My first SimRig build!

[DrRob]

Gents,

after playing on a wheelstand setup for quite some years, I decided to upgrade to a proper rig. I was always hesitant to litter the living room witha full blown rig, so made do with a GT Omega "Classic".

The whole journey started for me with a PS3, GranTurismo 5, a 100" front projection home theater setup and a Thrustmaster T500RS with TH8A. Later I switched to a PC with R3E and AC, modified the pedals with stiffer Mardo Media springs, upgraded to a TM Sparco 383mod, added a Nextion display and braced the wheelstand including Sofa hook-up.

Now playing mostly ACC and got a taste of what it is like with a proper rig and DD wheel which left me wanting.
I guess it is time for a radical change....and even got permission from the missus.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

Finally I received my new wheel! Chuffed to bits!
Due to the pandemic some materials and products were hard to come by, but Jakub at Rosso Sim Racing managed to get the build done. So far really impressed by the product! I will do some more testing and give further thoughts on the wheel in due time. Stay tuned!

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Looks great, simracingbay has wireless version of the same wheel, is this one much cheaper?

SRB GT3 V2 Wheel - SimRacingBay

SIMUCUBE, WIRELESS STEERING WHEEL SIMRACINGBAY SRB

www.simracingbay.com

 

[DrRob]

Looks great, simracingbay has wireless version of the same wheel, is this one much cheaper?

SRB GT3 V2 Wheel - SimRacingBay

SIMUCUBE, WIRELESS STEERING WHEEL SIMRACINGBAY SRB

www.simracingbay.com

Similar price range, but besides the Phoenix Simracing version the only non-flat front plate and (from the looks of it) more overall 1:1 feel of the Rosso Sim Racing wheel compared to the real wheel.
I wanted a wired wheel, not a fan of wireless connections if a cable will do the job just fine, so perfect for me.

 

[DrRob]

Ok, I had the chance to test the new Audi R8 GT3 wheel from Rosso Sim Racing quite a bit now. Time for some thoughts on it.
I attached a different length wheel extension to it and obviously the Simucube QR.

First of all I want to emphasize how solid and professionally made this wheel is. There is no doubt that it is a serious contender on the market amongst bigger and more well known competitors for a competitive price. Secondly the communication and service from Jakub is top notch. Very responsive, friendly and forthcoming. I can wholehartedly recommend him and his company.

The front plate is made of steel construction, bent to the same angles as the original wheel. Beside the Phoenix Simracing variant this is the only other on the market. Jakub did a phenomenal job in finding a supplier doing these front plates for him. I cannot stress this point enough as the majority of Audi R8 GT3 sim racing wheels only have a flat face plate. And it doesnt stop there. The back housing is a solid aluminium casing enclosing most of the buttons and electronics and gives a solid base to mount your quick releases to! It maybe would have been sufficient to make it from 3D printing and brace it with threaded stents, but Jakub has gone the whole 9 yards.

Aluminium construction is also the cage for the magnetic shifters. Very artisticly styled and made. The paddles themselves are of shiny carbon fibre plates. The magnets are quite strong, leaving no doubt if you have depressed the shifter or not.

The front plate, like the real racing wheel, features a fully covering sticker with all the graphics and lettering. On my wheel it is glossy, but can be had in matte finish. The buttons also feature labels on their faces. The best is, that these stickers seem very similar to automotive foils used to wrap cars. They are applied using heat and seem to be very, very durable. Quality is top notch.

The actual grip is very much like the original version, too. I don't know the material of construction, but feels very solid. Very thick grip, surrounded by a very pleasing microfibre, presumably alcantara. Stitching is very well done, almost artistic.
The diameter is a bit smaller than my Aston Vanatage GTE wheel, but it feels so right for a potentially snappy, mid engined car like the Audi.
There is no flex whatsoever in this wheel. It literally feels like a tank.

