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.

 

[RCHeliguy]

From another thread it appears that having ultra wide screens or triple screens both generates more heat directly in front of you and blocks a simple straight on fan making ducted fans a better solution.

I wonder if a simple remote controlled table top fan mounted just behind your pedals might work well for a configuration like yours. If you mount it level just above your pedal deck I bet it could keep you cool.

Had you thought about cooling yet? Where your rig is setup will have an impact on your cooling solution. Are you planning to push your rig into a wall or do you plan to use it pulled out away from the wall? With the casters you have under it you have some flexibility.

 

[DrRob]

Thanks for the tip on the pedal profile for ACC. I will go and have a look for that one to give it a go.

In regards to the SC2 settings, there have been a few discoveries recently and some of us are finding that the FFB is slightly the better for it. I'll link you to them if you want to have a try if/when you might want to

Heusinkveld profile mostly changes the clutch pedal curve I discovered and leaves accelerator and brake linear. Changed brake force to 35kg and increased lower dead zone to 15%. Happy so far!

Would love to give your new settings a go! I only found your screenshots on the Granite forums. Cheers!
Changed torque slew rate to higher values, but couldn't feel a really pronounced effect.
Due to injured left wrist I limit torque to 10.5 Nm.
Did a run on Zandvoort and spun violently on top of the crest of Scheivlak. Resumed the lap and noticed heavy rumble most likely coming from flat spotted tyres. Never felt that before! Changed tyres in the box, rumble gone. Wow, such detailed FFB!

 

[DrRob]

From another thread it appears that having ultra wide screens or triple screens both generates more heat directly in front of you and blocks a simple straight on fan making ducted fans a better solution.

I wonder if a simple remote controlled table top fan mounted just behind your pedals might work well for a configuration like yours. If you mount it level just above your pedal deck I bet it could keep you cool.

Had you thought about cooling yet? Where your rig is setup will have an impact on your cooling solution. Are you planning to push your rig into a wall or do you plan to use it pulled out away from the wall? With the casters you have under it you have some flexibility.

I did think about cooling! Previosuly with my wheelstand I did just as proposed: A table top fan blowing from the pedals upwards. Worked just fine in summer.
Didn't feel I need a fan in winter so far. Just switched to a t-shirt so far. Indeed I saw some clever 120mm fan solutions with some hose of sorts here on the forums. Will think about that. I have a license for SimHub which I could use for some fan control I reckon....

I have the casters to move the rig about. Will add some P1-X feet when they arrive. This way I have options. The spot the rig is standing on the photo is the spot it will stay for the most time.
Cheers!

 

[DrRob]

Did some work today and mounted the last bits. Preliminary cable management, but will tidy up some more. The PSUs are not fixed yet, will fabricate small brackets to bolt them to the rig I think. For the moment they are just resting on the corner brackets.
Keyboard tray and P1-X feet on back order. USB hub for the wheel is a makehift solution, will look for a better (shorter) extension.


Drilled additional holes into the seat brackets to bring my bum down some more and increase lean back. Plus fiddled with some lumbar support. All WIP. Not happy yet.

 

[RCHeliguy]

 

[EsxPaul]

Here they are @DrRob Only a minor change in feel compared with the last ones (mainly understeer) but you could try them back to back and see what you prefer

In game settings can remain unchanged.

 

[DrRob]

Cheers Paul!

Is this the profile from one of the following posting to yours from the granite forum thread? I believe so if I see the values.

I tried it yesterday after your hint here in this thread. The major gripe I have with it are damping and friction only 10%. If you both increase to 100% it feels very good in my book.
I have only 540° lock-to-lock and 10.5Nm of torque (100% ingame) mind you.

Maybe I have to increase torque in return to still have some FFB? With the above setting and 10.5Nm of torque the wheel feels dead most of the time (as in no FFB noticeable and very no resistance).
A bit reluctant to increase torque too much, since I have some wrist problems as of late.

Anyway, I will give it a (cautious) go and report back.
Overall I don't have trouble to feel over- and understeer. Coming from the TM T500 this is one of the revelations for me.

 

[EsxPaul]

Cheers Paul!

Is this the profile from one of the following posting to yours from the granite forum thread? I believe so if I see the values.

I tried it yesterday after your hint here in this thread. The major gripe I have with it are damping and friction only 10%. If you both increase to 100% it feels very good in my book.
I have only 540° lock-to-lock and 10.5Nm of torque (100% ingame) mind you.

