BUILD LOG: Racing + Flying VR Rig

[Callsign BH]

Hello all! New sim racer here and looking to start a bit of a build log for a couple reasons:

1. It seems like you guys like this stuff like I do
2. Because I know I am going to need some guidance and input along the way

Before I get into the present and future of my build, first I'd like to briefly share a bit of background. I'm 100% new to sim racing (currently focusing on ACC only, as I love GT3 cars), but I'm not new to simming in general...

BACKGROUND

Around mid 2014 I heard about Digital Combat Simulator (DCS) and given I spent my entire adolescence wanting to be a fighter pilot (before the Navy told me the dream was dead due to me being red/green colorblind) it seemed like something that might be relevant to my interests. Boy was I right! As I assume most of you have experienced, I quickly fell down that peripheral rabbit hole. Said "rabbit hole" become more of a "black hole" that I was falling down at hyperspeed, and the rest is history. From one HOTAS to the next, I ended up becoming very enthralled with the high-end boutique peripherals. Over the ~6 years since I started on DCS, I've gone through waves of being on and off with playing - "off" times being mostly due to my career taking too much of my time and/or other personal life obligations - and I've ebbed and flowed with my level of seriousness with playing. I've joined virtual squadrons and fought in the SATAL league there, I've read military flight manuals front to back to learn more about operating the jets, etc. To this day I still retain a love and enjoyment for DCS, although I haven't played much the past year or so.

Around June of 2020, after years of thinking "I should get into sim racing" (and being told as much by some of my flight sim buddies), I started to get serious about it. Again, I fell down that rabbit hole and became determined to get a racing rig put together. The twist this time was that my wife and I were expecting our first child in July, and we had just bought a new home that was undergoing a lot of renovations...plus there was a small global pandemic going on. Not exactly optimal timing, but life rarely lines up perfectly, so I said "Screw it" and proceeded ahead anyway. With the learnings from my flight sim hardware shenanigans, I subscribed to the "Buy Once, Cry Once" philosophy from day 1 here with the racing build.

I had never sim raced before, but I own an AMG and have always loved fast cars. In 2018, I did an AMG Academy Track Day @ Leguna Seca which was incredible and gave me confidence that I would love sim racing the same as I do flight simming. That day I was told by "Nipper" (my instructor for the day) that I "was a natural", but still I never took the leap to get a racing rig put together. Now that has changed...

PRESENT DAY BUILD

At the end of July, after the baby had arrived, I started ordering the racing rig hardware and checking hourly for the out of stock items to come back into stock. Below is what I settled on for the build and I ordered as soon as the items came back into stock:

• Rig: SimLab P1-X (Black)
  • Add-ons: SimFeet + Seat Rails + Seat Slider + Keyboard Tray + Mouse Tray + Cup Holders
• Pedals: Wave Italy WAVE FORCE MONZA - SIM PEDALS PRO
  • I ordered the 2 pedal set with no clutch, as I have 0 intentions of ever racing a car that doesn't use clutch paddles
• Direct Drive Base: SIMUCUBE 2 Pro
• Rim: Ascher Racing F-28 Wireless
  • I wanted the F-64 but ran out of patience in waiting for Martin to get this back into stock
  • I might add a new rim in soon, but TBD (would be a F-64 or a Gomez rim)
• Seat: Sparco Evo II QRT

The Ascher rim took the longest to come back into stock, which was painful, but by the end or end of October I finally had everything I needed. Those few months of waiting were rough. Unfortunately, the waiting didn't stop there as our new home had some undisclosed water damage/issues in the basement, which required a very costly waterproofing system to be installed. This also meant that the finishes of the basement needed to be totally ripped out as they dug the perimeter of the cement up to install all of that. While this was quite costly, it did mean that I had a clean slate to work with for remodeling my man cave...so that is exactly what I did.

The contractors were here for a month or so getting all of that done, and at this point everything is mostly finished besides some things I am going to DIY myself, and then having the painters come (which we cancelled in early December due to COVID spiking again, and we will likely have them come in the Spring once things hopefully have settled down).

Here are some photos of the build....

PROGRESS SHOTS:

FINAL PRODUCT:

I have since cleaned up all the wires with some TLC on cable management. I will get more photos of that up soon.

