In our team we have been testing several steering wheels last dates. One of them is this Ascher Racing McLaren Artura Ultimate which our collaborator Miguel V. has extensively reviewed. Check it out below.
If there is someone who has been in the world of simracing for a long time, it’s undoubtedly the folks at Ascher Racing. Talking with our dear Gonzalo about simracing stories and origins, the name Martin Ascher always comes up and how one of Ascher’s first projects ended up in Gonzalo’s hands. Quite a few years have passed since then, and what we are dealing with today has little or nothing to do with those early prototypes. The best-selling models from the German manufacturer are also somehow in the past; the Ascher Racing F28-SC V2 and Ascher Racing F64-USB V3 steering wheels, which have the privilege of being some of the first steering wheels with wireless connection on the market thanks to their compatibility with Simucube 2 bases. By the way, you can find a review of the Ascher Racing F28 model on the web.
What Ascher presented to us a few months ago is a before and after for the brand. While it’s not a revolution in terms of design or aesthetics, it is in terms of brand visibility, as the renowned English brand McLaren and Ascher Racing have signed a collaboration agreement under which the German manufacturer will provide steering wheels for the McLaren Artura GT4 cars that the British team will compete with in various championships around the world. We don’t get tired of is looking at their Ascher Racing McLaren Artura Ultimate model, of which we have been able to enjoy a unit for a few weeks.
Packaging
In the photos of the steering wheel’s packaging, you can appreciate how they haven’t spared any effort to highlight this union between the team and the manufacturer, and it’s not for nothing. Just by seeing the detail with which everything is perfectly packaged, we realize the device we have in our hands. Fortunately, I have already been able to test a few steering wheels, and this is one of the few chosen ones that has the honor of making me smile just by opening the box.
As soon as you hold this steering wheel in your hands, you realize it’s a high-level piece, just as the packaging of the box assures. Little to comment on this section besides the care and importance in details, well, one thing: generally, I personally miss longer USB cables as I have the PC at a certain distance from the cockpit, and it seems that it has reached Ascher’s ears who have kindly included not one but two USB cable extenders, thank you. Besides cables and manuals, we are provided with a good set of buttons with different logos to interchange them with the ones that come installed, various tools, and multiple stickers that in this case are not for the push buttons but for the rotaries and funkys available on this steering wheel.
Features
Let’s break down what the Ascher Racing McLaren Artura Ultimate offers us. With a completely symmetrical button layout, we find 7 backlit momentary push buttons per side, distributed as 3 in the upper area, 1 in the central area, and the last 3 in the lower area. We find 2 thumb rotaries per side in a perfect layout for thumb movement while gripping the steering wheel. We have 2 funky switches just on the longitudinal axis of the steering wheel; as you know, this button is really a seven-in-one as it allows moving in different positions besides having a push function, making it indispensable for navigating the simulator’s own menus.
In the lower middle part are the last two rotary encoders with 12 different positions numbered from 1 to 12. And of course, in the center of the steering wheel, we have the 4” high-resolution screen surrounded by 21 information LEDs arranged as 3 on each side and the remaining 15 in the upper area. If we turn the steering wheel around, we find the 3 sets of paddles. In addition to the typical shift and clutch paddles, we have an extra set located above the shift paddles and smaller in size than these. These two paddles, the shift and the extra ones, are exactly identical in terms of mechanism, and the only difference is the shape and size of the paddle itself, which in the shift paddles are larger, offering a greater contact surface to make the shifts more comfortably.
Getting into the clutch paddles, the first thing that surprised me is their long travel; generally, most manufacturers choose to have the paddles with a rather short travel, which causes novice users in this type of paddles to have a brief adaptation period by finding the feel of the paddles faster. In contrast, with Ascher’s paddles, it takes a bit more to coordinate the speed with which we give gas and the movement of the left paddle, allowing the car to traction correctly without losing grip. To adjust the clutch bite point, that exact point where the car tractions giving the maximum possible gas, Ascher gives us two options. The first is through quick access to the clutch bite point adjustment mode by holding the right joystick for 1 second until the red LED next to it lights up. With the right joystick, we can modify the bite point by 1%, and with the left joystick, it can be modified by 0.1%. The other way is through the Ascher Racing Control Center app, which, as you can imagine, is a complete steering wheel adjustment software.
In this app, we will be able to switch between different clutch paddle modes, adjust the clutch bite point through a slider, apply dead zones, change the modes of the central rotaries, and the time differentiation between one press and another. In the Device Mode section, we have a kind of manual for the steering wheel that indicates how to enter the quick adjustment modes of the steering wheel, and this small detail, being able to access quick adjustments through button combinations, is indicative of the great work in electronics and programming that they have done at Ascher Racing.
In the hands
And how does this steering wheel feel in hand? Well, for a 30cm diameter steering wheel compared to the usual 29-28cm, it feels incredibly comfortable, all due to the good injected rubber grips. I have always used it with gloves because it’s a habit of mine, although the feel with a bare hand is sufficiently pleasant for use as is. The choice of rubber type and the shape of the grips is close to perfection and surely the result of numerous tests to find the perfect formula in terms of ergonomics.
Similarly, we can define the feel and sensations of the various buttons on the device. The momentary buttons have a short and somewhat rubbery travel due more to the cap of the button, which seems to be rubber-coated, than the action mechanism itself. Both the rotaries and funkys have the necessary stiffness to make the movement in each step of the rotary paths appreciable.
