Zee Sim Rig

[Zeeflyboy]

Just in case anyone is interested, here's a little blog of my latest endeavour! I figure it's more useful than just posting the end result as it's certainly a learning process... I'm also more than open to suggestions along the way so feel free to add your thoughts.

The brief:

- Build a sim rig for the man cave.

- Dual (well triple) purpose... both for racing and flying/space games.

- Needs to be able to compact up to a reasonable size while still being nice and solid. I won't accept any wobble!

- Must be easy to move around the cave so I can move it out the way as needed.

- Ideally not completely ugly if I can help it since it'll always be visible.

- Upgradable in future.

- primarily for VR but possibility of mounting a screen.

I intend to run this as a 3 stage process. Stage 1 is the general structure to a usable state, and a transducer for haptic feedback. Stage 2 will be fleshing out the haptics possibly with further transducers, a seat belt tensioner, and a G-seat* using pneumatics. Stage 3, which is likely much further down the line, will be to then put the entire thing on actuators like the SFX-100 style rigs for full motion.

*G-seat concept for those that don't know - either mechanically or pneumatically actuated pads in the seat move to apply pressure from beneath/side/back to simulate being pressed into that side of the seat. Haven't tried it but supposedly very effective in VR without needing to go for a full motion platform. Also has the advantage of being able to simulate sustained G, so potentially complementary to a motion platform further down the road.

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Enough waffle!

Here's the 3d design I came up with after a few iterations, I decided to make it mostly from 44x44 planed all round wood (meranti as it happens) and plywood as I thought it would look nicer and I'm currently working on my woodworking skills... you could substitute 40x40 or 45x45mm aluminium profile for the PAR timber at similar cost and a significantly easier build but I have a habit of making my life harder than it really needs to be!






While working on the geometry:




The pedal platform is designed to be electronically actuated, and uses some spare HG25 rails and carriages I have had lying around for the last couple years from my CNC builds. They actually aren't overly expensive since you don't need genuine HIWINs for this, but they are potentially overkill... I love overkill though so, whatever.

The upper section is also designed to slide back to allow easier entry/exit and will also be driven by electronic actuators, because its cool. This part is definitely not really necessary, but given for games like star citizen I want to use tablets as MFDs and I think getting in/out may prove tricky without some mechanism to give yourself more space to move.

Anyway, that's the brief overview... more to follow once the little one is in bed!

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Pile of 44x44 PAR meranti....




As mentioned I'm trying to become a little more talented at my woodwork so this time rather than just boshing something together I'm going to try and use a little art. To that end, we're going for proper wood joints rather than butting them together and putting a great big screw through. Should end up in a much more rigid and stronger construction too... This could all be achieved with a hand saw and a chisel but thankfully I have some machinery that helps disguise my lack of talent.

Started with a tenon saw and tidied up with the router:








I then made this little jig for the table saw which made making the female joints easier, again just tidied up on the router...






Fit is rather nice!

 

[Zeeflyboy]

With those done time get the side frames made up:




Check for square




And tidy up with a flush cutter




Attached to a piece of 18mm phenolic coated ply (normal ply would do)

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Next up the seat mounting sections...

First I wanted to add an aluminium strip (which I had lying around in my stock pile waiting for an excuse to use!) for the seat slider to sit on, so I just ran a quick slot down it using the router table





On the underside I added m8 Tee nuts so that the seat has a really firm and strong mount. I made several positions so that there is some adjustability in mounting options... and made some matching holes in the aluminium strip of course






Then over to the CNC to make a jig for routing out some slots on the top of the side sections for some T-track

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Time to finish off the frame, and the cross struts are going to be glued with dowel pins...

3D printed a drill jig to make sure the dowels go exactly where I want:








Lines up nicely:




And with all dowel holes drilled time clamp the whole thing up with some glue and wait!

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Clamps removed and two coats of Osmo Terra applied:






Made these mount plates that fit the HG25 carriages to the wood side sections:




And here it's all starting to come together with some heavy duty castors fitted, along with the 40mm extrusion I'm using for the pedal platform and 3D printed corner brackets. Seat mounts and sliders just cheap ones from Ebay!

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Seat fitted, using a Sparco Grid 2 which my parents bought me many moons ago for my birthday when I first thought about making a gaming rig!

Here you can see full extension with seat back and pedals out vs seat slid forward and pedals in for storage.






And can't keep the wee man out of it:

 

[Zeeflyboy]

I decided to build my own actuator for the pedals... I have a load of CF tube lying around so designed around that. Most of the other parts are 3D printed and then it's just some m8 threaded rod, steel tube, steel rod and some screws.