Maybe I have to increase torque in return to still have some FFB? With the above setting and 10.5Nm of torque the wheel feels dead most of the time.
A bit reluctant to increase torque too much, since I have some wrist problems as of late.

Anyway, I will give it a (cautious) go and report back.

No problem at all mate

The settings are taken from SuperMonaco_GP here:
https://community.granitedevices.com/t/assetto-corsa-competizione-and-simucube-2/2784/104?u=esxesxpaul

I believe they are the standard template settings provided in the newer versions of TD (which I don't use)

One thing I forgot to mention is to make sure that resonance reduction is unchecked in the 4th tab down as seen in the linked post. Mine was unchecked by default but then I'm using the older v1.0.7

The strange thing with any of the settings under "direct input fine tuning" is that they are supposed to be inactive unless there is a filled bubble next to them. I've never seen that with ACC so I'm not so convinced that they do anything. It is interesting to hear your thoughts regarding things feeling better with them cranked to 100% though.

More investigation needed I think.

Just to add.. why not use 1200 both in game and TD? That will take care of the auto rotation for each car.

 

[DrRob]

Paul, indeed SuperMonaco_GPs settings I tested with the above deviations.
Cheers for the other pointers, will also check! Maybe later this afternoon.

I only play GT3s/ ACC at the moment. Steering lock for those cars is typically 540°-680° (depending on car and track optimization) to my knowledge. Remember, they use formual style rims in real life, where you are limited in steering lock without getting into trouble. I got used to 540°, but also used 620° in the past.

 

[EsxPaul]

Paul, indeed SuperMonaco_GPs settings I tested with the above deviations.
Cheers for the other pointers, will also check! Maybe later this afternoon.

I only play GT3s/ ACC at the moment. Steering lock for those cars is typically 540°-680° (depending on car and track optimization) to my knowledge. Remember, they use formual style rims in real life, where you are limited in steering lock without getting into trouble. I got used to 540°, but also used 620° in the past.

Fair play mate. We all use what feels right for us

 

[DrRob]

Did an extensive checking session with SimuCube settings starting with SuperMonaco_GPs profile.
To me it seems that if you dial down overall torque you have to adjust other values also. Most pronounced is damping (direct input fine tuning). From those settings only damping has a "bubble" showing when in ACC. I guess all the other values are not of relevance then.

At 10% the wheel feels lighter at standstill and gets heavier when going slowly. That does not make sense to me as I would expect it be heavier when not moving. I have to increase to 60-70% damping to have a similar heaviness than when moving slowly.
But then Inertia and Static Force also seem to scale with that. So I was fiddling with those two.
I ended up going in 1% steps as the difference was quite noticeable even with these small increments.

At all times the understeer and oversteer effect felt great. Could catch e.g. long slides down Scheivlak without a problem (was trying to optimize corner entry, missed the apex and... ).

Did most of the test driving ~40-50 laps on Zandvoort. As I moved to Zolder the whole overall feel changed for me with the same settings. Hence I was adjusting for Zolder for about 20-30 laps...

...long story short: I am not done trialling. It might even be beneficial to adapt to all car-track combinations. But that would be quite the work, right?

That said I am quite pleased with the settings based on SuperMonacos_GPs profile, just tuning to a certain extent. I will share them here after some more testing.

No tuning so far on the Sprint pedals. They just work as intended with a linear profile. I might do a slightly sloped curve for the brake in the future. Still not confident to brake very late and nail correct brake force. Varying brake force after initial brake point on the edge of ABS (set to 1) is quite fun I couldn't experience with the T500 pedals.
Still also too early on the loud pedal accelerating out of corners at times. Need to adapt some more.

I can say I was so engrossed yesterday evening and had tons of fun just testing.

 

[EsxPaul]

From the SC2 user manual:

• If an effect is used and actively controlled by the simulator, a filled balloon ● is shown Next to the effect slider. Changing the setting can result in a different force feedback feel in the game.
• If an effect is created but the value is not actively controlled by the simulator, an empty balloon ○ is shown.
• If the simulator has not activated this effect at all, then a dash (-) is shown, and the setting slider has no effect.
• Active DirectInput effects are also listed in the Advanced tab in textual form.
• It is recommended to keep the sliders at their default setting (100% for all expect
somewhat less for Damping and Friction), as game developers expect these levels.

