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]

It begins.

 

[DrRob]

After some cleaning up, I managed to make it look more tidy than before. I chose a slightly larger shelf, because ... who knows?

Seat all the way back


10" power strip bolted to the main beams


All set, seat in correct position


I will probably post a screenshot of my SimHub bass shaker setup and ask some noob advice later. Be warned!

 

[DrRob]

Some small updates on my rig.

I stole the idea of a small mini fan here from @Mascot.
Works fine to cool down a bit during hard races, but will not have enough power for a hot summer.
But for the price....and looks the part, too!


Since Kunos decided to remove mouse support for the MFD during pit stops the navigation was a bit cumbersome.
I have my normal keyboard tray swung to the side durcing races, so no help here.
Hence I decided to purchase a small programmable numpad to be positioned right in front of the mouse pad.
Wasn't keen on shelling out the money for a Streamdeck, but found the perfect contender on Ebay.
It is a fully programmable mechanical keypad with red switches. On top I bought a full set of 102 keycaps to change out the caps as needed.
Fabricated a simple bracket with a piece of sheet metal I had lying around. Wrapped it in carbon. Done.


Lastly I changed the dash pages on my Nextion to suit the McLaren 720S GT3 I am exclusively using at the moment.
One page to show laptimes and stuff, the other to show the opponents laptimes.

 

[RCHeliguy]

That little keypad looks like a great solution!
Looks like your rig is coming along nicely

I've seen a lot of fan solutions and while I was pretty happy with my remote controlled fan sitting at wheel height in front of my rig, it also requires extra setup/tear down time and blocks my view of the wall mounted TV/screen. So I'm building something. I ordered a Noctua 200mmx30mm fan. It's rated at 18.9dB and moves a pretty decent amount of air. I plan to mount it over my SC2. I also got a PWM control board with knob and a 12V 2A PS to drive it. Fingers crossed it works as well in practice as it does in my head.

 

[DrRob]

That little keypad looks like a great solution!
Looks like your rig is coming along nicely

I've seen a lot of fan solutions and while I was pretty happy with my remote controlled fan sitting at wheel height in front of my rig, it also requires extra setup/tear down time and blocks my view of the wall mounted TV/screen. So I'm building something. I ordered a Noctua 200mmx30mm fan. It's rated at 18.9dB and moves a pretty decent amount of air. I plan to mount it over my SC2. I also got a PWM control board with knob and a 12V 2A PS to drive it. Fingers crossed it works as well in practice as it does in my head.

Thanks!

I will be following your efforts then! I am always looking for a neat (but not too expensive) cooling fan solution to incorporate into my simrig. Not interested in Simwind implementation as I purely need the fan to cool myself during races.
At the moment the small fan does a good job on "normal" days with not too hot temperatures, but if temperatures rise I use an additional pedestal fan.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Thanks!

I will be following your efforts then! I am always looking for a neat (but not too expensive) cooling fan solution to incorporate into my simrig. Not interested in Simwind implementation as I purely need the fan to cool myself during races.
At the moment the small fan does a good job on "normal" days with not too hot temperatures, but if temperatures rise I use an additional pedestal fan.

What I'm looking at is definitely a VR solution since the fan will be centered over the SC2 behind the wheel far enough away that I don't worry about it, but pretty close otherwise. It would be a horrible solution for a triple screen setup. In fact isn't not even remotely viable in that situation. It would be directly in front of a screen and have no air flow. I may end up 3D printing a part to hold the fan, although I'll probably do like usual and prototype with cardboard and possibly wood or even aluminum.

 

[DrRob]

Enjoying the Rig so far! I delved into my first online races besides the odd CP race and joined the ACCSS rookie league here on RD and SGP. Love it so far! Absolutely recommend this league to beginners and slightly more experienced racers for championship and club racing fun.

BTT: No major gripes with my setup, everything is working as intended.
The SimuCube 2 Pro and the Heusinkveld Sprints are superb! They surely helped me get more consistent and improved my car control in ACC. Again: The Simlab P1-X is a tank .. 'nuff said.

I had a few issues with my still new-ish Netgear Router though. I got random disconnects during multi-session ACC races. Couldn't trace it down to anything particular. Read somewhere about others having disconnects using Netgear routers (in various games).
In a pure act of frustration I sourced a AVM FritzBox as a replacement. Didn't want to shell out big $$ and went for a rather cheap one for ~75€ (Type 4040) on sale.

Works really well compared to the double-priced NetGear unit! Slightly less WiFi strength and less option frills I never used anyway.
So far the problem seems to be cured! //fingerscrossed


I've been mulling over next improvements until the end of the year or for beginning of 2021.
As said above everything is working really fine.
The obvious improvements would be a beefier graphics card and higher resolution monitor(s).

• Next Gen Nvidia or AMD card, e.g. RTX3800
• Samsung Odyssey G9 or G-sync triples with ~30"

Triples would have to fit the Simlab integrated monitor mount (to be upgraded for triples).
Simlab reports potential issues going beyond 27", so not sure there on triples.

Seeing Barry's review video of the Motion House Motion System 2UN made me think about going the seat mover route.... This seems to be very intriguing. Never sat in one of those though, so not sure this would be to my taste. Missed my chance to try out a seat mover on the SimRacing Expo 2019 (damn!).

 

[DrRob]

Small additions to the rig from Motedis...

 

[RCHeliguy]

That water bottle looks familiar, are you thinking about getting the 28" bite tube for it ?

 

[DrRob]

Saw that on your rig. Might be tempted @RCHeliguy .