For this one I turned my own nut on the lathe but for the two that drive the top section I'll be using acme lead screws and just off the shelf brass nuts.

Just because it's fun to see, here's how the nut was made:

Turned down some hex stock and threaded with m8 tap




Flipped and back side finished:




Over to the CNC to mill the bolt pattern






Fitted to the 3D printed bushing and press fit to the steel tube with some sleeve lock to help hold in place




Final actuator sans motor:




Geared motor fitted





SHE VORKS!

Actuator in place:

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Needed to come up with a way to add limit switches to the actuator to make sure it cuts out rather than trying to over drive, so a little head scratching and I came up with this circuit using a DPDT switch

Excuse the child like circuit diagram - I'm not an electronics guy lol



This circuit allows the actuator to drive forward until hitting the forward limit switch which will then cut off power from that circuit, while still leaving the reverse circuit closed to allow it to drive backwards until hitting the rear limit switch at which point the reverse circuit is opened.


And here are the limit switches installed while testing if the theory works:




And tidied up with the wires running under the rig



And a little CF switch box made up to hold the DPDT switch in place:

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Next up the pedal platform just squeezes into the CNC...

I've made mounting patterns for my MFG Crosswinds, my crappy thrustmaster car pedals and also for the Clubsport V3 pedals which I would like to get in the future.




Oiled and a little laser etched logo, because why not!




MFG's fitted




Thrustmaster plastic rubbish fitted:

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Mounting plate for the warthog joystick, whipped up out of SRBP






For some reason I seem to be lacking photos of the throttle mount but same idea!


Next up is to tackle this big unit after having finalised the design...




I cut all the parts out of 18mm plywood on the CNC, and for the uprights laminated them together to get the desired thickness








Headcrab vibes anyone?

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Wheel mounting hardware was next, all 3D printed except for the mount plate itself which is plywood






Followed by a good oiling




Fitted (still waiting for some additional SBR20 rail carriages here) and whaddya know, everything is in the right place... please excuse the socks, they are my running socks lol!

 

[Zeeflyboy]

next the transducer arrived... I went for the simulation kit which gives you a buttkicker amp, mini-CT buttkicker and all the required wiring. In retrospect I think I goofed here and I should have just chosen my own amplifier but the simplicity a plug and play kit appealed.



My main issue with the buttkicker amp is that there is no indication of what volume you have set, and when you power off it goes back to default. That means every time you turn it on you have to dial in the volume to get the feedback to the right level. The second issue is that it's just single channel, and I could have bought a better amp with two outputs and a physical volume dial for similar money, which would have made adding a second transducer easier too... live and learn!

The buttkicker mini-CT is just screwed to the bottom of the chair (the Grid 2's removable cushions are rather handy here):






To drive the transducer I managed to find some nice software that actually reads the physics data from the game, which seems far superior to using it in audio mode... this also made the buttkicker amp less necessary as I didn't need the high and low pass filters (although still good to have I suppose for games that aren't supported).

For driving games I am using Simhub which seems to cover the vast majority of racing games... technically free to use but if you donate an amount of your choosing you will get access to a higher data refresh rate. This software allows you to choose exactly what effects get represented and tune how they are felt (eg rumble strips, suspension movement, engine strain, gear shift, abs activation etc etc

For IL2 I'm using sim shaker wings, which was about £20 but works fantastically well... again you can choose which effects to represent and their relative strength etc. There's something so amazing about how the old wwii fighters shake into life as your start the engine, the stall buffet as you try and max your turn rates during a dog fight, and the dakka dakka of the guns firing that is just very hard to describe how much it adds in VR especially!

If anyone is on the fence about whether to add a transducer to their rig, do it! I literally can't go back... it feels wrong when it's turned off.

One thing I learned during the tuning process is that less is definitely more, be careful how many effects you throw at a single transducer as you can start to lose definition and it becomes a little "muddy". I don't think I'll go so far as to add a transducer to each corner for localised effects etc but I can definitely see the benefit of a second one just to allow you to separate out some effects and allow them to really shine - eg put the engine vibration on one and road bumps/suspension vibration on another.


And with that we're pretty much caught up to where I'm at. Next on the list is to make the actuators for the steering module and get that wired up, tidy up the joystick/thrust lever wiring and fit a USB Hub underneath for a single point of connection to the PC.

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Glad you guys like it so far!

I dont think you need any suggestions. This is coming along very nicely. I would have suggested sticking with aluminium profile for how easy it is to work with and modify.

Agreed, but I just fancied something different to all the extrusion builds you see. You aren't wrong though lol.