NEXT STEPS:

1. Add a pedal slider to the racing pedals
2. Add tactile feedback to the rig
3. Add my flight sim peripherals to the rig
4. Build button boxes for both racing and flight
5. Add motion

With the guidance of @Mr Latte , I've gotten a small start on adding tactile feedback to the rig. Yesterday I ordered a Behringer NX3000D + 2x ButtKicker Concerts. Configuration of the two BK-CT's is TBD, but I am likely going to add one to the seat and one to the pedals. Unfortunately, the amp is on backorder under the end of January (yay, more waiting!) but once that is here it will mark the next big progress I am able to make on the rig. Once I get this all set up, I will work on adding anywhere from 4-8 exciters onto the seat. On my old flight setup, I used a JetSeat SE from Andre, which was very nice, but I know it will pale in comparison to what I am working on for this build.

Regarding adding my flight sim equipment to the P1-X, I still have some more thinking/planning to do on this one. Since we all love photos, here are some shots of my current gear...

FLIGHT GEAR:

• Rig: WheelStandPro for TM Warthog
  • Add-ons: Left Side RSG module
• Pedals: Slaw RX Vipers
  • Add-ons: Motorcycle damper
• Throttle: Custom made Throttletek F/A-18C throttle
  • Add-ons: Made with Halls sensor instead of a standard pot, and I procured ~$500+ worth of custom switches for them to use in the build, these are the OTTO mil-spec switches that are used in the real jet
• Stick Base: Virpil VPC T-50 base
  • Add-ons: Sahaj 15cm Black extension
• Grip: Thrustmaster F/A-18C Replica
  • I also have my old A-10C/F-16 Warthog grip from when I had a TM Warthog HOTAS

I've got some plans to change some of this stuff up a bit as well, but one step at a time...

Regarding the button boxes, I have about $1500 worth of mil-spec switches, rotaries, and other misc stuff that I purchased when I was planning to build a 1:1 replica cockpit of a F/A-18C Hornet. These are mostly Honeywell and EATON/Cutler Hammer, and are incredibly high quality with a great tactile feel. I've also got a landing gear handle from a GR-4 Tornado fighter jet that I will need to build into one of the botton boxes as well, as well as a landing HOOK handle. My point here is that I've got a lot of the materials already on hand that I can use for a racing box, I'll just need to add a few things here or there maybe.

While I've never soldered a thing in my life, and am largely not "handy" whatsoever, I did acquire all the necessary soldering equipment before...despite never finding the time to use any of it Hopefully that changes in 2021, but I'm not so sure given it seems that newborns take quite a bit of your free time, and I've got a lot already on my plate. Someday, though.

That is all for now....the baby needs fed again...but I hope you've enjoyed reading. I'll get the specs of my rig and VR put up sometime soon. Looking forward to hearing everyone's thoughts and feedback!

Happy New Year to all!

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Edit to add PC specs:

GAMING RIG:

• GPU: Nvidia RTX 3090 Founders Edition
• CPU: Intel i7-9700K
  • Still searching daily for a AMD 5900X to come into stock and allow me 2 seconds to be able to add it to my cart before the scalpers, and which point I will just go ahead and update the mobo, RAM, AIO, etc.
• Motherboard: Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Master
• AIO Cooler: Corsair H115i RGB Platinum
• RAM: 32GB Corsair Vengeance Pro RGB 3200
• Monitor: Dell U3415W Curved 3440x1440
• VR HMD: Reverb G2

 

[metalnwood]

You are welcome to send me personally, in DM any responses you have had with Simtag in that they stated to you to send a substantial sum of money (similar to cost of springs) in donation as you alluded to. You made an accusation, how or why would I have access to their customer communications/inquiries. So yes I ask you now outright to provide proof for me to take to them.

There is no "if they were wrong" either what you said is true or just more false information and your comment about this is the first I am aware of such.

I have already discussed this in a meeting earlier tonight as I was concerned so it will be looked into.

There is no distancing from Simtag. The early intentions were that buying RB products from Simtag was a way to ensure people were using the approved isolation and installation we encourage people to have. To then offer them an invite to become a member seemed a reasonable thing to do. However, anyone can buy that hardware and use whatever tactile transducers or effects they want with it. They don't even need to be interested in anything regards RaceBass at all.

