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

[Callsign BH]

This is purely flight related.
The F-16 and some other modern jets have a side mounted rather than center mounted flight stick.

So I just need to:
1. chop the unused end of the 40x80 at the back of my h pattern shift.
2. Make the 40x80 supporting the shift easily release and quickly reattach in the exact same spot.
3. Then make an attachment point on the side of my seat bracket to support the 40x80 with the quick release on it.

Fortunately I already had a second Magswitch and the existing 3D printed mount system from my last under seat mount. There is one issue, but it is a single bolt to swap out the 30 series slot Stick stop with the 40 series stop.

View attachment 524129


Edit: I'm going to put a pin in both of these projects and spend some time using my rig.

I've been toying with the idea of selling my VPC T-50 with 10cm extension, which I center mount, and picking up this side stick to perma-mount to the rig (link below). Its force sensing like the side-sticks used in the real fighters (F-16, F-22, F-35) and I know plenty of folks that use it and LOVE it. I do have a bit of mental block though on the idea of flying a center stick jet (F/A-18C, A-10C, AV8B, etc) with a side stick in VR. Thus, I can never decide if I would want to have to 2 stick options (center and/or side), or just keep it simple and go side stick only....

Too many other ideas and decisions floating around in my head for now though, so will keep noodling on it and eventually make a decision. Let me know how you like side stick flying, I'd be curious to hear.

https://realsimulator.com/fssb-r3-lighting/

Re: your comment on "hoping for a new exciting headset to go with the new 4000 series GPU's"....2022 is looking pretty bare indeed for new and exciting VR. The Pimax 12K looks next level, but with a target luanch of Q4 2022, I highly doubt we see it until mid or later 2023. I keep checking for Index 2 news and haven't heard anything of any significance still.

 

[RCHeliguy]

That is interesting. I have heard people talk about force feedback sticks.

For helicopter use it would also be very helpful.

I will have to see how much time I spend in DCS after the Apache drops this Wednesday. I've been looking forward to the AH-64D since they announced it early last year. I still need to setup tactile for DCS which will be another undertaking.

 

[Callsign BH]

That is interesting. I have heard people talk about force feedback sticks.

For helicopter use it would also be very helpful.

I will have to see how much time I spend in DCS after the Apache drops this Wednesday. I've been looking forward to the AH-64D since they announced it early last year.

I own the Huey, and could just never get into it....but always said "When an AH-64 comes, I will get into rotary finally".

But I am doing my best to avoid temptation because I know I'd end up with that $1500 Komodo collective/AH-64 grip, and 1) I don't need to spend that, and 2) I am running out of room on the rig once I get the throttle and some flight switches in a surrounding side panel added on

Hope it's a blast, though. Given it is ED and Early Access, it's likely to be a disaster....but hopefully it's still an enjoyable launch.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I think I'm going to try out the gold filament for the first time for the Index logo on the front of the Index controllers holder. It's not much filament and even printing at 0.10mm it's only a 33min print. I could still go with a silver, but I have yet to find a reason to try the gold yet so this will be it.

I would have generated a higher poly STL file if I generated this from scratch. I may just need to recreate this so I can. Then again this may actually look interesting, so I'll see how this looks first.

Speaking of layer heights. The underside of this has a VERY shallow angle to it.
Look at the optical illusion this generates. It's actually pretty smooth with 0.15mm graduations however when I first saw it, I assumed something went wrong.

It ends up rendered as a herringbone pattern creating dark and light rows.

You can see the stair stepping here focusing on the very edge of this.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Final top print complete.

The .5mm added to the inside of the USB hub ring was just enough to get a nice pressure fit No velcro or adhesive required.

Room for the hand controllers in front. The main section for the hand controllers is printing now and should finish about 7am tomorrow. This should be complete tomorrow.

 

[Callsign BH]

That is one bad@$$ HMD holder, I love it.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I ever were to get a big head about my rig I just need to look at this to be quickly put in my place. Not a well edited video, but still impressive. I think if I were to build a sim like this at home it would be a marriage ending event.

 

[RCHeliguy]

That is one bad@$$ HMD holder, I love it.

The good news is that the USB Hub and Headset holder should be forever items that fit any future headset and charge any future hand controllers. The front section will likely have to change.

 

[RCHeliguy]

A little wear on that left hand controller after 2.5 years of use. I did clean my hand controllers once I saw them under a light.

This Index Controller holder is very nicely done. Compliments to the author.

Not sure the dimples on the low poly gold Index Logo will cut it, but they are not bad. The brackets are printing one at a time. So it will be later on this evening before they are both done. I may assemble it in the morning.

 

[RCHeliguy]

In a very rare event, I had a print failure.
It appears that the bottom curled a bit, the print moved and a bad layer was created as a result.

The mirror side of this is printing right now. I'll find out later if this was a fluke or is a design issue I need to compensate for.

 

[RCHeliguy]

That will work.
USB Hub, Headset and controllers have a new storage space.

 

[RCHeliguy]

<sigh>
December 15th came and went and DCS still shows the AH-64D as coming soon.
They extended the PreOrder 30% off date to January 26th which is not a good sign

Oh well, I guess I'll focus on driving for a while longer.

I have a couple weeks to play coming up without work, hopefully...
Planning to do some welding as well.

Oh, in the no one probably cares department, I decided I prefered the controllers behind the headset. It's not like I need the hand controllers when I'm using my rig, so it seemed right.

