Designer pitches iPad gaming wheel Wacky iPad accessories are slowly starting to surface, with one designer convinced that a steering wheel is what’s required if you hope to play games on the Apple tablet. The iDrift, designed by Michael Greenberg, is essentially two thin, circular plastic halves that fix onto either side on the iPad, turning Apple’s tablet …
Quote: Greenberg’s iDift – if it ever makes it past the conceptual stage – should make holding the iPad while playing driving games slightly easier, we reckon.
Er, probably not. The great thing about the Wii wheel (and any other useful steering wheel game controller) is that, although the wheel's turning, your visual reference, i.e. the monitor or TV, stays put. Helpfully, this means you don't have to roll your head by 90 degrees each time you go round a corner.
Use this piece of crap to play a driving game and you'll be paying an expensive visit to a physiotherapist soon enough.
Still, anything that underscores the idiocy of iPad owners can only be a good thing in my book. I wish Mr. Greenberg much success, although I hope he never works in automotive design.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't current iPhone/iPod Touch games already work this way, using the device's accelerometers?
The wheel designer hasn't created the problem of visual reference -- that's something the game designer's did. I'm guessing that they compensated for this in the programming of the game....
fantastic ! probably end up going for a quid like the Golf Club, Gun, Tennis Racquet and ... wait for it... Yes ...Steering Wheel shaped wii remote holders that i saw this afternoon in uber Tat shop Poundland.
where incidentally you can get 5 curly wurlys for a pound :
(while stocks last
Er... There is one little detail that you seem to have missed: you can turn and wiggle the Wii Wheel as much and as fast as you want, but you view of the game will be unaffected. You know, it's on the TV screen, static. Or so I understand.
How good will it be to look at a fast moving screen while playing? I don't know, since I haven't played any games on a device like that (Touch, iPhone, etc.), but I don't feel attracted to the concept of bad visual feedback. Will have to wait and see.
...I'm going to tell you where I am.
I don't see how this is an investable opportunity.
It is just an overpriced piece of plastic designed to solve a problem that didn't exist in the first place.
...And now you want me to give you some of my children's inheritance to stick another pointless piece of plastic around the outside of it.
You have badly overestimated the size of your market. Steering wheel peripherals are bought by serious gamers. The I-Pad is not a machine for serious gamers. Most will have a console and/or high spec pc at home and a dedicated portable handheld system like the DS or PSP for travelling.
Epic Fail.
... and for that reason... I'm out.
The racing games on the iPad, like on the iPhone require the screen to be tilted anyway so it's not a flaw of the peripheral but the nature of the hardware and these kind of games' design.
The peripheral itself merely is attempting to make it more natural/comfortable to hold when playing the game as did the wheel adapter for Wii controllers when playing Mario Kart Wii .
It's an iPad. Same as an iPod Touch or iPhone. You *have* to tilt the thing anyway, to control your gameplay. The screen is going to tilt however you hold it. This device simply makes holding it a little easier and perhaps more familiar for driving games.
This screen-tilt thing you laugh at? Nothing to do with the iDrift. All to do with the platform.
Don't you have to use your thumbs on the touch screen to accelerate and brake with these driving games?
With the wheel attached wouldn't your thumbs be too far away from the screen to do this?
Doesn't that reduce this products customer base to those with impossibly long thumbs?
I need answers!
A good point, and one that, not having a iDevice, I overlooked.
It's still an incredibly daft way to play driving games, though. This just shows that it's the platform that's FAIL for driving games instead of the peripheral.
Now, let me get back to my Logitech G25 and remember how it's done properly.
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