We already have several members that have their own solutions in part, regards plates or brackets that suit their own installations but the official springs have been popular choices for people. There is no "you must buy all this stuff" rule. Those people get the same help and are treated no differently to those who may buy the whole bundle. At the same time and this is common sense, people want to show their support and buy the official solutions because they respect the work that Peter/Mark and others in the community are doing and appreciate what we are trying to achieve.


It was commented by someone here a while ago that buying hardware to gain access to the RB effects and community could be deemed a paywall of sorts, when that was not and is not the intention. Therefore to clarify, RaceBass community is its own entity, Simtag sales do not influence who we grant access to nor does it control any aspect of it.

If someone has reasons to query if they would be granted access to the community, then why is that? For the vast majority of people of course it should not be a problem.....

There was no accusation. Simtag saying you need to provide a donation to get access to the profiles is right on the money, thats what you said two posts up. You gave three or four reasons for wanting a donation. I didnt say anything that wasn't true.

simtag will sell hardware, that will give you access to the discord where you donate to get access to the profiles - maybe but no guarantee.
Catch .22, gotta buy the hardware to find out if you get the profiles, if you dont did you want the hardware?

I am glad you are getting it just how you want it though.

 

[RCHeliguy]

And all I feel is sorry that @Callsign BH has to deal with this clutter in his build thread.

He's excited about building his rig and sharing the progress he's making, nothing more. He's not into any of this. But some of you now consider "Race Bass" a trigger word and decide to vent all over the place whenever you see that word.

Personally I'm so over this discussion that I could scream. Let me very honestly say it's been confusing to me as well and I've seen the discussions on the inside. I consider myself a fairly intelligent and articulate person, but I don't know how to reconcile this in a nice clean black and white conclusive way.

I will say that there has never been a price tag for anything mentioned in the discord server other than the hardware.

However, when 9 out of 10 things lead you in one direction and are obvious, but that last 1 out of 10 things is subjective based on viewpoints, there is no finishing an argument. There is always that technicality that can be argued.

I can not say that metalnwood does not have a point. In the big picture taking everything else into account Rodney sees this as a small part of the equation, and yes there are many other things involved, and if you have adopted the whole Race Bass concept it makes sense, but if you don't see the value in the rest of system that one thing stands apart. If metalnwood embraced the whole RaceBass concept this would not be an issue, but he has not.

So I can not argue this in any absolute way that I'm comfortable with and this argument has no logical conclusion.

I will mention Race Bass in my build thread from time to time, but I would appreciate it if that did not start this damn argument over and over again.

Can we let this thread get back to being fun and about building a sim rig ?

 

[Peter Winkler]

hi
such a great report, sorry first time i saw it, really like it
lets focus on the topic, great rig pictures
peter

 

[Callsign BH]

@RCHeliguy thanks for jumping in, appreciate it.

@Peter Winkler happy you found the log!

My log here got off to a good start with the build and associated pics, then I kind of stalled it out myself along the way as I waited for this mounting solution to come to fruition in order to add the tactile I had purchased. Lots of “I hope to be doing this soon” and then not actually doing it as I continued waiting during 2021. That said, good things comes to those who wait and I’ll have a RaceBass approved install done in the near future!

I suppose I have made a couple of small improvements to the rig along the way in 2021 but also had a long break where I didn’t even use the rig because life got too busy. It’s been mostly fluff here and there from me in 2021, but 2022 I am getting back on track.

My point? This log isn’t perfect and has had had its high and low points; a little butting of heads isn’t going to “break my log”. But I appreciate folks being sensitive to the log and asking to get back on topic.

All said, I’m super excited that the wait is nearly over and I’ll be able to put all of this tactile equipment to great use! Hoping the RB stuff is here by this coming weekend and I’ll be able to get it all up and running…the big risk to this is if my wife goes into labor earlier than expected. IF that happens, we again may see some delays, but I’ll find a way to get it done still, just might need to be done in bits and pieces.

I’ll be sure to snap some good pics along the way during install and, of course, of the final product.

