Example of poor simracing equipment

[Niels_at_home]

Hi All,

Each simracing forum has the ''show your cockpit'' type treads. I will start with saying; its a hobby, if you have fun its great! However, many of these setups are poor.

Since this hurts the simulation experience and drivability, I might use this tread to show a few initially impressive cockpits which are in reality quite bad! Yet the community response seems to be 'Wow I want one!' .


Entry 1: "Full Motion Big Screens .. or Micro Motion Full Lag?"
Setup:

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What is wrong:
Looks very impressive. Must have cost a FORTUNE! However:
- the lag of these expensive televisions is incredible. Its undrivable on the limit in a good simulator
- the 'full motion' must have cost something but it barely moves at all. Waste of money, as are all wobbly seats but I might go into that at a later date!

Hypothetically, the user could have spent the money on a static seat, Leo FFB wheel, much better pedals and three much faster gaming screens. He would have money left over and an infinitely better simulation experience!

 

[Niels_at_home]

A very big reason why I never went beyond headphones is the stereo nature of rFactor. I'm not sure how directional you still hear with a helmet and earplugs in a real car, but surround audio could be an accurate form of 'feedback'.

 

[Georg Ortner]

Any money spent on wobbly seats is money wasted from a *sim* point of view. Perhaps it can immerse, but it really is no more than a wobbly seat that, as it leans to the left, as they do in a right hand turn, throw your body to the right of the seat, giving you an inverted G force clue, but ''G'' is not present in these seats. Sustained 0.1G and it just 'nudges' you, often in the wrong way as I just said.

Leaning left, once you're there might give you the 0.1 or 0.2G 'right hand corner G' but when the seat goes from 'straight up' to this left lean, you're pushed to the right of the seat, as if its entering a left hand turn. This 'nudge' is likely to be of greater short G burst than the sustained G

ALso, moving in relation to your pedals and wheel is just odd, either you limit motion of the seat to perhaps 2cm each way, so you don't have any motion, or you don't but then you move around your pedals and wheel which is just wrong on so many levels..

Of course you are right in terms of a motion seat not being able to simulate the actual g-forces that you experience in a race car, and the video you showed is a particularly bad example.

But there are some good systems out there, that are very aware of that fact, and put a great deal of thought into how to get the most immersive experience out of motion.

Best example imo is:
www.simxperience.com

Our Motion Principles

Our simulators are designed to optimize the principles of kinesthesia and proprioception. This concept is often applied in advanced Olympic training programs.
The fact is that no simulator can provide the full G-Forces, torque, etc.. that an actual vehicle can, therefore a simulator must fool the brain into perceiving these effects in an immersive manner. We do this by properly scaling G-forces and vehicle movements, manipulating your inner ear (sense of balance) and by creating properly scaled muscle pressures.
The key to creating the properly scaled muscle pressures lies in the fact that we choose not to move the wheel and pedals, and only the occupant. You can easily see how under braking, for example, that we can apply the same pressure to the muscles in your wrist and forearms as would be applied in an actual vehicle. Simulators that attempt to move the entire cockpit (wheel included) could only create these pressures if they were able to create the exact same G-Forces as the real vehicle AND sustain them.
Our unique combination of kinesthesia optimization combined with muscle pressure optimization and muscle memory optimization results in one of the most advanced and immersive simulations available anywhere at any price.
It's not enough to simply create this immersion. The human brain will continually attempt to break the immersion by attempting to identify movements that are not to scale with real world movements or that were unexpected. We go to great lengths to ensure that each motion profile created meets a strict criteria that focuses on the reduction of these "negative motion cues". However, not everyone will be immersed by the exact same criteria and some tweaks to the motion profiles may be required to achieve near perfect immersion for a particular individual.

I think "wobbly seat" doesnt quite do justice to systems like these.

Agree with all your other points though!

 

[Paul Mullins]

Of course you are right in terms of a motion seat not being able to simulate the actual g-forces that you experience in a race car

Even the F1 sims such as the Red Bull Simulator can only pull a maximum of 1-G by virtue of their design using gravity not lateral loading.

I wonder neils, if Berney 'gave' you one of his sims, would you use it or throw it in the corner?

 

[George Pilkington]

Good question Paul...

 

[Niels_at_home]

This can quickly turn into a virtual pillow fight I fear!

The Red Bull simulator is aparantly not very good. I have not tried it but as I am fortunate enough to work a little bit in motorsport, the driver count who prefer my rFactor modified single seater simulators above the Red Bull one is 5. Also I know someone who knows the simulator hardware and he said the motion system is very slow.

Perhaps that is the highest end example of what looks great might not work great. But I have not seen or tried it, I am going by what others say.

The *real* red bull simulator (that they actually use for the drivers) is probably a lot more advanced though.

 

[Paul Mullins]

Wow - I'll be sure to tell Sebastian Vettel that his simulator should be returned for a refund as it is "not very good"..

No doubt he'll be around to pick up your wooden sim next week..

 

[Niels_at_home]

Red Bull has (to my knowledge) 2 simulators. A pretty old one you can hire as a race driver and they use for promotion, and a proper one that Vettel & co use. It is likely the old one has a good F1 model, but their 'for rent' GP2 / Gp3 / F3 models might not be so good, as they are afterthoughts compared to the F1 effort and data they have.

I was hugely surprised to hear this from multiple real drivers. I assume the old Red Bull simulator is in pretty much all aspects technically superior to what any of us have. Perhaps its just the non F1 cars you can drive on it where they might've copied some tire data that is a bit off, who knows.

But I can completely understand if people who read this from me consider that to be the end of the little sanity you thought I might have..