The buttons are very pleasing to press, and have a very distinct threshold and definite click to them. They are not comparable to NKK or Knitters, but very much up with them. The rotaries are also very solid, nice tactile feel and have grippy knobs easy to manipulate while wearing gloves. Jakub will send me a button guard for the pit limiter later. He sent me the wheel as soon as he finished work for me to start my new Audi GT3 season with a befitting wheel.

The supplied USB cable is of medium length, with a very thick cable and solid connectors.

But there is some room for improvements, I'm going to be honest with you here, hopefully Jakub appreciates my openness.

• The grip might be too thick for people with smaller hands. The thumb cutout is not as pronounced as on the original wheel, which can result your thumb resting on the metal of the front plate instead of the grip. Thumb might get sore over time. That happens even for me with larger hands, but I got quite used to the different grip size already.
• The flappy pedal reach is perfect for my hands, but it may be a bit far for smaller hands. You can adjust the paddles to some extend though. Magnet force could be a wee bit lighter.
• A minor gripe is that the front plate and button stickers do not feature a fluorescent or UV-responsive paint for the yellow colour.
• For my setup the cable is either too short or too long and a bit too stiff. Have to make some modifications to the rig, but manageable.
• Due to a shortage of some electronic components and sourcing issues the button colour is green instead of black. But the stickers cover the buttons almost 100%, so just a small point.

All in all an overwelming amount of light, some shadow. The biggest gripe I have is the thumb cutout.
Would I recommend Jakub's Rosso Sim Racing and his Audi R8 GT3 wheel? Absolutely!
Look at his Facebook page and the other products he does. Maybe there is something there you fancy as well?
I for one will have an insane amount of fun sim racing with this wheel on ACC and my trusted Audi R8 GT3 Evo.

 

[DrRob]

You might have noticed that some other things changed as well on the my rig.

• I lowered the monitor a hefty 3 cm, so that the monitor hovers right above the wheel extension with only a few millimeters of leeway.
• I finally permanently attached my small Nextion display to the upright aly profile using a long bolt a few washers and nuts. Not perfect still, but a good start. Might angle it a bit towards me in the upcoming days/weeks when I find time.
• I added a second NVme SSD to the computer and noticed the high temperatures the SSDs have due to them sitting in the vicinity of the CPU. I purchased two heat sinks and added an additional fan to the back on the case. I could reduce the temperatures 20°C! Noice.

 

[cnhoff]

Thanks for the elaborate review, Rob, very interesting!

 

[DrRob]

Latest setup in video... practice conditions for the Zolder race last Sunday.

 

[DrRob]

Just a few additional detail photos to demonstrate the wheel setup, the play light position and the new Nextion Audi dash...

 

[DrRob]

Was kind of intrigued seeing this btw.

https://mito3d.com/de/3dmodels/printdetails/design/2281189

https://www.simbuyracing.com/store/buttonboxaudir8

 

[DrRob]

These days I kind of was reminded again that despite optimizing the position of the keyboard tray I still wasn't completely happy. Mostly because of the swing radius and the hinge solution (sagging). The hinge has to be lubricated from time to time to allow for a smooth operation too.

I investigated what was available on the market and found two interesting looking solutions:

• Trak Racer Table Top / Desk with Swivel Mount
• Treq Advanced Keyboard Tray

I really like the Trak Racer approach to potentially minimize the sagging issue. But it's taking a lot of space at the upright profile and they still use the same standard hinge. What I like about the Treq approach is to use different mounts and the smaller footprint. Not sure about the sagging issue though....

So despite the price I took the plunge and ordered the Treq one. Communication to the team was fine, had no issues there. The ordering process was a bit sketchy though as the price of the product and the shipping price changed twice as I was clicking through the buying process. Shipping price quite steep, similar to Sim Labs (UPS). Oh well...

Today the parcel arrived. I will report back when I mounted it to the P1-X. The hinges look promising but I fear I might have to modify them a bit to minimize sagging. Will see....