I sold my JetSeat SE when I built this rig (feels like ages ago) so I’ve actually never experienced a true rig with top tier tactile…just a JetSeat on my computer chair for flight simming years ago. This is going to be a big game changer for me, and I hope it starts some new momentum in my progress on the other planned enhancements to the rig I’ve discussed.

Cheers all! Like I said before, we are all here with a common goal of trying to get the best out our rigs that we can, so let’s keep that in mind and move forward together.

 

[Callsign BH]

Thinking back, it’s funny…when I first started this log I remember it was because @Mr Latte suggested I do it. Then I remember PMing him with a bunch of questions on tactile options and saying “I’ll probably just wait to install it all until you have the isolators all sorted out and available”. He warned it might be a while, but I stayed the course.

I doubt back then that he believed I would actually wait 13-14 months, but here we are…I did! My wife tells me every day I am way too impatient…but it seems like I am plenty patient. I’ll keep that one to myself though, don’t need to open that can of worms.

 

[Callsign BH]

The RaceBass eagle has landed in my local DHL sort facility as of 8:15am this morning, so hoping it will be delivered this weekend -- a few days in advance of DHL's estimated 2/15 delivery date.

Getting close!

 

[Callsign BH]

Man DHL Express is fast, it's out for delivery by EOD today...so a weekend filled with "get ready for new baby #2" house projects just got even busier by adding in an "install RB" project.

 

[cnhoff]

Man DHL Express is fast, it's out for delivery by EOD today...so a weekend filled with "get ready for new baby #2" house projects just got even busier by adding in an "install RB" project.

Kinda ironic...you have waited for 13 months and now everything happens all at once

 

[Callsign BH]

RACEBASS INSTALL

My RaceBass seat plate and isolator install is done. Haven’t touched the pedal install yet, will fight that battle another time

I did everything once last night (which involved a ton of inefficiencies), then did it all over again tonight to correct the things I didn’t like about how I did it last night. Such is my life, I rarely do something once and leave it as is…always a healthy dose of trial and error.

PARTS LIST

Tactile Mounting	RaceBass Seat Plate + 8 Isolators + 8 Brackets (4 of each installed on seat, 4 on hand for pedals)
Transducers	ButtKicker BK-LFE (2 total; 1 installed on seat, 1 on hand for pedals)
Transducers	Clark Synthesis TST429 Platinum (2 total; 1 installed on seat, 1 on hand for pedals)
Amps	Behringer NX3000D (2 total; 1 for LFEs and 1 for TST-429's)
Soundcards	SoundBlaster X3 (2 total; 1 for LFE/TSTs, 1 on hand for Exciters)
Audio Connectors	Neutrik SpeakON Connectors (several NL2FX, two NL4MMX for TST-429s)
Audio Connectors	Nakamichi Speaker Banana Plugs (used for BK's)
Audio Cables	Pro Co S12NN-25 12 AWG Speakon Speaker Cable 25 ft. (cut to size, patched with Neutrik NL2FX connectors)
Audio Cables	Pro Co S12NN-10 12 AWG Speakon Speaker Cable 10 ft. (cut to size, patched with Neutrik NL2FX connectors)
Audio Cables	Mogami Y Audio 3.5mm Stereo Male to Neutrik Dual XLR (2 total; 1 for each NX3000D)
Amp Rack	Samson SRK Universal Equipment Rack Stands 8 Space

The above isn't inclusive of everything, mostly just missing some random hardware user for installation. This should cover all the main pieces.

INSTALL PROCESS

Attaching a few photos here of the process. Full disclosure, I did a terrible job of capturing the “process” in photos. I started off okay then got locked in and just worked to finish it, without taking progress pics, hence why I’ve never started a YouTube channel… and why this log is so mediocre. I never stop to smell the roses, I just sprint to the finish line.

Received the boxes; 2 boxes of DIY isolators and mounting brackets, 1 seat plate.

Took the seat/seat rails off and set it aside for safe keeping

Removed all of the corner bracket covers, bolts and corner brackets on the P1-X around the seat

Took the middle and back cross members out, and flipped them over because the corner brackets on the standard install for the P1-X seat rails scratched the hell out of the profile.

