Rig Build – My Year in Sim Racing (4 Viewers)

[Bassetts]

Introduction

About 10 years ago I dipped my hand in a bit of racing I think it was probably something formula 1 related but I really can’t remember, at the time I bought a Logitech Momo Wheel. This was a short lived excursion and it soon went in the attic to be forgotten about.

Some time in 2015 I saw some press about Project Cars and thought it might be time to blow off the cobwebs and have a look what world of racing games had to offer 10 years on.

Below is a shot of one of my first excursions into pCars with my trusty old Logitech Momo.

Whilst reading the project cars forums I started to realise that the racing community had definitely evolved into quite a big thing over recent years, and I started to see all of the really interesting things people were doing around the community. I work for an automotive / engineering company and this really connected with aspects of the business that I’m really passionate about and from here my interest really did start to take off.

New Equipment.

I’ve always been the type of person who never goes into any venture half assed (just ask my wife) so after playing Project Cars for about a month and really enjoying the challenge I felt that I should look to purchase a more up-to-date setup with a view to the future, having a clutch pedal was definitely one thing I wanted from the upgrade. After looking around I decided to jump in head first and grabbed a Fanatec CSW v2 Wheel Base, BMW GT 2 Wheel and CSP V3 Pedals alongside a GT Omega stand to mount it on.

After running this for about a month or so I realised that the GT Omega stand was not really solid enough to handle the feedback and torque from the CSW v2 and that another solution was needed.

Unfortunately I have limited space for the equipment as it resides in our spare bedroom which doubles as a home office and also a TV room for the kids. This placed a few limitations on options as all of the really solid rigs such at the RSEAT and similar types of rigs would just not work. Ideally I needed something that could be stored under my desk when not in use and I could then move out and place in front of the TV when needed, although there were a few solutions I really didn’t think they would be strong enough to take the torque and breaking forces so needed to find a new solution.

 

[Bassetts]

Custom Build – Revision 1

It was around then I started reading up about people building their own custom rigs and saw a lot of people purchasing pre-configured systems using aluminium profile (80/20), This sounded really interesting but all the solutions were a bit on the large size my needs. So here began the idea to have a go at taking the inspirations from the designs I had come across and adapting them to my requirements. As mentioned I needed something that was both solid and had some aspects that could be collapsed when not in use so that it didn’t take up all the space in the office.

I spent a couple of weeks drawing up some plans and then refining the plans to best meet my needs. After I had drafted out revision 1 I then translated this into a set of required parts and purchased all the aluminium and connected parts from motedis.com.

It took about 3 weeks for the order to come over from Germany, and this arrived a few weeks before the Christmas of 2015.

At this point I enrolled the assistance of my son to basically play a big game of meccano

The first stage of the build was to build the frame where the steering wheel and pedals would fit. The goal here was to have adjust-ability so that the pedals angles could be changed and would connect to a second stage of the assembly that would hold the seat. The two parts would then be able to collapse into each other to reduce the floor space when not in use.

 

[Bassetts]

Custom Build – Revision 1 - Continued

The second stage of the build was the seat frame and seat, this was designed to slot inside the first stage to allow the two stages to be collapsed into each other. The second stage of build required a seat and I actually live about 3 miles away from the Cobra Factory where they make the Cobra Race seats. Around this time they were having a factory sale so I thought I would go and take a look first hand to see the type of seats available. I saw the GT style seats and decided this was the type of seat I wanted to attach to it, but unfortunately these were still very expensive at a factory sale event, I did a bit of searching around and found some cheaper alternative and at a place called GSM Performance Sport Seats and decided on a Mirco RS2 3D Fibreglass FIA Sports Seat and had it customised in a blue/black/grey combination to match the look of the office.

 

[Bassetts]

This was a huge step up compared to the GT Omega Rig the ergonomics of the rig worked really well and had the flexibility to it to be collapsed when not in use and store under the desk.

Here are a couple of images of the rig extended and collapsed and stored away.

 
Custom Build – Revision 2

After running in the default state for a few weeks I discovered a few problems with the design of the rig. The mains issues were that my knees were catching the underside of the frame during driving and the mounting of the wheel to the frame was not as sturdy as I would like leaving some flex when under high torque loads.

I found the Sim-Lab.eu who do custom parts for aluminium rigs they had pre-fabricated parts that would resolved these initial design issues, firstly a set of brackets that I could use to adjust the angle on the wheel frame http://sim-lab.eu/product/wheeldeck-bracket/ and also a plate that the CSWv2 could be mounted to http://sim-lab.eu/product/universal-wheel-deck-plate/

After fitting these all the initial issues were resolved and this kept me happy for a couple of months, however one thing that I was not enjoying was the limited field of view from using a 40” TV. When running in races online I had no confidence as the realistic Field of View settings that needed to be run meant there was zero peripheral vision and I made it impossible to safe judge gaps and distance to people when trying to overtake or defend positions. I felt like a liability here and this was a real shame.

