Words: NZ Performance Car Photos: Supplied
THE SIM RACING BOOM
NZPC: Why has sim racing become so popular in recent years, and what’s driving the growth beyond just gaming? With so many products on the market now, why does it feel more overwhelming than ever?
Harry: I think one of the biggest drivers behind the growth of sim racing was the Covid pandemic. One unexpected positive to come out of that period was the massive growth of sim racing.
With real-world motorsport effectively put on pause, we suddenly saw professional drivers and teams jumping online and racing because there simply wasn’t anything else happening. That exposed a much wider audience to sim racing and showed just how much potential there was in the category. Brands saw that opportunity too, and since then the market has exploded.
Before Covid, there were really only a handful of major brands to choose from. Today there are far more manufacturers, much stronger competition, and technology that would have been considered high-end a few years ago is now available for a fraction of the price. That’s a huge positive because sim racing is more accessible than ever, especially here in New Zealand. But the downside is that with so many wheelbases, pedals, cockpits, ecosystems, and compatibility options now available, it can also be pretty overwhelming for someone trying to work out where to start.
What are some of the biggest misconceptions people still have about sim racing?
One of the biggest misconceptions is that you need to spend a fortune to get a genuinely good sim racing experience. That used to be pretty true, but it really isn’t anymore. Right now is probably the best time there’s ever been to get into sim racing. The technology is better, there’s more competition between brands, and good equipment has never been more accessible.
To put it into perspective, when I started sim racing around 10 years ago, getting into direct drive was a serious investment. A 16Nm direct drive setup — or really any decent direct drive system at the time — could easily cost upwards of $5,000 by the time you sourced it from overseas. A lot of those early systems were essentially high-end industrial components adapted and put together specifically for sim racing.
Today, you can walk into a New Zealand retailer and get into direct drive for around $600. Obviously that isn’t going to give you 16Nm, but even something comparable to those old high-end systems can now be bought locally for around $1,200. That’s a massive change in 10 years. What was once really niche, expensive technology is now accessible to someone buying their first proper sim setup.
GETTING STARTED AND YOUR FIRST SETUP
If someone is building their very first sim racing setup, where should they start?
If you’re building your first sim racing setup, I’d start with a good foundation and buy something that gives you room to grow. For someone getting started, one of Moza’s entry-level direct drive bundles like the R3 or R5 is a great place to begin. You’re getting proper direct drive technology without having to spend thousands, and you’ve got an ecosystem you can build on later with things like a shifter, handbrake, better pedals, or a different steering wheel. I’d also recommend looking at complete turnkey systems, even if you’re not planning on buying one. They’re a really good way to understand what goes into a full setup and what sort of components work well together at different price points.
At Speednation, we list everything that goes into our turnkey simulators, so someone new to sim racing can use them as a bit of a blueprint and see exactly what wheelbase, pedals, cockpit, PC, monitors, and accessories are being paired together. The biggest thing is that you don’t need to buy the absolute best of everything on day one. Start with a solid direct drive wheelbase, decent pedals, and a stable cockpit, then build from there as you work out what matters most to you.
How much should someone realistically spend to get a good beginner setup?
If you’re talking about a genuinely complete beginner setup — PC, monitor, cockpit, monitor stand, direct drive wheel, pedals, shifter, and handbrake — realistically you’re looking at around $5,800 to do it properly with all new gear. Our Vortex turnkey simulator is a good example of that. It uses a Moza R3 direct drive setup and includes everything you need to get racing, rather than getting halfway through a build and realising you still need another thousand dollars’ worth of bits and pieces.
You can absolutely get into sim racing for less, though. The wheel, pedals, and cockpit side of that setup is a really solid starting point, and if you’re happy to source things like a PC or monitor second-hand, you can bring the overall cost down quite a bit. The important thing is spending your money on a good foundation. If you start with decent direct drive hardware and a solid cockpit, you’ve got plenty of runway to upgrade individual parts later without needing to replace the whole setup.
WHERE TO PUT YOUR MONEY FIRST
What are the most common mistakes people make when buying their first rig, and where should budget be prioritised for the biggest improvement in feel and performance?
One of the biggest mistakes I see is people spending all their money on the wheelbase and then buying the cheapest cockpit, seat, and pedals they can find. The cockpit is the foundation of the whole simulator. Your seat and chassis are hugely important for comfort, but they also need to hold all of your equipment properly without flexing. I always explain it like this: imagine putting a 1,000hp engine in your car and then bolting in a deck chair for the driver’s seat. It might look impressive from the outside, but once you’re actually driving it, it’s probably not going to be much fun.
