Buying advice please - Next Level v3 Motion Platform

[MarkR]

I'm looking for some advice and thoughts of other owners or people with good knowledge of the product, please.

I always said I'd buy myself a motion simulator if I could afford one and had the room available. Well, that day may have arrived. I'm impressed by what I've seen of the Next Level v3 Motion Platform

This seems to meet all my criteria:

+ Limited space requirements, I don't have room for a huge sim rig but this seems compact enough to work.
+ Works with Oculus Rift VR, that fixed head position setting solution is impressive
+ Great support and regular updates from the developers
+ Available in the UK
+ Works with my current Thrustmaster wheel and accessories.
+ Sub £3k for the full setup, I'm not a pro racer I'm not looking for a practice simulator this is just for fun so the cost/fun balance has to be right.

So help me do the man maths! Is it worth it?

Is there another similar product I should also look at? It would need to be reasonably compact, work with VR, available in the UK without too much hassle and in the same £3-5K price range.

Is there anywhere I can try one or even better several of the systems in the UK?

 

[anton_Chez]

Too late...................

 

[anton_Chez]

Whaaaa? What happened?

 

[Mascot]

Whaaaa? What happened?

I like to give people the benefit of the doubt so I'm hoping it's an honest mistake that he can rectify. He's selling a bunch of them so they are either ALL v3s and he's listed them incorrectly, or he's accidentally sent me v3s instead of v3is. I'm hoping it's the latter as I really want those v3is now.

eBay messaging now seems to be back up so my message has gone. Watch this space..!

At least I should be able to finally fire up the NLV3 tonight if I get my sh!t together.

 

[Mascot]

Too late...................

Lol, what have you bought now mate..?

 

[anton_Chez]

Oh wow that's a bummer. I have the V3's and they are great, but it seems that now I have ordered the OSW and have a HE sequential shifter sitting here also, it's only a matter of time before the V3's become HE Pro's or something similar. The problem with sim racing and I am sure other hobbies too is half the fun is squiring the stuff!. When you're a good saver and don't waste much money on things you cannot use/see, it makes the question 'do I really need this' all that much tougher to answer responsibly...!

Oh well. Hopefully that get's rectified for you in the right way and you can enjoy everything rather than have a sour feeling from dishonest people.

I bought the OSW from Simracingbay. Told myself forever that I wasn't interested in Direct Drive and here we are......

 

[Mascot]

Nice one. A DD wheel is definitely in my future now that I've got a worthy cockpit, but after recent activity my bank manager is currently standing in my front garden and staring at me through the kitchen window, gently tapping a cricket bat against his palm.

 

[anton_Chez]

Lol forget about him he clearly isn't a sim racer......

Really looking forward to next week. The shipping on the OSW is like 1-3 days so with a bit of luck I'll have it by next weekend. For now I have the V2.5 but it's like brand new and I think I want to advertise it that way. I haven't used it since I sold off the V2 and then I tore down my old rig.

 

[Mascot]

Ok, this NLV3 gizmo is pretty frikkin' awesome.
I haven't had much time to fiddle with it yet but I can already tell it's going to enhance the immersion immeasurably. What a fantastic partner to VR.
Default settings out of the box felt crazily OTT so all I've done so far is drop the master slider (intensity?) from 100% down to 50%, and haven't touched the post processing. This immediately felt more natural while still giving a believable impression of car motion. It's crazy when you take the headset off and see just how small the seat movements are - they feel huge when you're deeply immersed!
Looking forward to fine tuning over the coming days and getting my head around what each slider actually does. Good times ahead!

 

[anton_Chez]

Make sure you check out my settings thread once you have had a play yourself. You can then compare what you have been able to achieve with what I have with a number of hours testing and correspondence with MotionSystems. I would like your overall feedback as well with both what you prefer in terms of your ideal feel as well as how my settings may / may not help you achieve that. Keep in mind I have not yet played with the brand new negative setting in post processing. I will get to that once I'm back up and running, of course

My feeling is the same as yours, and most others. Smaller movement settings, especially in VR are the way to go. Our new post processing tab helps up refine that, however, and has been a great addition.

 

[Mascot]

I tried your settings for the non-formula car mate but found them a bit strong. Maybe I need to work up to them slowly..! Thought my face was going to push up against the windscreen the first time I slammed the anchors on, lol.
Love it!

