst we can now use all our steering devices through USB (via our Speed7� or Pro USB pedals) we have not had opportunity to change the architecture to add more functions. Our new Speed7� steering device will incorporate more buttons and functions than you will find uses for! In the meantime however, we are looking at ways to offer more buttons for the existing steering devices.

BHMS: Will BRD be doing more updating of the website to keep the potential customers better informed on their products? Currently the site says to go to the teamBRD website for tech support, yet the link provided does not go to such a place. This may lead one think that there is no way to obtain tech support.

BRD: It is our intention to provide more information to existing and potential customers via our website. It has been difficult to make the time to actually do this in practice. The teamBRD website is now in build and this should provide a very great amount of detail on products and lots of practical information on how to get the best out of the products. We are also planning a number of technical papers on various aspects of sim racing hardware, from discussions on potentiometers and encoders to force feedback. It will also be a forum for customers to swap this kind of info and to feed information back to us.

BHMS: I'm a professional race driver and a SIM racer as well. I'm using SIM Racing as a traning tool. It helps in a lot of areas. The problem is that hardwear doesn't give the right fealing. Softwear is not perfect as well. My question is, would BRD's new (upcoming) FF wheel sistem future a shifter (H pattern)? Will it have Force Feedback to simulate the forces felt in real car?

BRD: We are developing a sequential and H shifter which will be available for Speed7� pedals and also as a stand alone device. Release date will be around June/July 2003. They will be all metal constructions and designed to give an authentic feel. The force feedback steering system will be very radical and is being designed with training applications in mind. We can not go into more details yet.

BHMS: Will your speed7 FF wheel have something in common with the Reaction prototype?

BRD: We have had discussions with them and have tested some of their equipment. All we can say at this time is that the Reaction system is only a motor drive unit and not a complete steering system, and so it would only be something that could be incorporated into our new product, it is not a product in its own right, which ours will be. We will be making more details available in the not too distant future.

BHMS: I'm very pleased with my BRD Pro wheel and Pedal set having had it now for coming up 5 years with no problems. Firstly I would like to upgrade to the clutch addon package. Im using it extensively for GTR2002 from Simbin which is equally excellent. Will this improve my lap times? Also during race starts and spin recovery the auto clutch in GTR takes for ever to get in to gear. I guess the other issue will be going back to right foot braking. One last thing, is there an upgrade for the steering sensor as its never smooth post calibration?

BRD: Sometimes ghosting or jumping. This problem is caused by the Game Port on your PC. If you take the Poll with interrupts off in the game port config screen this will solve this problem, otherwise if you upgrade to USB this will solve any problems you have. The clutch add on will give some benefit, such as improve starts, but we could not say whether you will actually go faster throughout the rest of the race, that�ll really depend on your method of driving.

BHMS: I own a Pro v wheel and Speed Seven pedals. They are absolutely the best race controls I've ever owned and were well worth the money, especially the really fine throttle and brake controls. They have a lot of "feel" to them. My question is regarding the upgrades and diagnostic programs you talked about for the Speed Seven. When are these coming out?

BRD: The software development is well advanced now. We have been testing the program for the last couple of months, making revisions and adding features. We still have a few bugs to iron out so it really will not be too much longer. The program will be far more radical than anything currently available. We hope that this will be ready in the month.

BHMS: In the future are you going to develope a Winston Cup style wheel with the stick shift off to the side like the Thrustmaster or Thomas Enterprises wheel? If so, how far off in the future is it? Or what else would be cool if you could incorparate the stick shift inside the Race Frame Pro. Anyways I think the Speed 7 pedals rocks, the Race frame pro is awesome but I just wanted to see the steering wheel with a shift knob on it before I purchase the whole set.

BRD: Thank you for your positive comments. As mentioned above, we will have a stick shifter for use with our controls by the summer. The design will allow it to be mounted on the Race Frame Pro. We have just introduced a Winston Cup style wheel which we call our Stock V2, so all you need to wait for now is the gear shifter.

BHMS: BRD produce some of the best steering wheel and pedal sets around, but considering the price of rival steering wheels such as the MOMO, do you think your products are priced too steeply, and as a result loosing a big section of the market? Is there to be a compromise between your best steering wheels (eg speed7) and price in the future?

BRD: Our aim has always been to produce items that are going to maximise performance and be realistic. To develop such products requires a high level of investment. Taking Speed7 as an example, we had to invest many tens of thousands of pounds designing and building the tooling for the dies etc for the Speed7 pedal components. We were using extruded aluminium and such complex shapes had not been done before, so there was a lot of work that had to be done with the aluminium producer. Also the electronics design in the pedals is far more complex than any other steering and pedal system. The development of the USB program took nearly a year to complete and we are using USB 1.1 rather than the standard USB 1.0 protocol as this is necessary for the plans we have for our new steering device. So not only do we have high development costs, but the complexity of some components means that the material costs are higher. Now it is true that prices could be reduced if volume was higher, just like any product, but even if we were producing a product in the same volumes as say a Logitech system, our product would still be considerably more expensive, simply because the parts are more expensive to make.
We have priced our systems as low as we can possibly make them because we want to make the system available to the most people possible and still make it viable for us to build the units and develop new products. In the end, winning performance costs money, whether it is your sim racing controls or your racing car or your washing machine!
We intend doing a technical paper which better sets out the cost/benefit relationships between different control build techniques and the technology behind them, which we hope you will find informative and useful.