Mobile Driving/Flying Cockpit with Motion and Tactile ( Build )

[NetLawMan]

This morning I got iRacing feeling even better. I've changed the settings around quite a bit. I got to feel the brake dive I was looking for and then backed it off because the car was not diving that much in VR and it didn't match up.

Gear Shift a tale of 3 combined effects...
I added the gear shift effect back to my G-Belt and it syncs up beautifully with the gear shift motion from the D-Box, which I am using but backed off a bit and I have the tactile Gear Shift effect as well. So tactile gives me a nice thunk of the gear engaging, and the D-Box gear shift motion effect when combined with the G-Belt Gear shift effect feels miles better. Together it's extremely convincing and no longer feels out of place and importantly I don't feel like I'm getting jerked around at all. It all feels very natural.

I suspect some of this is just getting used to my rig feeling different than it did before because my settings are somehow drifting back towards the defaults and yet are feeling wonderful. So I guess my brain is relearning how things feel.

I left iRacing for the day and I'm curious how I'll feel about it staring cold tomorrow morning with the settings I left off with today. I'm hoping that I'm starting to setting in on something that feels good day in day out.

Then I tried Dirt Rally 2.0. I started out stock, but quickly turned off the engine effect and while I can't A/B it with a system that has more motion, so far I'm not disappointed. I still need to spend more time dialing this in. It felt a bit over the top, so I'll likely dial it back some.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to do an quick reality check and see if I still like the iRacing settings that I liked today, then I'm going to try to dial Dirt Rally in more.

Next up will be DCS.

Be sure to give ACC a run. I have found it to be a very interesting and exciting dbox experience, and different than the other games I have played.

After a week or so, trying playing with dbox off - it’s tough to do!

 

[RCHeliguy]

FYI, I have ALL my controls including the D-Box going through my 10 port USB 3.0 hub without any issues and now I have my second USB hub with flight controls setup.

Couldn't wait to try out DCS.
I worked with the Huey because I'm more familiar with it.

The G-Belt now supports DCS, so I had some seat belt action that worked reasonably well with the motion and that was nice. The added G-forces do help matters some. I still need to play with that a bit. The flight effects are not as obvious to me as the driving effects are.

But this is the first let down. For flight the motion is really not enough to do it justice and the NLRv3 was definitely better for this as it has a LOT more angle with 20 degrees of total motion. In fact the NLRv3 has more angle than most larger actuator motion systems out there so I suspect even 4" of travel would have been disappointing, maybe 6" would be reasonable. ( I did the math and it would take a 150mm or 6" system to be comparable to the motion of the NLRv3 )

The D-Box is "OK" and it is moving a bit, but it's not as immersive as the NLRv3 was for flight. What is better is that operating the rudder isn't distracting with motion. That was the one downside of the NLRv3. I didn't notice the NLRv3 much with driving pedals, but with flight pedals I found the seat moving around a bit distracting at times.

On the flip side I was very happy to have the Haptics of the D-Box in DCS. I currently have no tactile setup for DCS and with the D-Box I did have some turbine feel and the guns felt very good with the D-Box and it did have some other effects that seem to work.

To be fair I completely expected flight to be a bit "meh" with the D-Box. My main concern was whether I would be happy in Rally as well as the track and so far that seems like it is perfectly good enough to keep me happy.

I may get around to setting up Simshaker for Aviators and could then compare that against the haptics, however I already know that it has limitations.

The Virpil collective definitely feels smoother than the collective I had before it, so I'm definitely happy with that.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Delete! Not even going to speculate on having a separate flight rig.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I'll revise the flight a bit. With the G-Belt dialed in a bit better the motion for flying planes is acceptable. For helicopters I just don't have that feeling of the collective stick that really enjoyed with the NLRv3.

 

[stigs2cousin]

Mark,

please don´t kid yourself.

Rather see it this way:

as you have most of the necessary parts anyways it would be no biggy to build a flight rig.

And your wife can only kill you once

( Must be gone) Carsten

 

[RCHeliguy]

Yeah, yeah...

She could also hold out on me, and that might feel worse than death.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I think it's time to just chill a bit and get settled in.

Too many things to play with and I need to get everything "stable".