 

[Steve D]

I tried your settings for the non-formula car mate but found them a bit strong. Maybe I need to work up to them slowly..! Thought my face was going to push up against the windscreen the first time I slammed the anchors on, lol.
Love it!

What sim were you playing? I use Anton’s settings with a couple of minor tweaks for all titles and they are perfect for me (formula and non-formula created for each) but for Assetto Corsa specifically I was thrown forward pretty violently under breaking. Easily sorted but it certainly woke me up!

One little tip is that you can easily switch back and forth between the sim and Motionsystems software to make profile / intensity changes on the fly. It’s a great way of tweaking and experimenting and understanding what the individual effects do.

Be prepared to grin a lot and in a very short space of time racing will no longer feel right without it. Compliments VR perfectly.

 

[Mascot]

What sim were you playing? I use Anton’s settings with a couple of minor tweaks for all titles and they are perfect for me (formula and non-formula created for each) but for Assetto Corsa specifically I was thrown forward pretty violently under breaking. Easily sorted but it certainly woke me up!

One little tip is that you can easily switch back and forth between the sim and Motionsystems software to make profile / intensity changes on the fly. It’s a great way of tweaking and experimenting and understanding what the individual effects do.

Be prepared to grin a lot and in a very short space of time racing will no longer feel right without it. Compliments VR perfectly.

Pretty much all I play at the moment is Assetto Corsa. I've got a ridiculous number of car and track mods for it, Content Manager is a god-tier launcher and to be honest I don't particularly like flip-flopping between different sims, and having to re-learn their individual quirks, button mappings and unique UI logic. I recently booted up Project CARS for some thunderstorm night racing (which is simply incredible in VR) and gave up in frustration after half an hour because my pedals and wheel weren't recognised (even though they worked fine last time I played it) and I couldn't work out how to resolve it. The motion platform will probably get me interested in playing more sims though just to compare them, but only ones with VR, of course.

What's the way you mentioned to pull up & adjust the settings mid-race? I've been doing it between stints so far.

 

[Mascot]

Oh wow that's a bummer. I have the V3's and they are great, but it seems that now I have ordered the OSW and have a HE sequential shifter sitting here also, it's only a matter of time before the V3's become HE Pro's or something similar. The problem with sim racing and I am sure other hobbies too is half the fun is squiring the stuff!. When you're a good saver and don't waste much money on things you cannot use/see, it makes the question 'do I really need this' all that much tougher to answer responsibly...!

Oh well. Hopefully that get's rectified for you in the right way and you can enjoy everything rather than have a sour feeling from dishonest people.

I bought the OSW from Simracingbay. Told myself forever that I wasn't interested in Direct Drive and here we are......

The pedal shenanigans are now resolved - the seller offered me a substantial discount to keep them, so I ended up with a brand new set of CSP v3s for less than half price. Happy with that!
I've has CSPs since they launched and like the way heel & toe feels on them, so am happy to stay in that ecosystem.. for now at least, lol.

 

[Steve D]

What's the way you mentioned to pull up & adjust the settings mid-race? I've been doing it between stints so far.

Alt/Shift/Tab to switch between open applications.

 

[Mascot]

Ah, of course!
Thanks.

 

[Mascot]

I didn't realise there were some schematics for the Sim Lab cockpits. I'm scared to look now in case I've built mine completely wrong.

https://sim-lab.eu/downloads/

 

[Mascot]

New CSP v3s rigged, all cables managed, both knees ruined. Only got the CS shifter left to mount and then maybe I can finally start driving some bastard cars.

 

[Neil Farren]

New CSP v3s rigged, all cables managed, both knees ruined. Only got the CS shifter left to mount and then maybe I can finally start driving some bastard cars.

Seriously mate that looks absolutely mega!

 

[Magiashkii]

Mascot... Great looking rig, super clean setup. Amazing work

 

[Mascot]

Mascot... Great looking rig, super clean setup. Amazing work

Thanks! It's been an intense few weeks of building and modding and fitting new kit but well worth the effort. One bonus of 80/20 is the neat cable management possibilities - you just stuff the cables into the nut channels on the blind side of the aluminium profiles and secure with the occasional cable tie (or lumps of Blu Tac, lol).