The biggest thing is to think ahead. If you already know you’re probably going to upgrade to a stronger direct-drive wheelbase or better pedals in the future, buy a cockpit that can handle that now. Otherwise, you can very quickly end up buying the same part twice. If you have the space and budget, I’m a big fan of aluminium extrusion-based cockpits, like the Next Level Racing Elite Series. They’re incredibly rigid, but they’re also very modular. You can add monitor mounts, shifter mounts, handbrakes, motion systems, and other accessories later without having to replace the whole chassis.
If you’re short on space, folding cockpits and wheel stands are still great options, but you generally give up some rigidity and upgrade potential. Pedals are another area people really underestimate, especially the brake pedal. A good brake can make a huge difference to consistency and lap time because you can build proper muscle memory and control your braking much more accurately. So if I was prioritising budget, I’d put a solid cockpit and a good set of pedals — particularly the brake — right near the top. Get that foundation right, and you can upgrade almost everything else around it as you go.
What can you safely start cheap on, and what should you avoid skimping on?
I think the main things you shouldn’t skimp on are a fairly decent direct-drive wheelbase, a good cockpit, and a good set of pedals. Those three things are the foundation of the simulator and have the biggest impact on how it actually feels to drive. For most people starting out, I’d be looking somewhere in the 5Nm to 12Nm range for a direct drive wheelbase. That gives you plenty of detail and feedback without needing to jump straight into the really high-end gear. The cockpit is just as important. There’s no point having a good direct-drive wheelbase or strong brake pedal if the whole rig is flexing underneath you. Then there are the pedals, particularly the brake. Being able to brake consistently and build muscle memory is a massive part of getting quicker, so that’s definitely somewhere I’d put some budget.
Where you can save money is on everything around that foundation. You don’t need the fanciest steering wheel with a screen, heaps of buttons, and every feature available. A basic wheel rim will still do the job perfectly well. The same goes for shifters and handbrakes. Something like the standard Moza shifter and handbrake gives you great value and does everything most people need. You can always upgrade those sorts of things later. Your display is another easy place to save money. If you’ve already got an old TV or monitor sitting around, use it. It gets you racing, and you can spend that money on the parts that actually improve the driving experience.
PCs are probably the hardest part to give a fixed recommendation on because the market is constantly moving. Generally, I recommend buying new, and these days a good pre-built system can work out very close to building one yourself once you add everything up — without the hassle of sourcing parts, assembling it, and troubleshooting everything. So if I were starting from scratch, I’d put the money into a 5Nm to 12Nm direct drive wheelbase, a solid cockpit, and good pedals first, then save money on the wheel rim, shifter, handbrake, and display.
And you definitely don’t need the perfect setup to have fun or be fast. I started out racing on a 50-inch plasma TV and had an awesome time, sometimes driving circles around people with much more expensive setups. I’ve also had mates racing on laptops sitting on top of shoeboxes who could drive circles around me. The gear helps, but at the end of the day you’ve still got to drive the thing.
UNDERSTANDING UPGRADES
At what point does an entry-level setup like Logitech-style gear start holding someone back?
It really depends on how you’re using it. If you’re just racing for fun, entry-level Logitech-style gear can absolutely get the job done, and you can have a great time with it. Where it starts to hold you back is when you begin racing more seriously and chasing consistency. With a basic wheel and pedal set, you’re missing a lot of the detail through the force feedback, and the brake pedal usually gives you much less control and repeatability.
Once you move to direct drive, you start feeling things through the wheel that you simply weren’t getting before — small changes in grip, the car starting to rotate, kerbs, weight transfer, and what the front tyres are actually doing. That extra information makes it easier to understand what the car is doing and react to it. The pedals are just as important. Moving to a load-cell brake means you’re braking based more on pressure rather than simply how far the pedal has travelled, which makes it much easier to build muscle memory and hit the same braking point lap after lap.
That doesn’t mean entry-level gear suddenly makes you slow — there are some seriously quick people on basic setups. But once you start competing and looking for more consistency, direct drive and a proper brake pedal are probably the two upgrades where you’ll notice the biggest difference.
GEAR-DRIVEN, BELT-DRIVEN, AND DIRECT DRIVE EXPLAINED
Can you break down the difference between gear-driven, belt-driven, and direct drive wheels?