 

[DrRob]

Test fitted the assy yesterday evening. Unfortunately this will not be a straight bolt-on mod to my rig. Due to my seating position either the arm is interfering with my legs in driving position and/or the tray will be too high to comfortably fit below the wheel plus slightly touching the front mount.

Some serious mods necessary I fear. And I don't have a brilliant idea how to do it at the moment.
I like the hinges though! They are much better than the typical ones. Still, sagging can be an issue and I will have to look into that too.

Quite to project just to ft your keyboard to the rig.

P.S: Something else inbound that will may hurry up the keyboard tray project.

 

[DrRob]

Sooo gents....the second toy arrived as I was alluding to earlier.
I pulled the trigger on the SimBuyRacing Audi R8 button box.

Obviously I went for the yellow one (red and blue highlights available as well) to match the wheel. I thought this would be the original decal design as in the real race car (and shown on the website), but obviously they "upgraded" the design on all of them to forged carbon look instead of weaved carbon .
The labelling is not exactly like the real life button cluster and has at least one spelling error. I might change that decal along the way...I asked the seller if it could be configured before the buy, but no dice.

But first things first: The button box comes at 245€ with a whopping 30€ of packaging & shipping from Spain. P&P feels a bit expensive, since this is for normal DHL-style mail, not UPS express. Delivery took a couple of days.
Anyway I wasn't put off by that too much as I wanted that button box really badly.
Communication with the seller (never giving his name) was good and helpful. I think he was using a translator from Spanish to English, but worked out good enough for the purposes.

What you get is a 3D printed enclosure which looks kind of similar to the original middle console button cluster of the real race car. I haven't seen a closer match to date on the simracing market. The quality of the printout seems kind of medium quality. I have seen better prints to be honest. Maybe attributed to the size of the enclosure, it measures approx. 30 x 16.5 x 8 cm. But the actual company behind SBR being a 3D printing provider (EN3D.es), I was expecting a bit higher quality.

The top lid holding the actual buttons seems to be some sheet plastic as well. I believe there is a full carbon option, but didn't ask specifically.
In terms of buttons you get

• 10 momentary buttons,
• 1 emergency stop style button,
• 4 rotating buttons with a fix 90° turn to the right,
• 1 four direction D-Pad-like joystick with push-button function and 360°C rotation and
• one rotary encoder.

So quite a lot! Most of these lit up when powered, just like in the real racing car. Buttons feel good, the rotaries feel a bit light and imprecise, but I will check that again in action.

On the back of the enclosure you will find two mounting holes with metal inserts.
Electrical USB connection is via a coiled cable and screwed 4-pin connector at the button box (Cube Controls style).



Now I have to think a way how to mount this to the P1-X and relocate the keyboard tray and the Nextion display.
Still not sure if I keep the original Sim-Lab keyboard tray or do something with the new one from Treq. Maybe will cannibalize both of them and come up with a hybrid?

Stay tuned!

 

[DrRob]

I decided to share some of my sim racing as well, not only write about the rig itself. This might make it more interesting to see where I'm coming from, why I do some changes to the setup and how I use it. I hope this is still within the rules of such threads?

I started out my online sim racing story about 2 years ago, just after building the initial iteration of the rig (I wrote about this before). I joined ACCSS, founded by Steve Worrell and hosted on Simracing.gp, for the first championship season. After initial evaluation I was placed in the highest category, then called Gold (IIRC). After the first season I finished third in the championship and hence graduated from ACCSS as per the idea that it is a beginners community.

I did some racing with other groups and some casual races with the old gang from ACCSS for the next few months. A lolt happened at ACCSS including change of management, a great increase in members and contestants, better live coverage and live stewarding. And they introduced the Pro category for all those #Yabanned drivers and others qualifying for the category.
I returned to ACCSS for Season 9 and been racing with them since. The broadcasted races take place on Sunday evenings. Lot of talent in the Pro category, which makes it incredibly difficult to finish in the Top 10, let alone Top5. For me at least. I don't excessively train for the races, use premade setups and only tinker with tyre pressures to make the car work for me. Beside these races and limited preparation I do not simrace much, if at all due to other hobbies and family time.