Increased the gap between the back and middle cross member in order to fit the RaceBass plate.

Fixed them all back into place

Finished the first night of isolator assembly and plate installation, then realized I should’ve flipped the mounting brackets 180 degrees in order to have the seat sit as high as I wanted it…and frankly as high as I needed it in order to use the existing P1-X pieces of profile that the seat rails were mounted to

TEMPORARY "FINAL" RACEBASS INSTALL

Took everything back apart tonight, back to the beginning, flipped the mounting brackets 180 degrees, and put the isolators and plate back on (mounted higher than before) and then mounted the seat.

Finished product is the final photo above…at least I hope so because I don’t want to have to do it all a third time.

I need to take care of some other stuff tonight, so I’m taking a pause for now. I have a full day tomorrow and Monday will be busy with work/Valentines Day, so I’ll probably leave it untouched — and not tested — until I can get back at it Tuesday. I took Tuesday and Wednesday off work to finish it up before baby #2 arrives, so should make a lot more progress then and be in a good position to share some initial thoughts.

NEXT STEPS TO FINALIZE RACEBASS INSTALL

1. Rework the spacing of my wheel and pedals, as needed, given the new geometry of my seat position
2. Load up the RaceBass SimHub profiles, map everything, and really test things out in ACC
3. Once I confirm all is well, take care of some much needed cable management to get things nice and tidy again (I was smart enough to start it with some cable clips and zip ties under the seat, before I mounted everything down…but still lots to do to get everything tidied up)

 

[Mr Latte]

Welcome to the club....
Installation and teething issues aside. Taking time to get familiar with tactile effects and Simhub setting to suit you should bring a new level of immersion for you to enjoy. I am curious how well you are going to find other people's profiles/settings that they have dialed in, for the same sim/cars feel on your own rig.

One of the objectives is to make this possible, so that people who already have or don't mind putting in a lot of time and effort into effects tuning and settings. Then becomes a benefit to those that do not have the patience/time and just want to enjoy a top-level tactile experience.

Hope you can get exciters installed soon as well.
Best wishes for the family too

 

[Callsign BH]

Welcome to the club....
Installation and teething issues aside. Taking time to get familiar with tactile effects and Simhub setting to suit you should bring a new level of immersion for you to enjoy. I am curious how well you are going to find other people's profiles/settings that they have dialed in, for the same sim/cars feel on your own rig.

One of the objectives is to make this possible, so that people who already have or don't mind putting in a lot of time and effort into effects tuning and settings. Then becomes a benefit to those that do not have the patience/time and just want to enjoy a top-level tactile experience.

Hope you can get exciters installed soon as well.
Best wishes for the family too

Thanks man, feels great to be up and running after all this time.

The good thing is that despite minimal time to tinker today, I’m starting to connect a lot of dots on the SimHub profiles/effects now, how they all feel and work, etc…so I will be working to dial things up and down over the coming days. There’s a few low hanging fruits to knock out first, then I can really get into the details to maximize everything. Pleasantly surprised how quickly I’ve been able to pick up the basics of SimHub and understand the effects at an elementary level.

First drives have been really enjoyable as well, but I can definitely make some slight tweaks to make things even sweeter for my own setup/tastes.

 

[Callsign BH]

I did find a small 30 minute window of time yesterday to plug everything in and test that it works...it did!

I spent most of my time testing the SimHub effects out one by one just to acclimate myself with them and try to close some knowledge gaps of my own. Once I finished that, just to see how it all played out in action, I drove a couple of laps. Everything felt great, as expected.

I'll be out of pocket all of today, but tomorrow I will be going through and doing some fine tune adjusting of some of the gains for my own tastes/needs, based on my installation. Primarily, I believe the biggest thing to work through will be reducing the gain percent by percent on some of the LFE effects with very low HZ (i.e. gear change blip, big road impact, etc)...currently with the values I was testing at these effects were causing a very loud single "pang" or "punch" that resonated throughout the house, two floors up through two closed solid slab doors, so I just need to bring the gain down a bit to reduce that noise while ensuring I still receive the tactile feedback I want. Should be a pretty simple task, and was expected. I didn't notice anything out of sorts with the TST-429 effects. From there, I'll spend a good bit of time driving and then work on any further fine tuning to balance things, as needed.