The easiest way to explain it is that all three are trying to do the same thing — transfer force from a motor into the steering wheel — they just do it in different ways. A gear-driven wheel uses a smaller motor connected to a series of gears. It’s generally the cheapest way to do force feedback, and it works well for getting started, but you can often feel the gears through the wheel. They can be a bit noisier, a bit more notchy, and some of the finer detail from the car gets lost along the way.
Belt-driven wheels were the next step up. Instead of gears, the motor drives the wheel through a belt and pulley system. That makes them smoother and quieter and generally gives you better force feedback, but the belt can still absorb or soften some of the smaller details, and there’s another mechanical system between you and the motor.
Direct drive removes all of that. The steering wheel is effectively connected directly to the motor shaft, so there are no gears or belts in between. That means the response is much faster and you get far more detail through the wheel — things like the tyres starting to lose grip, weight transfer, bumps, kerbs, and what the front end of the car is doing.
It’s a bit like removing a bunch of rubber bushes from between you and the car. The less stuff you have between the motor and your hands, the more information you can feel. That’s why direct drive has become the standard now. It used to be very expensive high-end technology, but today you can get into a good direct drive system for not much more than some of the older belt-driven setups.
THE NEXT STEP UP — MOTION, HAPTICS, AND ACTIVE PEDALS
What are the key upgrades that make the biggest difference when moving into a more serious setup?
Once you’ve already got a good direct drive wheelbase, solid cockpit, and decent pedals, I think the next big step is adding more feedback into the simulator. Motion and haptics are both hugely underrated. They add another layer of information on top of what you’re seeing on screen and feeling through the steering wheel. With haptics, you can start feeling things like ABS, wheel slip, kerbs, gear changes, and engine vibration through the pedals or seat, which makes the whole experience feel much more connected. Active pedals are another massive upgrade and probably one of the coolest technologies coming into sim racing now. The easiest way to describe them is almost like direct drive for your pedals.
Instead of relying on a fixed spring, elastomer, or hydraulic system, an active pedal uses a motor to generate the pedal force. That means you can completely change how the pedal feels through software. You can make the brake pedal short and extremely stiff like a race car, or give it more travel and a softer feel. You can change the pressure curve, travel, resistance, and where the pedal starts to ramp up, then save completely different setups for different cars or games. The really cool part is that the pedal can also give feedback back to you. You can feel ABS pulsing through the brake pedal, engine vibration through the throttle, and other effects depending on how the system is configured. You can run just an active brake pedal, put one on the throttle as well, or go all the way and run active pedals across the whole pedal set.
Then you’ve got motion. Good motion isn’t about throwing you around the room — it’s about giving you subtle cues for braking, acceleration, bumps, weight transfer, and what the car is doing underneath you. When you start combining direct drive, active pedals, haptics, and motion, you’re getting feedback through your hands, feet, and body rather than just looking at a screen. That’s when the simulator really starts to feel like a complete driving experience.
REALISM AND REAL-WORLD DRIVING
How close is a modern simulator to driving the real thing?
It’s incredibly close now, although it does depend on the sim, the car, and the track you’re using. iRacing is a great example. A lot of the tracks are laser-scanned and recreated in huge detail, and the cars are developed using real-world data. The physics are constantly being updated as well, so things like tyre behaviour, suspension, aerodynamics, and track conditions continue to get closer to what you’d experience in the real car. Assetto Corsa can vary a bit more because there’s such a huge amount of community-made content, so the quality really comes down to who made the car or track. But there is some incredibly good content available with very convincing physics. For me, one of the biggest real-world benefits is track learning. You can arrive at a circuit already knowing which way the track goes, where the braking zones are, what gear you’re likely to be in, and roughly where your racing line should be. That means instead of spending the first half of a track day just learning the circuit, you can hit the ground running and start refining your braking points and lines almost straight away.
It can absolutely help with real motorsport skills too. Things like racecraft, consistency, looking ahead, braking technique, and learning how to react when the car starts moving around all transfer surprisingly well. It also keeps your brain sharp. Motorsport is constantly throwing decisions at you — when to brake, when to defend, when to attack, whether there’s actually a gap there or whether you should back out of it. In the real world, sometimes making the wrong choice can get very expensive very quickly. In a simulator, you can put yourself in those situations over and over again, learn from the mistakes, and build those reactions without having to replace a bumper afterwards. Obviously, a simulator can’t perfectly recreate things like G-force, fear, heat, or the consequences of getting it wrong in a real car, but as a training tool it has become incredibly powerful.
Why are more real drivers using simulators as part of their training?