 

[metalnwood]

<sigh>
December 15th came and went and DCS still shows the AH-64D as coming soon.
They extended the PreOrder 30% off date to January 26th which is not a good sign

They had an update at the end of November

'Development on the AH-64D module is going well. However, due to progress on the “George” AI and flight control system components, we have decided to postpone the Early Access release to the end of January 2022. This additional time will allow us to further develop the flight control systems, hold modes, damage model, missions, skins and other items. As a token of our appreciation for your pre-orders, we are increasing your pre-order ED miles up to 8,500.'

 

[RCHeliguy]

Have been messing around today and measuring things.

I verified that my tactile effects are never clipping with the DSP software.
I did tweak a couple things to make sure they never get past the yellow, but I think I'm erroring a tiny bit conservative.

Better not to clip and to increase the volume at the amplifier. Clipping can hurt speakers and transducers. I had already dropped my exciter gain by -2db and they were still running clean. Granted they only get 2 notches of volume at the amplifier.

It has been speculated that my NLRv3 RaceBass solution may be more efficient since I'm only using about 30-35% signal vs. 50% that others like to get plenty of vibration for my taste. However I'm running the exciters at 45% right now vs. stock 50% so I'm guessing that the hard mount effects are pretty similar across seats. The reason being that there is a bit of play in the universal joint in addition to the isolators. 50% on the TST/BK effects is WAY too much.

I am running one notch more gain to both transducers driving my foot plate. The plate may be light and not have any pressure on it, but the BK is off axis where it is located and I lose some of it's effects. The TST-329 is half as efficient as the TST-429 under my seat and I may just want to change the overall signal and dial back the TST-429 as a channel to keep things even. I'm going to tweak that a bit more.

I tried setting up KartKraft and the G-Belt works, the Profile I've got for the SC2 works pretty well, but SimHub and the NLRv3 are not connecting for some reason even though I've set the UDP port 5000 up. So no motion or tactile...

Just for grins I pulled up No Limits 2, the rollercoaster simulator. It has motion support, G-Belt support and tactile support. All are working well. I need to dial the tactile in, but overall they all worked well together. I dialed back the NLRv3. The G-Belt worked well for braking, acceleration/deceleration and lateral side to side motion. No Limits 2 supports a pretty wide variety of tactile effects and I've got too many setup. I need to adjust them for my seat's BK, TST and exciters. The speed effect is good. The effect while being hauled up to the top is pretty good. Still should mess with that some. I don't use this title except with kids mostly. The fact that my feet bottom out on the floor sort of ruins immersion for me.

I have ACC updating and I'm going to finally get it going since that is Mr. Latte's starting point for all effect sets.

EDIT: I spend some time in ACC and really didn't like it. The SC2 profile I used is decent enough. The motion and tactile were fine. The G-Belt was fine. I'm sure I would need to spend some time to get my VR experience to be a bit better. It didn't look horrible but it was reprojecting a good chunk of the time. It appears to have defaulted to 150% SS which didn't help.

When you are just uncomfortable with something it impacts all of your other impressions about it and I wasn't feeling it. I'm not saying it's bad, but I am very used to iRacing and I think I'm just going to stick with that. It feels right to me.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Finally updated my development box from an i7-2600 to an i9-9900K with twice the RAM.

My i7 has been running well for many years, but just maybe I should have paid it a "bit" more attention.

Fusion 360 runs better and I'm sure my video rendering times will drop, but most of the time I probably won't notice much of a difference.

Also had a very good day welding today. I've feeling pretty darn comfortable making solid smooth looking welds. Now I need a project!

 

[RCHeliguy]

I think I've figured out my next project.

I believe that my current foot plate is flexing and I'm losing some of the BK's power.

So I'm thinking about welding some steel like the following:

 

[HoiHman]

Great project to test our your new learned welding skills

 

[RCHeliguy]

Great project to test our your new learned welding skills

Exactly! The steel for this won't be expensive, and I need a real project to practice this skill.

It is an experiment based on an educated guess, but I don't feel like I'll be out anything for trying this and I should learn a few things.

I will use their industrial drill press, large chop saw and metal cutting band saw and grinding disks and belt sanders in addition to the welding equipment.

I still need to decide how I want to finish this. I'm assuming a white primer and maybe a silver paint, but I'll think about that. I've seen some people having good luck with plasti-dip.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I've been looking at this a bit closer. Steel is almost 3 x heavier than aluminum. 7.82 vs 2.72 specific gravity, plus it will need primer and paint.

That said, I don't believe my existing foot plate was that heavy, so I think it will probably be OK.

I'm looking at 1018 Cold Rolled bar 6"x1/4 and 2x2x1/4" Hot Rolled angle.

The main foot plate is 6" by 560mm or 22" wide.
The BK mount is 4.5" by about 8.5" wide.
The angle is two pieces of 360 or 14.1" long.
Then I'll need to weld stubs to the end where the RaceBase springs through bolt.

I have everything in my cart, but I'm going to wait a bit to make sure I can't think of anything else. I have a key to the maker space now, so I can go in 24x7 if I want to.

I have thought of another small project that I would need the Mill for. There will be another class in January for the Mill. So this will need to wait until after that. I'm ordering enough steel to handle that as well.

 

[blekenbleu]

Steel is almost 3 x heavier than aluminum

As bicyclists note, steel and aluminum
differ in ways other than density
that should impact tactile effects, often in favor of steel.

My guess is that a lighter gauge of steel with a lip bent
along the long edge will yield better results