Just remember if you have loadcell pedals, you can be putting a great deal of force through the brake pedal. Make sure the runners you have the pedal sled on are up for that.

Yeah I designed with load cell forces in mind... these rails and carriages are incredibly strong and rigid, designed for use on CNC machines and load factors way above anything needed here. It will rip the wood frame apart first!

This shows quite well the chunk factor:

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Cheers! Yes thankfully the man cave is reasonably well provisioned with a Lathe, CNC router and 3D printer! Also yes, designed myself... I enjoy the making of things almost as much as the using of said things, becomes something of a hobby by itself.

Toothy - plan is to stay on the castors, it's easy to roll around!

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Thanks again

Today I managed to grab a little time to make something for the chair after having been ordered to make a sandpit for wee man and earning some brownie points, so decided to get something quick and easy done.

So currently I'm using quest wirelessly but I have a G2 pre-ordered for September and wanted to come up with a little something to hold the cable up off the neck/shoulders and make using a wired headset less irritating.

Whipped up this little design to go n the back of the seat (details of cable hook I'll work on later):




Cut the arm from 2.5mm CF and 3D printed the rest. Bish bash bosh! Need to get some shorter screws for the main base.

 

[Zeeflyboy]

@randal

Thanks!

It's not an ebay special, Uncle Petey has kindly given you the link to where you can find them. It shares a similar base, and resultingly many of the design flaws, to the ebay ones you generally find but the really important differentiation is that most of the cheaper ones you'll find are using unsupported round rod on the X and Z axis, and SBR20 on the Y. Both of these are much less rigid than the proper linear rail used on the X6 and will therefore lead to a machine that is significantly less rigid and less capable. They will do the job as long as that job is suitable for their capabilities (primarily wood, plastics, composites, some light soft metal work with the right machining strategies), and with some learning of how to work within their limitations you can get some surprisingly reasonable results out of them as long as your expectations aren't out of touch with reality (I had a similar machine before this one, so I know a bit about them!).

Even the X6 is lacking in several areas design wise though, ultimately 2300 bucks is still cheap as chips for a proper CNC machine so there will be compromises. I'm actually in the drawn out process of building my own upgrade to the X6 which is taking forever due to a beautiful combination of lack of time, funds and to be honest interest at the moment. I will get around to completing it at some point though, I've done a lot of the hard stuff already!

@ryhoper lol... You would have to do quite an awkward entry/exit to get close to smacking it. The natural way to get in and out has you lean forward rather than slide perfectly vertically up and down the seat which you would have to do to make contact with the cable caddy, plus all that would happen is you would hit the plastic part which has smooth edges and would probably twang out of the way as there is some spring to the carbon fibre.

 

[Zeeflyboy]

So a few tweaks to the design for this cable caddy, firstly I decided the base needed to be stronger so I built a chunkier model made of several parts so I could align the print orientations better to be as strong as possible (for those unfamiliar with 3D printing, layer lines tend to be a weakness)... I can now swing it around like the ape that I am and no chance of breaking it... I added some parts to the base to better fit the curve of the seat back too. I also came up with an idea for the design for actually holding the cable.

The part that holds the cable just uses a simple O-ring to lock the cable in place and if the cable gets yanked too hard it just releases it, so should prevent any possible damage to the headset if one gets overly excited!

The printed parts could do with some tidying up, I probably need to clean my nozzle as they normally come off the bed better than this.

New base part with a cutaway to better show the construction:






New holder part:








So for now that bit is done, I'm now ready for my G2 please HP.... I'm waiting. Please.


I think next I really need to get the actuators for the upper section done and get them out the way.


And for reading this far, here's a fun little video of my boy demonstrating the rigidity of the steering module for you (love that a 2yr old catches that slide at the end lol) apologies for the vertical video, the wife was filming! Yes, I've considered divorce over it:

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Ahem, I refer you to the above post!

"...apologies for the vertical video, the wife was filming! Yes, I've considered divorce over it"

 

[Zeeflyboy]

The seat can slide forwards, and the pedals can come back as far as you would want... if you look at the pic I posted at the end of post #8 (here) you can see roughly the limits of adjustability. The seat can actually travel another inch or so forward from there. The only limiting factor I think would be the height of the steering wheel as I can only have it come so low and still be usable for a larger person. I imagine that could be solved by a booster cushion.

That's is flipping sensational, we need a proper video of it, all aroudn the whoel thing, that's amazing, most impressed I've been in years with a home brew that!

Cheers! I'll think about doing an overview video for you once it's tidied up and "stage 1" is finished, although we have a 3 day overdue baby at the moment so may not be that soon lol.

@Uncle Petey haha, he's gotta learn somehow!