Mantis FS2 Review
Ordering and Shipping:
After about a month of searching for the exact motion sim I wanted I finally found and F1 style sim rig that didn’t cost 3 arms and 4 legs. The ordering process was super easy. In spite of UPS best efforts I did receive the package after a bit of a delivery mix up. Throughout the week, that UPS was struggling with my package, Mike was always only a text or an email away and went above and beyond in the realm of customer service.
Construction:
The construction was quite straight forward with very well detailed instructions. I spent a couple hours a day assembling the rig over the 2023 holiday season and never once encountered a part of the build when I stopped and thought I was in over my head. It is a bit of a lengthy process building the rig, but its half the fun and so worth it in the end. The only issue I came across was I had a momentary power surge, that caused me to need to replace the Arduino board, this was not the fault of the rig it was my outlet. Yet again, Mike was immediately helpful with getting me a replacement Arduino and I was back up and running in no time at all.
Software:
Using Mantis Presets in sim tools is incredibly easy and the software instruction manual for how to set it all up is very easy to understand and well thought out. I had only one issue, the directions of the motors were reversed due to a SIM Tools update, but this was easy to fix and once more, Mike was right there ready to answer my questions and help keep me racing.
Using it:
Its amazing, running in VR with the motion brings the experience to an entire new level of immersion. Put the effort in to assembling properly and you will be rewarded with some of the best, high intense racing action you could ask for.
Final Thoughts:
I had an issue getting my pc to recognize the Arduino right away because of a driver that windows broke in an update and needed to reset back to an old driver. I opened SIM hub (separate sim program) and in the Arduino section there was a red button prompting me to roll back my driver.
I weigh about 230 lbs. (104kg) at 6 ft tall and I ordered the XL size and I fit snuggly but comfortably in it. I have turned the range of motion down on the motors so that the motors don’t have to work quite as hard as I am a fairly large person. But before I reduced the range I had no problems either.
The chair is ordered separately through a different manufacturer but the chair itself is of very high quality and I would order from them again if I ever needed too. Sometimes the email response time from the chair manufacturer can be a bit slow (a few days to respond) but once it shipped it arrived quickly and was very well packaged.
Conclusion: BUY IT, and convince your friends to buy one as well.
February 1, 2024
Unprompted review