Here's where it gets strange. If you go back and look at my settings screenshot, you'll see I have a dash next to each and every setting so I don't get to play around with them at all

I believe the lack of weight when standing still is something inherent in the FFB signal given out by ACC. I seem to remember users asking for this to be fixed over at the official forums. As of now, I don't think anything has changed on that front so we are left to choose whether we want to "mask" that shortcoming with settings, as you have. I prefer not to as I feel doing that effects the feel once you are up to speed. All personal preference though and no right or wrong way

I completely agree with you in that there is a need to have specialised settings for each car and track combo. You can absolutely nail the feeling for a car at one track and yet it will feel off when taking that same car to another circuit. Just the thought of getting all those profiles perfected is tiring enough, yet alone attempting it. Once you've finished, they'll release an update that fundamentally changes the FFB and we'll all be crying into our gloves

 

[DrRob]

Cheers Paul for the heads up! Have only briefly looked at the manual. Good example I should give more attention to instruction and operating manuals.

I'm not active at the official ACC forum. Good to know that I am not the only one feeling this. Not sure I noticed a drawback of my damping setting at speed. I will at some point quit optimizing ans enjoy gameplay more. Although the optimizing game yesterday was fun too.
The drawback of options is that you want to explore them.

 

[DrRob]

Got the last parts for the rig from SimLab.
Installed the keyboard tray the way Barry mounted it in his P1 video.


Pre-installed the P1-X feet and used piano teflon glider instead of the rubber inserts to the feet.


Fabricated aluminium brackets to increase lean back to my seat. Much better now, but still have to get used to it.


Will see if and how I can reuse the Nextion display with Simhub. Thinking of Tyre temperature/pressures and laptime history. Or maybe PC health?

Question to other 80/20 rig owners: I regularly get zapped when touching the rig. Any ideas how to ground the rig? Just a cable to theliving room radiator, etc?

 

[metalnwood]

You certainly want to ground your rig. From what I hear your radiators are grounded so that should be OK although generally to avoid any other issues it would be grounded with the other electronics you may be using on the rig. I dont have my SC2 arriving until next week to see the options but one possibility is grounding off that as well.

The best way to ensure a good grounding off the simlabs is to put an M8 tap down the end of one if it's profiles with a bolt to hold your grounding wire. You can just put a 8mm hole through the plastic covering cap to put the bolt through and keep using the cap.

 

[DrRob]

These are my current settings for ACC.
Low torque setup (high torque mode). Based on SuperMonaco_GPs settings.

 

[DrRob]

The best way to ensure a good grounding off the simlabs is to put an M8 tap down the end of one if it's profiles with a bolt to hold your grounding wire. You can just put a 8mm hole through the plastic covering cap to put the bolt through and keep using the cap.

Tried that yesterday evening and still got zapped. I had a good laugh as I realized I only get zapped when I wear my good old classic Crocs Clogs. To much rubber and insulation...

 

[DrRob]

This is where I ended up playing withe the SimuCube settings. Very happy with it so far.
Only little adjustments here make a noticeable difference ingame.

I prefer to use relatively low torque, but pronounced holding forces and high level of detail in FFB to understand what the car is doing. I focussed on e.g. getting very good feedback on over- and understeer.

 

[EsxPaul]

Thanks for posting your settings @DrRob

They look completely different to what I've seen up till now so I'm going to give those a try later on today.

I did have a play around with the in game dynamic damping last night and I've ended up moving that down from 100 to 0. The negative is that it makes the wheel lighter at low speeds. The positive was that I could feel the onset of a slide slightly earlier.

I hate these compromises

 

[DrRob]

They look completely different to what I've seen up till now so I'm going to give those a try later on today.

Not sure you will be happy with them. But give them a try and give your thoughts!
My brother has a DD1 at similar torque levels and he seemed to like my settings on a test run.

Vice versa I had trouble with other profiles after I reduced torque to my preference. Didn't seem to fit my needs. Either that is attributed to me wanting a different feel or that scaling down torque needs adjustment of all settings as a consequence.

I did have a play around with the in game dynamic damping last night and I've ended up moving that down from 100 to 0. The negative is that it makes the wheel lighter at low speeds. The positive was that I could feel the onset of a slide slightly earlier.

Hmm, interesting. I am hesitant to adjust to an even lighter feel on lower speeds. Just feels wrong to me. But you know what I mean. Maybe I will give it a try nevertheless. Cheers!