Long story short, I now race in ACCSS Season 10, still with the trusted Audi R8 Evo. Far from mastering the car I gradually come to terms with it. Not always with top tier times, but mostly consistently lapping. Historically not a qualifying genius to be honest.
Season 10 is a revival of Season 1 in terms of track selection: Silverstone, Nuerburgring, Misano, Spa, Barcelona.

You can watch the races live on Twitch (ACCSimSeries) or re-live on Twitch and Youtube. At the moment the Saturday Bronze-Gold split and the Pro split on Sunday are broadcast.

First race at Silverstone went quite well I have to say, despite the low probability rain/wet race. Wasn't really prepared for that. Dry qualified on a back row P19, I couldn't crack into the 1.57s but came out with a low 1.58 even. So no chance on qualifying on the front rows. The rain being an equalizer, I managed to come up a few spots and finished on P13. That's 2 points towards the championship.
Considering the treacherous conditions I was quite satisfied with the result.

I will post new videos for Season 10 after the races and share a few thoughts on them as well. I hope this is not too boring, but a welcome change to this thread.

 

[DrRob]

Ok, some more things changed in the meantime. I mangaged to

• mount the button box
• relocate the Nextion screen
• install the Treq keyboard tray.

It is all still a bit rough around the edges and not finally optimized. Especially the keyboard tray. I might purchase even another one only to butcher it to make a Frankenstein version of all 3.
Anyway I will share some pictures the upcoming days and explain a few of my gripes with the new hardware setup.

Also I finally took the plunge and updated the SimuCube True Drive to Paddock. Had some issues with 2021.9 and finally got reminded by Mika that already a 2021.11 version exists that would solve my problems.
In the end nothing really changed for me to be honest, I took the opportunity and tweak a few settings, but overall still more or less the same parameters as they work quite well for me. Saw Gergö Pankers settings in Paddock and will try them some time to compare. I don't expect any major differences though judging from the parameters.

Then of course came the huuuuuge V.1.8 patch for ACC, which changed quite a bit in terms of tyre feel & driving style, FFB feel and of course performance. To quote myself from the v.1.8 patch thread:

"Initially I lost about 1.5 - 2 seconds compared to v.1.7. But I gradually was able to claw back most of the time again. Maybe still 0.5s left on the table from pre-v.1.8.
BUT I have to work harder for it than before. I have to be so much more precise with brake, accelerator and steering inputs to maximize grip and hence lap time. That said, I find it very enjoying to delve into this sort of challenge without try-harding too much though.
I didn't have too much trouble with tyre temps and pressures after opening the brake ducts for 1-2 clicks and maybe decrease front camber a tad. Getting the tyres to work properly takes 2-3 laps typically now, but I felt that they lasted longer in their performance window than before.
I am by no means an expert though, just a casual simmer."

So again on a learning curve and the last race went quite well (more on that soon).

On ACC performance with DLSS I had to tweak a little to find the sweet spot. For the Samsung 32:9 monitor I needed a resolution upscale of 120% ingame to counter the projection correction of 1.0. Without you'd get a blurry middle section of the picture from the stretching effect. With DLSS the upscaling functionality is disabled unfortunately which left me a bit confused on how to counter that as the visual result looked quite bad especially in the center of the screen. Really blurry and soft due to the 100% resolution and downscaling of DLSS. Worse than before on 100%.
Luckily I remembered the DSR upscaling option in the Nvidia drivers and used that to good effect. A setting of 2.00x gave really good results with minimal performance impact.

On the contrary I was able to almost up any setting ingame to "Epic" and still have headroom in performance. I lock to 70 FPS and see still only 60-70% GPU usage at most!
I don't kniow why but especially when in the menus the GPU usage went to 95-99% before, now chills at 30-40%. Which means overall cooler GPU and less noisy.