Side note: My seat slider handle was rattling like crazy, likely due to either the design or my installation. I've pulled the handle off for now, but will need to work to either reinstall it with more tension, or remove the slider altogether.

Really looking forward to continue to dig into this, and mostly, to having tomorrow and Wednesday off work to just enjoy everything and do a lot of driving

 

[EsxPaul]

Side note: My seat slider handle was rattling like crazy, likely due to either the design or my installation. I've pulled the handle off for now, but will need to work to either reinstall it with more tension, or remove the slider altogether

I had the exact same issue. Tried to add more tension by bending the handle outwards but it didn't work very well.

I fixed it by fitting four open centre rubber grommets (4mm inner diameter) into the holes on the sliders. They stopped those spikes on the slider handle from rattling against each slider

 

[Callsign BH]

I had the exact same issue. Tried to add more tension by bending the handle outwards but it didn't work very well.

I fixed it by fitting four open centre rubber grommets (4mm inner diameter) into the holes on the sliders. They stopped those spikes on the slider handle from rattling against each slider

View attachment 541111

Brilliant, thanks Paul!

 

[EsxPaul]

Brilliant, thanks Paul!

No problem

If you do decide to try them out, pay close attention as you refit the spikes of the adjuster bar into the grommets. It's quite a tight fit and if you don't quite centre them you'll tend to push them through, they'll drop into the slider mechanism and lots of cursing will follow

 

[RCHeliguy]

No problem

If you do decide to try them out, pay close attention as you refit the spikes of the adjuster bar into the grommets. It's quite a tight fit and if you don't quite centre them you'll tend to push them through, they'll drop into the slider mechanism and lots of cursing will follow

BTW Paul, I think you will likely end up helping a lot of other people with this same issue

 

[Mr Latte]

Simple solutions often work wonders eh...

 

[Callsign BH]

Spent today taking the long way around the block testing all the RB SimHub effects out. Out of the gate, some of the low HZ LFE effects were giving some pretty audible bangs. I spent most of the day testing effects while driving one by one, tweaking the gain on effects (mostly just tweaking down when it was giving the loud bang), and then once I thought I had something I might like I’d hop in a race online. Eventually I then tried going back to the stock mix and just bumped the NX3000D amp down to 1pm from 1:30pm. Doing this was perfect for me, maintains a good balance between all the effects and layers that feels cohesive, and keeps the LFE calm enough to not give that loud punch.

I’m sure I’ll do more testing and small tweaks, once I have more time to realize my wishes, but for now this is really, really good.

Long story short, definitely worth the 14 month wait to install everything. Do I wish I had done it sooner? Sure, but now it’s done right and it all works well together. Everything feels great and I’ve really been enjoying testing everything out and doing some racing with an elevated experience.

Also moved my pedals and wheel mount positioning around today, and feel like I’ve got that back to being locked into a really comfortable spot.

 

[Mr Latte]

Good that your getting more to grips with it all and Im happy its turning out to be worth all the time effort and money as well as trust you have put into this shared concept.

One tip to try, is to goto some of those overpowering layers that causes pang with the BK, set the layer to 100%, and then dial back the volume on the amp, see if you then can run those layers with up to the 100% avoiding the pang.

An alternative to consider is to alter the DSP to lower the boost from the set 10dB and drop that down to 8dB, (now you see why I avoid using 12dB). With the large BK, there does seem to be a sweet spot that it can work best in.

This will also highlight to you with how we apply the DSP why having the extra wattage of an NX6000D is wasted as we do not even use all of what the NX3000D offers.

The 1pm position on the amp is popular but we can see some changes needed when other soundcards are maybe used. Talking of soundcards, just make sure your creative software is not applying any EQ of its own.

Additional isolation may help with the issues you have at home with vibrations traveling but can be looked at in the future...

 

[Callsign BH]

Updated my RaceBass install post above with a "parts list", at a high level. To avoid confusion, the list is inclusive of everything I've acquired for both the seat and pedal installs...only the seat install is done for now. There's also some parts listed for the future addition of 4-6 exciters, but I need the EPQ 304's to come back in stock in the US before I can venture down that path.