Had a fairly vertical hike today with my wife and my ankle is fine and I've still got energy. So it's time to get my weight training going again and get my rowing going again. Ready to get my hairline fracture and Covid way back in the rear view mirror!

 

[RCHeliguy]

Damn.... Virpil just released a new stick base with a dry clutch for better helicopter collective action. Looks like I'm going to have more controls for sale soon.

I think I've got my Haptic Bridge control box wiring pretty well situated.

The one thing that is a bit awkward are the power cables.

What I would love to find is a 15A 3 prong plug to 4 x C13 plug, but I've yet to find one. I supposed I could always make one custom if I wanted to eliminate a bunch of the clutter.

 

[drvrn]

Damn.... Virpil just released a new stick base with a dry clutch for better helicopter collective action.

New Virpil base with dry clutch is for cyclic not collective.

You can find here:

For future, Virpil should improve base of collective. Many people have to use counterweight or hydraulic damper for better use. I use hydraulic damper myself and happy.

 

[NetLawMan]

Damn.... Virpil just released a new stick base with a dry clutch for better helicopter collective action. Looks like I'm going to have more controls for sale soon.

I think I've got my Haptic Bridge control box wiring pretty well situated.

View attachment 596366

The one thing that is a bit awkward are the power cables.

What I would love to find is a 15A 3 prong plug to 4 x C13 plug, but I've yet to find one. I supposed I could always make one custom if I wanted to eliminate a bunch of the clutter.

That actually is one of the benefits of the g3 system. Single cable to the actuator.

 

[RCHeliguy]

New Virpil base with dry clutch is for cyclic not collective.

For future, Virpil should improve base of collective. Many people have to use counterweight or hydraulic damper for better use. I use hydraulic damper myself and happy.

I'm a bit surprised I mixed up the collective and cyclic. I know better. It's not like I didn't start flying RC Helicopters 12 years ago.

So far I'm happy with the smoothness of the Virpil Collective stick, but I understand how people would like the collective to stay in place without increasing the friction so it would hold position. I would think that the friction adjustment would be similar to a damper.

I've seen the flight sticks with FFB which seems like it would be even better. However I wonder about the quality of the telemetry data to work from.

I'd love to run a long extension pipe, but I haven't found one that would work given my seat. Many flight seats are split in front or shallower.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Backed into my rig today while recording some video and broke my HMD hangar. So now I'm now reprinting that hangar with more perimeter walls and infill

Not completely happy with how I worded things. Stream of consciousness doesn't always stand up to scripted.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I just needed to print mirrors of the plate holder and slot support to reuse that solution here. I'm still planning to keep one of the lever mounted quick connectors on the top slot to get a more robust connection especially with this connection being at the bottom of a long piece of profile that will see some pressure, but this should speed up getting the stick in place.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Works beautifully

I also ran the speaker cables going to the TST and BK-CT under my seat under the frame to clean things up a bit more. I'm feeling pretty good about how clean the wiring is getting.

Having that 3D printed angled slot support and chamfered edge allows the stick to slide right in perfectly centered and then I can flip the magnetic lock. I still loosen the levered quick release, push it into the slot and tighten for a very solid feeling stick.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Decided to create a new cable clip to keep the flight cables out of harms way since they are only temporarily in place.

 

[RCHeliguy]

This is working pretty well. My previous clip was a bit flimsy.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Got a few of these to clean up some of the wiring under my rig. Didn't need to, but couldn't resist.

Currently I have a heavy duty outlet strip with a 15A 1-4 3 prong splitter in one plug. Then a pair of the following: (3 prong to C13 cable from D-Box. Then a C13 Y cable from D-Box). Then there is a 3 prong to C13 cable going to the power supply for the Haptic bridge.

I should be able to remove all 3 x 1 foot long 3 prong to C13 cables and one of the C13 Y cables.

The back of the rig is very clean, but below shows a bunch of power cables bunched up at the front that I'm looking to clean up.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I've had some cooling off time and I've spent more time dialing things in and and I keep writing and deleting my posts.

I've often said never to believe the impressions of someone who just got a new toy. They are either giddy and overly positive or there was disappointment and there is a knee jerk overly damning negative response. Neither of which is accurate.

