OT: race/driving sim rigs - anyone

[gridgway]

When you've got it set up Graham, I'm coming round!

BTW, Jimmy Broadbent was on the winning team at the Buckmore 24 hrs last year

You'll be very welcome James!

[Bruce M]

Little Miss M has an Oculus Go which gathers dust most of the time. I quite enjoy the VR experience but I find 20-30mins is about the max before I need a break. Alas, as it’s the standalone version, it’s not much use for PC Sim use.

Appears I was wrong... with a Virtual desktop app and bit of side loading of upgrade... you can use the GO/ Quest with PC games such as Steam driving Sim. Not the full experience but functional (3DF / med res). Perfectly acceptable as a budget toe-dip if you have access to one.

25min u tube video on the subject by Zimtok5, with detailed set up.

[NurLinks]

Hi Graham,

I have been considering the same and for similar reasons as you: a bit of fun while there is no real racing going on and are stuck around the house and a way to practice hand-foot-eye coordination, learn tracks for racing and keeping mentally fit for on track battles. I race in historic touring cars and GT's and did 10 years in modern touring cars in the past.

I did some sim racing long ago and at the time I found it lacking in realism, mainly because of the poor equipment available at the time. I got bored pretty soon and quit using the sim. So when I decided to buy something last week, I wanted to get at least a decent level off realism. For me the most important was the pedal feel (particularly brakes) and the steering wheel. I also wanted a stiff rig. The screen was less of a priority, more a nice to have. Nowadays most screens are good and all games are at least 1080p and most have HDR, so graphics are pretty good if you pick the right game.

I thought about PC vs. console and considered several brands for the rig. I decided to go for a PS4 pro console: they are affordable and if I want to upgrade to PC the PS4 is easily to sell. For the rig I found many brands too flimsy (lower end and medium Playseat, etc...) or too expensive (fully adjustable aluminium kits). For a used rig you get back very little so this should be first time right.

I ended up buying the following:

Fanatec CSL Elite wheel (just the 'standard' version for PS4 and PC, not the fancy Formula 1 or GT3 wheel). I wanted the best wheel short of a direct drive wheel (which are extremely nice but very expensive).
Fanatec CSL pedals with a separate load cell kit for the brakes. The latter promises a much more realistic feel on the brakes than the brakes without load cell. The standard brake pedal can be used as a clutch pedal.
RSeat RS1 rig with a separate RSeat monitor mount
Samsung 49" curved ultra wide screen monitor (on which I got a great deal). This basically is the same size as two 27" normal wide screens, but without the bezels in the way. It is a specific gaming monitor and turns out to give fantastic graphics, colours and virtually no lag.
Set of wireless headphones in order not to drive the family crazy and for a higher level of 'immersion' (this is a key term in sim racing )
Project Cars 2 and F1 2019 as games. Apart from iRacing, F1 is pretty much the standard (although many disagree) and I can join my racing pals in the competition they set up. Project Cars 2 gets mixed reviews, but it costs next to nothing (EUR 18 with a massive discount) and the nice historic cars were too tempting to resist.

I set everything up last Monday and Tuesday evening (around 8 hours of work) and spent some additional time on adjusting seating position, pedal spacing and positioning (I was happy I bought a decent rig!) and tweaking the stiffness of the brake pedal. Then the hardware was set up. The 'in game' adjustment of the steering wheel also took me a lot of time. With some searching on the many forums however, I found a really good baseline which turned the steering feel from outright crap in standard setup to very realistic.

I must say I'm really very happy and I am particularly glad that I didn't go for cheaper options. I think out of all the decisions I made the brake pedal was the best one. A load cell kit gives you a feeling on the brakes which really is very similar to a real car. Also the Fanatec steering wheel is pretty good. If you like VR, that is probably very nice to have, but TBH I immediately got car sick when I tried it. It is probably more 'immersive' than I can handle . On PS4 vs. PC I'm not so sure. I can't compare the two, but when loading games or sessions I think it's much slower than what you're used to if you have a state of the art professional desktop or laptop.

I realise this is all personal and subject to taste and (very, very much) to budget.

I hope this helps.

[gridgway]

Really helpful, thanks, lot to digest there, but real world experience is very helpful
Graham

[gridgway]

Quick question, which suppliers did you use?

[NurLinks]

Quick question, which suppliers did you use?

All local suppliers in the Netherlands, except for the Fanatec stuff which I ordered at the factory in Germany, since all shops were out of stock. Fanatec did have everything on stock. You'll see that some other items like the PS4 are difficult to get on short notice. RSeat Europe is located in France and is affected by the lockdown, so I ordered that at a local dealer. If you compare prices also look closely at shipping costs for the rig. Mine came on pallet in two huge boxes. Shipping cost at some suppliers was over EUR 120, others much more reasonable.

[Dougieboy1]

by coincidence, this seems to be on the minds of the Goodpeople at Goodwood......

https://www.goodwood.com/grr/race/moder ... ND,RCFOF,1

i will confess to not having read the article but the title seemed relevant....

[Nige]

Red Dead Redemption, no driving but you ride a horse or wagon. I've sadly put hours into it.

It's like starring in your own Western movie.

[hot66]

Red Dead Redemption, no driving but you ride a horse or wagon. I've sadly put hours into it.

It's like starring in your own Western movie.

Me too ... you playing the original or 2 ? I think I finished the first one , the no2 I’ve kind of put to the side, must get back on to it at some point

[MikeB]

Graham
You mentioned using data logging in conjunction with your FF2000, not am notsure about the other high tech gaming/sims, but iRacing does have a full data logging system, which I think may hook up to real world systems. So it may be worth a web search to see what each of these sims can provide in that direction.

[gridgway]

Yes, good point Mike. Vbox has a sim pack to extract data from games, don't know if Aim does though. I use Aim currently.

I'm probably aiming to do too much as unless I can get a good simulation of the car I'm racing (Reynard FF2000), comparing data with the real world is not going to be useful.

Mind you, using data out of the sim to compare individual laps will be interesting anyway.

Graham

[Nige]

Red Dead Redemption, no driving but you ride a horse or wagon. I've sadly put hours into it.

It's like starring in your own Western movie.

Me too ... you playing the original or 2 ? I think I finished the first one , the no2 I’ve kind of put to the side, must get back on to it at some point

RDR2 I'm a PC user.

Get back in the saddle!

[NurLinks]

I doubt whether comparing in game telemetry with your AIM has any value. The car physics model and the track physics and layout model of a 'consumer' SIM will never match the data of a real car. Secondly, what you have on your car in terms of tyres, suspension and power train will never be included in a SIM. Finally, no commercially available hardware will give you the seat of the pants feel that a real car does, so replicating exact driver input is also almost impossible. From experience I can tell you that even a 6 DOF hexapod rig with high tech motion software, costing north of 100k, doesn't give you that feeling.

This is also why I only use sims for learning tracks, practicing race craft, concentration and eye-hand-foot coordination. That doesn't make it less exiting and fun, however.

[gridgway]

So just for fun on a sunny Sunday afternoon, I've been looking around at stuff to diy the sim rig bit to get me started...
IMG_20200419_124227 by graham Ridgway, on Flickr

Then how do I make a platform for the wheel. Ahh those broken end supports for the swing seat...
image-20200419_131927 by graham Ridgway, on Flickr

[andytat]

Looking good Graham.
Are you basing the sim rig on dimensions from your historic
race car? I'm thinking about building one as well and was
toying with the idea of basing it on the seat/pedal orientation
of a 70s 911.

Andy