 

[Bassetts]

Increasing Immersion

With the limited space running a triple screen setup was never going to be viable, about this time the rumours about the Rift CV1 being released started and this to me sounded a great solution. Something like VR would solve the Field of View settings challenges and also be very compact. As soon as the pre-orders for the CV1 went live I signed up and got a delivery date of May 2016.

Increasing Immersion – Stage 1

In the months that passed whilst waiting for the CV1 I also started reading up about vibration based feedback and wanted to dip my toes in the water and see if this was another aspect that could add to the experience.

After a bit of reading I decided to started off with a single Buttkicker Mini LFE mounted under the seat and a piece of software called SimVibe. This software translates the data from the sim and then sends vibration feedback to the bass transducers based on the physics data.

I paired the Buttkicker with a thomann t.amp E4-250 amplifier so that in the future I could support upto 4 transducers from one amplifier and move having feedback from all 4 corners of the chassis.

Even with the one transducer it was a lot of fun, from an immersion perspective it just takes it up a notch, having the thud of the gear box when you change up/down, the shaking that goes through your back when you run it over the rumble strips, and the thud from when you have some contact really adds an extra dimension.

One drawback here was that due to the power output the amplifier has active fans and these are quite loud so I had to re- position the amplifier to remove the noise. I decided to move the amplifier into the attic and then run cables from the attic back into the office.

 

[Bassetts]

Increasing Immersion – Stage 2

Shortly after finishing the transducers setup in April it was not long until May was here and the Oculus Rift CV1 arrived. This changed the whole experience of racing for me. Running the CV1 solved all of the Field of View issues and gave me the confidence and positional awareness to actually race closely with people and my enjoyment increase immensely.

If I had to choose a single piece of equipment to keep from everything it would be the CV1 the confidence and awareness this gave me was the biggest single benefit from this whole experience

Increasing Immersion – Stage 3

At this point most of the major parts of the build were complete, and the next stage was to move from having a single tranducer under the seat to having one place on each corner of the axis

Polishing touches

Bringing all of the connections into the rig started to get a bit messy there were power cables, speaker cables, usb cables all coming into the rig and sitting underneath the pedals. This was limiting the ability of the rig to be portable as this was all a giant mess under the pedals and was very fiddly to disconnect. Here I decided to design a umbilical cord that could be used to easily terminate all the connections and allow it to be connected/disconnected with speed.

From left to right you have.

• speakON - NL4 Speaker Output Connector - this connects to the rear left and right transducers.
• speakON - NL4 Speaker Output Connector - this connects to the front left and right transducers.
• On/Off switch for powerCON (Grey)
• powerCON (Grey) this is a mains output feed which goes to power the 4x250W RMS amplifier which drives the transducers.
• powerCON (Blue) this is the mains input feed into the system.
• On/Off Switch for powerCON (Blue)

At the back you have fuses for the amplifier and the hard wired mains connections into PSU's that power the steering wheel and USB Hub.

 

[Bassetts]

And finally pulling it all together some current state pictures.

 

[Bassetts]

Next Steps Placeholder

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[m4nu]

Stickied!!

 

[Gxbbs]

This is so nice! Great job pal

 

[Dama_The_Crow]

Great job man!

 

[miagi]

Really nice mate!

 

[2scoops]

Awsome, I tried one of those chair types and I couldn't get out the thing Whats the Fanatec shifter like?

 

[Bassetts]

Awsome, I tried one of those chair types and I couldn't get out the thing Whats the Fanatec shifter like?

The seat is definitely only for the more.... shall we say athletic build, anything over a 36" waist and you will need to be cut out

The gear stick is the ClubSport Shifter SQ V 1.5 and was a present from my wife last xmas. It's a good solid bit of kit but also needs to be mounted well to stop flex when shifting. I really like the ability that you can switch from H-Pattern to sequential with the flick of a slider at the base of the shifter, and also quickly change the handle between a round H-Pattern knob to a more slim knob for the sequential mode.

The V8 race we did around Bathurst was so much fun with this in sequential mode, banging the box up and down through gears as we went through the mountains, has to be one of my favourite moments

 

[2scoops]

Are you saying I'm fat

 

[falcon2081]

@Bassetts how did you like dealing with Richard over at SimLabs? His 80/20 rig is one I'm considering.

 

[Bassetts]

@Bassetts how did you like dealing with Richard over at SimLabs? His 80/20 rig is one I'm considering.

Honestly my interaction with Richard was fairly light, I did chase the order as it was taking a few weeks, but he did reply promptly and it was shipped shortly after, however this was only a small order for 3 parts. The majority of the 80/20 was purchased through http://www.motedis.com and a few later parts from http://aluminium-profile.co.uk/

 

[2scoops]

Regarding the CV1, as you keep sending my mind over to it what is your opinion about the resolution and depth of clarity and screen door effect I keep hearing about. If someone was near I would come over and give it a go. After the brain tumour I don't know if my brain would cope with it or not