The picture looks so much more realistic now compared to before. Less edge sharp, buut more smooth and believable. The advanced sharpening helped with farther away scenerie still being crisp. I LOVE THAT NEW LOOK!

Here my settings ingame:

 

[Deleted member 197115]

I have found the best visuals with 1.8 for me is not using DLSS at all.
BUT, there is a bit something new you can use to bump up visual quality a bit.
FSR, set it's Quality to Custom, that will disable downsamping/upsampling, but will let you use FSR CAS sharpness.
Combined with Advanced Sharpening just as little as 20% CAS and regular (ToneMappe) shaprness at 0% it is perfect to my eyes, sharp but without oversharpening artifacts.
Adding my preset just in case. BTW, I don't use Projection correction, so you might want to bump resolution scale up, with FSR on Custom it still works.

 

[DrRob]

I have found the best visuals with 1.8 for me is not using DLSS at all.
BUT, there is a bit something new you can use to bump up visual quality a bit.
FSR, set it's Quality to Custom, that will disable downsamping/upsampling, but will let you use FSR CAS sharpness.
Combined with Advanced Sharpening just as little as 20% CAS and regular (ToneMappe) shaprness at 0% it is perfect to my eyes, sharp but without oversharpening artifacts.
Adding my preset just in case. BTW, I don't use Projection correction, so you might want to bump resolution scale up, with FSR on Custom it still works.

Thanks for sharing mate!

I tried FSR alongside DLSS and found at least no meaningful performance difference between the both of them, which came at a surprise to me. Wasn't familiar with FSR and would not have thought it would be as effective as DLSS.

In the end I steered away from FSR because of the lack of projection correction when FSR is enabled. Really unfortunate, but I cannot stand the stretched image on the 1000R monitor to be honest. Would've liked to fiddle with FSR a bit more, but that stretched image was a real deal breaker for me.

[EDIT: You're obviously not using the new TAAGen5. I didn't have time to really check it out, but I thought it would be the best option?]

 

[Deleted member 197115]

Thanks for sharing mate!

I tried FSR alongside DLSS and found at least no meaningful performance difference between the both of them, which came at a surprise to me. Wasn't familiar with FSR and would not have thought it would be as effective as DLSS.

In the end I steered away from FSR because of the lack of projection correction when FSR is enabled. Really unfortunate, but I cannot stand the stretched image on the 1000R monitor to be honest. Would've liked to fiddle with FSR a bit more, but that stretched image was a real deal breaker for me.

[EDIT: You're obviously not using the new TAAGen5. I didn't have time to really check it out, but I thought it would be the best option?]

I have tested it extensively, it is giant performance killer without substantial image improvement benefits. Dev claims that it does better job than Gen 4 with lower resolution scale, but then you need to drop resolution to come up with the same performance as Gen 4 at native, which still looks sharper. It is really meant for UE5, and not all features backported to UE4, so in a sense it's a buggy early access version.

I believe I had slightly better visuals with FSR upscaling, but it's only sharpness feature from it that I currently use as native always looks better.
I also throw these two console vars into engine.ini

[ConsoleVariables]
r.PostProcessAAQuality=6
r.TemporalAACurrentFrameWeight=0.2

 

[Deleted member 197115]

And may be I wasn't very clear but you can use positive resolution scale with FSR set to Custom, that only activates CAS sharpness.

 

[DrRob]

Cheers mate! Really interesting info there.

 

[DrRob]

Ok, as I already alluded to I managed to mount everything to the rig and had 2 races with this setup until now. Still I am not 100% satisfied with how it turned out to be. So I might adjust bits of it in the upcoming weeks.

Anyway, the new button box is attached with a small extra piece of 40x40 I had still available and attached two joints to it. The mounting holes are quite close to each other, so that I had to drill the 40x40 and stick a long screw through it to mount the box additionally to the corner bracket. I angled the box at about 45° and as high up as possible. The position is quite good regarding reaching all the buttons and dials and it is quite similar to the real cockpit layout as well. Also it is not in the way of the mousepad and reach of the my hand hand while operting the mouse.