I was concerned about my highly positive feelings about my Ultimate+ pedals, and I still absolutely love how they feel and believe I will continue to feel that way. With my D-Box I have had the opposite reaction.

To be clear, the D-Box is quiet, I've had zero issues with my VR headset so the EMI is nicely shielded, the software is reliable and automatically detects my title and I'm getting more comfortable configuring it. Their customer support was outstanding and they wholesale replaced my entire system very quickly when there were issues at no cost to me

So I continue to believe this is a very high quality well supported product with mature software.

I want to preface this with a couple things. First I started with a high end tactile system that provides a lot of detail and texture that most people haven't experienced. Second going from no motion to a motion system is a huge jump and the NLRv3 has the equivalent angular motion of 150mm actuators. If you are going from no motion to a D-Box or you don't already have a high end tactile system you wouldn't have my reference point.

Edit: I just found out that my seat brackets had come crazy loose which is why I couldn't feel as much from the D-Box unit. So my opinion on the D-Box in rally has changed radically from the comments below. After tightening up my seat brackets and adding the Jump Landing Tactile effect, I am a very happy camper in Dirt Rally.

In fact I will need to revisit all my thoughts about how the D-Box feels because I'm feeling a LOT more detail now and it is living up to what I had hoped for.

I just wish I had waited one more day before posting this.

For me the D-Box didn't add texture on the roads that I didn't have before. I decided to let it take this over from my tactile system because it was equivalent but only for track use. I still needed to add some road vibration in rally. For me so far the Haptics has been a wash. I continue to use my tactile system for engine rpm, gear shift, speed sensation, and wheel slide.

On the track, the D-Box does feel very good and the heave does add something. You do get more of a feeling of being in a car with moving suspension. I was hoping it would make more of a difference but it is lively.

Gear Shift: I initially fought with the D-Box gear shift effect which seemed to jerk me around quite a bit and was very aggravating. Reducing that combined with strong G-Belt gear shift effect and a tactile effect combined to create a very natural feeling and overall I'm very happy in iRacing now.

Rally: 95% of the time it feels better than the NLRv3, but that last 5% breaks immersion for me where the NLRv3 didn't. This is where the actuators are length limited. In Dirt Rally this is mostly in Finland, Greece and other places where you can go a bit airborne. The D-Box uses heave to drop the car and does have a landing effect, but it can't compare with how the NLRv3 would dump you forward on landing which was absolutely believable. This was an area I was concerned about. Once again if you haven't had a motion system before, you probably wouldn't miss this and it would feel miles better than a static rig.

I need to spend more time in flight to try to dial it in better, but I still believe that the NLRv3 did flight better and longer actuators would be needed to create a more compelling experience. Sure you can get great ground effects on the runway and feel buffeting around with the heave, but it just doesn't handle flight as well as the NLRv3 did. I'm sure 150mm / 6" travel actuators would be very convincing. I still am trying to get that connected feel to the cyclic of the helicopter and there are settings that I think may help me improve this.

I've had someone suggest that I put my NLRv3 back on the rig, but I like the Race Bass tactile plate, seat sliders and having my seat more solidly mounted to the chassis.

I haven't decided what I'll do long term.

If the actuators were longer I think I would be very happy with everything else, so for the few of you were were wondering if the D-Box secret sauce would make up for the lack of actuator length. My answer is no. They do a great job with the length they've got, but size does matter.

 

[OlaGB]

I cant relate to the ‘dump forward’ part unless you land on the front or rear, and this gets handled well in my motion system..

I use ‘jump landing’ effect (with high priority) in my tactile in addition, to replicate the hardest landings in rally, on top of motion/suspension effect. This is a very cool effect.. Landing a jump in a real car is a huge bang no matter what suspension they got

 

[RCHeliguy]

I cant relate to the ‘dump forward’ part unless you land on the front or rear, and this gets handled well in my motion system..

I use ‘jump landing’ effect (with high priority) in my tactile in addition, to replicate the hardest landings in rally, on top of motion/suspension effect. This is a very cool effect.. Landing a jump in a real car is a huge bang no matter what suspension they got

Interesting. I've never gotten the jump landing effect to work. Maybe enabling high priority is the key to make it work. If so thanks for the pointer! I'll give that a try.