Why wouldn’t you? The technology is there, the tool is available, and if it can help you improve your driving, racecraft, and decision-making, it makes complete sense to use it. Drivers can use simulators to learn tracks, practise braking points, work on consistency, and keep their reactions sharp between real-world events. That’s probably the biggest advantage — it’s fun, incredibly cost-effective, and you can practise almost anytime you want. Compared with the cost of tyres, fuel, track fees, repairs, and actually getting a race car to a circuit, simulator time is very cheap seat time.
CHOOSING THE RIGHT SETUP
With so many options available in the sim racing world, why should someone choose Speednation to help build their setup?
The biggest difference for us is that we don’t start by asking, “How much do you want to spend?” We start by asking, “What do you actually want to use the simulator for?” That changes everything. We build the simulator around what the customer is trying to achieve. Are they just wanting to have some fun at home? Are they getting into competitive sim racing? Are they using it to train for real-world motorsport? Do they need something compact, or are they wanting a full triple-screen or motion setup?
There is so much hardware on the market now, and for someone new to sim racing it can get confusing very quickly. A big part of what we do is slow that process down, explain the differences between the options, and take customers through a setup line by line so they understand exactly what each component does and why we’re recommending it. Once we understand what they actually need, we can shape the hardware around that and set realistic expectations around what the setup is going to deliver.
If the original budget doesn’t quite line up with what they’re trying to achieve, we don’t just throw random cheaper parts at it. We pivot, work out where the money is best spent, and make sure they’re still getting the right foundation rather than something they’re going to regret or replace six months later. We’ve got more than 10 years of experience around simulators and actually driving them. We’re not just selling boxes off a shelf — we love sim racing, we use the gear, we understand the differences between it, and we’re genuinely part of the hobby. That’s the biggest thing for us. Sim racing isn’t just another product category — it’s something we’re passionate about.
A GOOD RIG VERSUS AN EXPENSIVE ONE
What makes a ‘good’ sim rig versus just an expensive one?
A good sim rig isn’t necessarily the one with the most expensive parts — it’s the one where everything works together properly.
You can spend a huge amount of money on a wheelbase, pedals, motion, and screens, but if the cockpit flexes, the seating position is uncomfortable, the pedals aren’t set up properly, or the hardware doesn’t suit what you’re actually using it for, it’s not going to be a good experience. For me, a good rig is balanced. The cockpit is rigid enough for the wheel and pedals, the seating position is comfortable, the hardware is matched properly, and everything is configured so you’re actually getting the feedback the equipment is capable of giving you.
Setup and tuning are a massive part of it as well. You can have very expensive hardware that feels average if it’s configured badly, while a much cheaper setup that’s been put together and tuned properly can feel fantastic. It also needs to suit the person using it. Someone doing casual racing on the weekend doesn’t necessarily need the same setup as someone training for real-world motorsport or competing seriously online. So to me, a good simulator is one that makes sense as a complete package. It does what you need it to do, it’s comfortable, it gives you good feedback, and it leaves you room to grow. Price alone doesn’t guarantee any of that.
What does Speednation offer that helps take the confusion out of building a setup, and how do you help customers go from beginner through to a fully dialled-in simulator?
A big part of what we offer is experience. We’ve seen the technology change massively, we’ve used a lot of the hardware ourselves, and we know what works well together and what doesn’t. For someone new to sim racing, that makes a huge difference because there are so many options now. We can take someone from knowing almost nothing about it, work out what they actually want to achieve, and then walk them through the setup component by component so they understand exactly what they’re getting and why.
That continues right through to our turnkey simulators. We don’t just put a pile of expensive parts together and call it finished. We build the system, configure it, set up the hardware, make sure everything works together properly, and try to make the whole experience as easy as possible for the customer. We’re also developing Speednation Command, our own software specifically for our turnkey simulators. The whole idea behind it is to simplify the experience even further. A lot of customers buying a full simulator aren’t necessarily computer experts, and they shouldn’t have to be.
Speednation Command is designed to bring the important parts of the simulator into one easy place, so the customer can manage and launch their racing experience without digging through five different programs and Windows settings every time they want to drive. That’s really where we want to take Speednation — not just helping someone buy their first wheel, but being able to support them all the way from their first entry-level setup through to a completely dialled-in simulator with direct drive, triples, haptics, motion, and everything working together properly.
Looking to build your sim rig?
Head to speednation.co.nz to compare entry-level Direct Drive bundles, browse ready-to-race turnkey simulators, or contact the experts to blueprint a setup tailored to your space and budget.