T500 RS Wheel for Gran Turismo 5 Arrives in Early January

Thrustmaster has announced that the T500 RS wheel and pedal set that the firm has specifically designed for the Gran Turismo 5 racing simulator from developer Polyphony Digital and publisher Sony will be released to stores in early January, with a suggested retail price of around 400 dollars.

The firm describes the T500 RS as “a racing assembly that lets gamers live the most realistic, powerful driving experience, with no compromises.”

The wheel and pedal combo has been created specifically to deliver a driving experience that is as close to real as possible for all the cars that Polyphony Digital has included in Gran Turismo 5, with the emphasis on the Premium cars that have their insides fully represented and benefit from a complete damage model.

The wheel will weight in at 4.6 kilograms and the pedal set will add an additional 7.4 kg to the add on.

The weight is in part linked to the use of metal, on the pedals themselves, the central spokes section of the wheel and the levers for shifting gears.

The set is also customizable with gamers able to choose how the wheel will behave on certain tracks and when using specific cars and also able to control how high or low the pedal set will lie in the racing space.

Kazunori Yamauchi, who is the chief executive officer of GT 5 developer Polyphony Digital, has stated, “The goal that I set for the Thrustmaster team was to design for me the most precise wheel ever developed, without any latency – to accurately reproduce the sensations of GT5, and let users truly feel the emotions experienced by drivers on real racing circuits.”

Gran Turismo 5 finally launched on November 24, after several delays, and has delivered a complex experience, with events ranging from the Nurbungring track to NASCAR and more standard track based competitions.