Mounting
One positive aspect of acquiring a third-party steering wheel is that it offers the possibility of being mounted on a large number of bases thanks to its compatibility with practically any quick release on the market. The drawback of this Artura Ultimate is precisely anchoring a Quick Release, and it’s because if we want to mount one from brands like Fanatec, it is necessary to open the steering wheel and expose the electronics board to access the USB port that allows the connection and validation of steering wheel and base.
Realistically, the operation is not difficult at all. I have opened the steering wheel myself to adjust my Quick Release more optimally by placing self-locking nuts and washers on the screws, but it’s something the average user always hesitates about because any damage to the electronics board can be fatal. After removing all the screws from the front part, and there are quite a few, the greatest care we must take is with the paddle wiring that is completely exposed, and any pull can cause them to break. Observing the electronics board, I realized that there is a physical way to change the clutch paddle mode between dual or single as we have a switch to do it.
The Screen
There is no doubt that if there is something that stands out above all in this steering wheel, it is the impressive integrated 4-inch diameter screen. And I want to emphasize the word “integrated” because the entire steering wheel has been designed around the screen, and that is something that becomes evident at first glance. For example, the steering wheel buttons are protected by a plastic molding that provides special protection to those buttons commonly used for functions that significantly affect the car’s performance, such as the pit limiter or DRS activation, thus preventing accidental presses. This molding, which protrudes slightly from the steering wheel, is perfectly aligned with the screen’s frames, which also stand out from the rest of the steering wheel.
The main feature of this screen is its compatibility with the SimHub app, which has become indispensable for any device that integrates some type of display to show information. Until not long ago, steering wheels that incorporated a screen were usually controlled by the manufacturer’s own applications, meaning the company marketing the steering wheel had little control over the information the screen could offer the user. A clear example of this is my own Cube Controls CSX2 steering wheel; the screen itself is wonderful, but the software that controls it is a headache. Although it’s possible to create screens from scratch with the data you’re most interested in, the process is really tedious and complicated.
All this changed with the appearance of the SimHub app, not because the way of creating information screens has improved much, but rather due to the openness and standardization of this app in practically all the steering wheels or displays on the market. The magic of this app, besides being free, is that it allows compatibility with many different devices from various manufacturers, such as information displays, Arduino devices, wind simulation fans, belt tensioners, motion platforms, etc.
Ascher Racing understood that they had to program a series of screens and configurations for the LED lights and backlit buttons themselves, which already highlight all the possibilities of the Artura Ultimate and SimHub. For example, with Ascher’s preset profiles, the button backlighting will always be on just by connecting the steering wheel to the PC. Moreover, in the purest RGB keyboard style, the button lights will create a wave effect, changing color tones, and when we enter the track, an illumination effect will activate on the buttons and information LEDs, similar to a car’s test when turning the key in the ignition.
Infinite Possibilities
The magic of integrating SimHub in screen control lies in the fact that users can create their own profiles, not necessarily thinking specifically about this steering wheel. There are generic profiles for any screen compatible with this Ascher Racing McLaren Artura Ultimate , and I have been testing two in particular. The first one is called “Lovely Dashboard,” which you can find at this link https://github.com/Lovely-Sim-Racing/lovely-dashboard, and it is compatible with ACC, Assetto Corsa, Rfactor2, AMS2, F1, and iRacing.
As you can see in the images, these screens are somewhat overloaded with information as they try to display many important values on a single screen, and there are data that in certain simulators do not update continuously. However, you can navigate between different screens and change these data for a track activity map or time tables.
The second profile I have been using more, and my favorite, is created by Yoep de Ligt, a famous simracer who is quite good at programming these screens. If you have read the analysis of the Asetek La Prima pedals by our colleague Óscar, and if not, I recommend it, he mentioned a Clint Eastwood movie where he had to steal a Russian plane piloted by the mind. Well, something similar has been created by our friend Yoep with his series of dashboards because he has practically read my mind. The idea he had is really simple but arduous.
In summary, every time we enter the track with a car, the same dashboard that the car we are going to drive has will be loaded on our screen. And by identical, I do not mean that it reflects the same information as the car in terms of data, but identical in the sense of exactly the same with the same graphics, font, and screen distribution, etc. As an addition, there is also a profile available for controlling the information LEDs and RPMs, which is a clear example of how far Yoep wanted to go with simulation and the verisimilitude of his dashboards.
Generally, the RPM LEDs of any steering wheel light up progressively as the engine revs up to the cutoff point in a sequence of colors that typically goes from blue to red, or from cool to warmer colors, to show that the maximum RPM regime is being reached. With Yoep’s profile, the LEDs of the Artura Ultimate will replicate exactly the same color pattern as the car we are using, and not only that, it will only use the number of LED lights that the car has; for example, if the car has 10 LED lights, only 10 LEDs on the steering wheel will be enabled.
Final Conclusions
With this demonstration of capabilities between SimHub and the Artura Ultimate, I conclude this review as I put this wonderful device back in its box to return to the Ascher Racing warehouses. For me, it has been the best experience in terms of sensations and functionalities, as well as immersive capacity, that I have experienced to date with a simracing steering wheel. The gap between simulation peripherals and devices used in real racing is getting smaller, even nonexistent in some steering wheels. The price of this Artura Ultimate reaches 1499€ plus shipping, and enjoying the highest technology has a price.
You can buy it on the Ascher Racing website for 1499 euros or on Simufy with a 2% discount using our code SFYOPTF7ZMR98:
And the other variants:
- Ascher Racing McLaren Artura Sport
- Ascher Racing McLaren Artura GT4
- Ascher Racing McLaren Artura Pro
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