The History of Direct Drive in the Sim Racing World (2/3)

First part here:

• The History of Direct Drive in the Sim Racing World (1/3)

At the end of 2014 Granite components know that they have sold more Argon units than expected thanks to simRacing and open the possibility of using their future controller in other more diverse tasks. For its launch they are looking for financial support from the community through the crowdfunding platform Indiegogo. It is May 2015 and Ioni more than meets the funding as it promises to do what Argon does for a quarter of its price. Beano is reunited in Finland with the creators of Granite and tells them what his technology is being used for and what possible improvements it could include. The Finns listen to his advice and gratefully reap the rewards of not having limited the use of their hardware with thousands of units sold. This will lead to Ioni Pro and Ioni HC the following year.

If Finland stands out for anything else, it is that it is possibly the country with the highest ratio of motor racing fans per capita in the world. Both Aki and his partner Tero (heads of GD) exchange ideas with Beano and start exploring a crazy avenue in which they develop their own brand of simRacing products based on controllers and motors. While that happens in late 2015, small companies emerge across the world, selling prefabricated assemblies of what is already known as OpenSimWheel, first with Argon and later with Ioni. Augury, SimRacingBay in Europe, another couple in the USA, at least one other in Malaysia and a last one in Australia.

At the beginning of 2016 Ioni HC is launched for high voltage sources and to be able to comfortably use the large MIGE motor (up to 30 Nm) and others with large Nm capacity. Granite Devices continues to develop ideas as the use of Direct Drives spreads and the companies mentioned in the previous paragraph begin to run out of steam. Several others are coming out selling ready-made OSWs, but the main issue for GD is in the board and all the components that stand between your controller and the PC. You have to simplify it or rely on software programmed 2 years ago by the unsupported community. We are talking about Michael Moszkowics’ miraculous MMos.

The Simucube board (also launched by indiegogo in mid-2016) is Granite’s first product intended to replace both physical elements and software. As the Finns were much more proficient with components, the board was first released to ease assembly, to many months later finally receive the Simucube firmware that took advantage of the improvements introduced by the Finns at the hardware level. Things were moving much faster than it seemed. Many of our protagonists were still in contact, now officially with some contracts for distribution or sale. Meanwhile Fanatec had already heard about all this and had already contacted one of our protagonists. Fanatec had called Beano, and asked him for advice.

Why was Fanatec interested? Well, obviously because it is dedicated to the topic of automotive simulation exclusively, but above all because around the topic of engines an incredible ecosystem of products of all kinds and conditions had formed that generated huge amounts of revenue. People were spending what they had never spent before on hardware for simRacing, and Fanatec wanted to make a profit selling steering wheels, cams, quick release, engines, brackets, cockpits and whatever it took. And if it was almost real, so much the better. All in all, all distribution and purchasing is done only through their store by those who are entirely the beneficiaries of the sales that are made with their brand. Meanwhile Thrustmaster was developing the T-GT for GT Sport and was quite content in its own universe, similar to the one occupied by Logitech with its G29 released in July 2015.

With the waters more or less calm and a fairly stable ecosystem having passed just 2 years since Ioni was announced, Fanatec drops its bombshell in mid-2017. There will be Fanatec Direct Drive, and it will be in-house development, using nothing from anyone, not even engines, and they will release it at the end of 2017. It should be remembered that at that time Fanatec was just a company that reached 50? employees, maybe less, which had enough to solve the reliability problems of the newly launched CSL range and needed Direct Drive products to be virtually infallible.

The other real stumbling block Fanatec faced was that they had to comply with a lot of extraordinary regulations to bring out this range of products. It was something that was going to be used exclusively for simulation and as a PC peripheral and nothing that could fit within the more lax standards of an industrial product. It had to meet a lot of safety standards and certifications for a home product. Being more than regulated and licensed (the ForceFeedBack brand is licensed) was a bureaucratic hurdle that had to be reckoned with and could lengthen development by many months.

Little can we know about what went on behind the scenes during that period and what difficulties they faced, but it was a monumental development for a company of that size that was already running short to fill its current (2017) orders. Plans never came to fruition and the first deliveries of the announced Podium series would be made in late 2018 after an event with the community. Among the known problems it was necessary to change the initial plan of two different engines to use only the DD2 engine in both models, which would result in a price increase shortly after going on sale. Arriving at Christmas a new delay was announced and not even that deadline could not be met and everything was postponed to mid-2019, two years after the public announcement. As you can imagine, nothing, absolutely nothing was simple in the conception of these devices.

To understand what we are talking about and why this is so problematic it is worth looking back at the companies that sold OSW prefabs with GD components. All the companies were made up of 1 or at most two people (a family member or friend caught off guard) who crossed their fingers that the assemblies would work at an RMA rate of almost always 0%. A return, a theft, a lost package or an electrical failure was a real misfortune for them because to replace that loss they had to sell 10 more bases. That’s how meager was the margin with which companies like Augury Simulations or SimRacingBay worked and that Fanatec, Thrustmaster or Logitech could never afford.

And as an example of the previous paragraph, what better than to remember the case of FeelVR, the Ukrainians based in California who promised to distribute at a low price a set of hoop, base and pedals. Direct Drive technology (campaign in April 2018 on Kickstarter) for less than $600 while a Simucube set of similar technology without including pedals or hoop or quick release could easily go for 2.5 times ($1500) that price. The story ended badly, if we can say it has ended at all, as we will surely continue to hear about it for another couple of years.

To be continued in part 3 in a few days with the launch of Podium and what GD was doing while it was being prepared.

See you on the track!