On a second note towards the button box, I have to say compared to the other parts on the rig it is sub-par. The quite chunky 3D printed housing is not straight on the rear face where you mount it. This makes it quite difficult to attach to a level surface. I used some neoprene sticky pads to level it out and prevent movement. Secondly the thin edges around the button panel are really prone to cracking. I managed to crack it while mounting. There are some pronounced horizontal lines visible, where the stacking of the printed ridges obviously not connect too well.
Again I have to say coming from a professional printing service, this is really basic quality. The nextion housing was done by a friend for free to test out his cheapo 3D printer. That is almost on the same level of quality. Makes you think...

Speaking of it, that left me with the Nextion display which kind of lost its place on the rig. Again I had some extra 40x40 lying around and a joint and used them to side-mount the display to the button box vertically. Not optimal, but works quite well.

The keyboard tray assembly is still suboptimal. What I would want is a possibility to angle the actual tray to make the keyboard tray more accessible as it was on the SimLabs tray. Unfortunately I cannot re-use anything from that one. But I've got an idea, will see if it works out...
For now the keyboard works both beneath the wheel as well as to the side as others do it on their rig. I shortened the middle 40x40 piece from the original Treq tray to optimize reach. Also I re-used the small stubby 40x40 with the two corner brackets on the left upright. This is much more stable and less prone to sagging than using the hinge directly to the upright. Why? Because you can use 4 of the locking pins on the face side of the 40x40 than just 2 when you have just one slot in the profile.


I might shorten the stubby 40x40 a bit more to make entry into the rig more comfortable without hurting your knee in the process.

I will snap a few more pictures with the whole setup in action and fully lit up. SoonTM.
In the future I might attempt to create a new vinyl front label for the button box to bring back the carbon look matching the wheel and hence be more close to the original (Also find the spelling error on the labels...).

 

[DrRob]

While I'm posting I could as well sum up my last league race on Nuerburgring. As mentioned before I am participating in the anniversary Season 10 ACCSS Pro split championship.

I am quite accustomed to racing on the Nuerburgring, done a few races there on ACC. With the new v.1.8 patch the physics and tyre model changed quite a bit and I'm still struggling to regain my lap times compared to pre-v.1.8.
The opposition is quite well paced and the new BMW M4 GT3 proved to be a bit OP on this track. Not trying to smooth over the fact I managed to only qualify on P13 not managing to breach into the high to mid 1:54s as I could do before the update.
Still a quite good starting point, but was a bit worried about being in the thick of the pack into turn 1, which will bunch up the whole field, allowing for like 5 wide into it and funnel down into the AMG arena.

Start of the race was quite well behaved minus one Ferrari who thought it would be a good idea to divebomb on the inside on turn 1 taking out the only Nissan GTR in the field. I received a hit from the Nissan in the process getting some damage on the car which wouldn't help for the race. I didn't repair the car in the pits as pace was still good and I would never be able to recover the time lost in the pits throughout the race.
Before the pitting and even after I was kind of stuck on round about P11 anyway. I couldn't make any inroads on the guys ahead of me for the whole race to be honest. I could get close to my brethren Audi R8 towards the end of the race, but I ran out of time.

There was a nice fight though in the AMG arena, where I tried to overtake the pink Porsche (Ressar) ahead of me feeling the pressure of a BMW M4 (Thomas) breathing down my neck (he got hit earlier on from the front of the pack and was on a recovery run). I did a dive into turn 1, the Porsche driver playing his role as well. The BMW could also buy into this while we were slowing each other down. We had some kind of attempted under-over through the AMG arena, which left me a bit flustered towards turn 4 not exactly knowing where the Porsche would be. With a resulting bad exit towards the back of the track layout..... Well, the BMW M4 could take advantage of the situation and overtook the both of us. Gave him a small side swipe on his way to scare him a bit..
Not ideal, but it was a fun fight! (see the fight build-up and resolve here)