 

[Nicoboks]

Small additions to the rig from Motedis...

View attachment 407949View attachment 407950

oh boy i need those gloves holder

 

[DrRob]

oh boy i need those gloves holder

Yeah, I know....kind of stupid....but they were always falling down and/or in the way, so this was a good addition in my book.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Yeah, I know....kind of stupid....but they were always falling down and/or in the way, so this was a good addition in my book.

I think your point is that there needs to be some dedicated place to put them. I put my gloves on top of my largish button box. I put my driving shoes on my seat when I'm not driving. That gives me a dedicated place to put them AND keeps my cats out of the seat so I'm not constantly having to clean hair off of it. ( Very Important! )

 

[Nicoboks]

Yeah, I know....kind of stupid....but they were always falling down and/or in the way, so this was a good addition in my book.

i was dead serious i need it !

 

[DrRob]

I've been mulling over the next updates I wanted on the graphics side. I kept my trusty GTX1070 from my previous build as I waited for the RTX3xxx cards to hit the market.
And if I would up the graphics performance I would also exchange the C49HG90 and its 1080p resolution to something more serious. As I suffer from motion sickness pretty quickly I abandoned the idea of going VR very early. It might work with a full motion system, but not prepared to chip in the extra couple of k€s.
I want to use the rig for more than just sim racing, so I also steered away from a triple setup for now. I wanted to have the widest monitor setup apart from triples available at the moment, so I stayed in the quite limited offers 49" 32:9 ultrawide market.

Late November, beginning of December I pulled the trigger on the Samsung Odyssey G9 (C49G93TSSU) and the Inno3D RTX3080 iChill X3. Despite being shown as available and ready for delivery soon the RTX30780 wasn't shipped until today. Obviously the GFX card availability was announced to the reseller when he began selling the cards, but haven't had them in their store yet. The deal kind of fell through....

Anyway while I am still waiting for the Inno3D to arrive, the Samsung G9 was delivered to me 1 week after my oder.


My wife helped me installing the beast to the rig. Quite some weight to the thing and it is bulky after all. You have to be careful not to lift it holding to it at the wrong points or it might bend too much potentially damaging the hardware. That is true for the HG90, btw.
Anyway it was a straight swap coming from the C49HG90.

I shared my first thoughts on the G7/G9 thread.
The increased resolution is a welcome upgrade especially in Win 10, but also ACC. The increased curvature from 1800R to 1000R is a rather subtle change from the seat POV, not a game changing difference. In theory the curvature helps to have all points on the screen having the same distance to your eye. G-Sync worked as intended after the Samsung and Nvidia driver installs.

The problem I have now is that the GTX1070 is really at its limit to produce high enough FPS at native resolution of the screen with a decent image quality. It is the sheer amount of pixels it has to push that limit the overall FPS. I reverted back to the custom ini from here which really helps to squeeze the last bits of performance out of the setup. Hopefully the RTX3080 arrives soon...

Additional Info:
- I upgraded the Firmware from 1005.2 to the latest 1008.1 to enable 240Hz support.
- In ACC I increased projection correction from previously 0.7 to 1.0.
- With brightness set to 35 the G9 doesn't get any hotter than the HG90
- Colour setup pretty spot on out of the box, I changed the colour balance towards a warmer preset.



Overall I am quite happy. A costly update for sure. The cheaper RG90 would have been the middle ground with the same resolution and a nice matte black finish. The glossy white back plate of the G9 is the biggest gripe I have.
That said I wanted to have proper G-Sync support, hence the RG90 wouldn't have cut it.

 

[EsxPaul]

The rig is looking superb @DrRob

Thank you for posting your impressions and especially the vesa mounting picture. I've got the same motedis type bracket and have been wondering if it would match up with the mount supplied by Samsung. Now you've saved me a lot of worry over how I was going to fit it all together!

I've downloaded the 1008.1 firmware but I didn't realise there were also Windows drivers that were also needed. I'd better go and get them now in preparation

 

[DrRob]

@EsxPaul : Just a quick search brought me here (Australian site but doesn't matter)

49" Odyssey G95T Curved QLED DQHD Gaming Monitor | Samsung Support Australia

49" Odyssey G95T Curved QLED DQHD Gaming Monitor. Solutions & Tips, Download User Manual, Contact Us. Samsung Support Australia

www.samsung.com

Never understaood what the difference is between the C49G93, C49G94 and C49G95 model tbh. Seem to be identical?

 

[EsxPaul]

@EsxPaul : Just a quick search brought me here (Australian site but doesn't matter)

49" Odyssey G95T Curved QLED DQHD Gaming Monitor | Samsung Support Australia

49" Odyssey G95T Curved QLED DQHD Gaming Monitor. Solutions & Tips, Download User Manual, Contact Us. Samsung Support Australia

www.samsung.com

Never understaood what the difference is between the C49G93, C49G94 and C49G95 model tbh. Seem to be identical?

Thanks for the link to the drivers, mate

I managed to find a link where this question has been asked. It speculates that the C49G95 has a higher response time than the others but Samsung say that it's just a way of labelling the different regional variants. I hope that's correct otherwise it means I purchased the bad model

 

[DrRob]

I would think it's regions @EsxPaul . When I looked at vendors in other regions the naming varied.
Since I used the 1008.1 update from another regional Samung site the Nvidia control panel says I have the C49G95T model now...

[EDIT] Yours seems to be a month younger than mine if I read the serial number correctly. I think the number after the "N" tells you the month of manufacture.

 

[DrRob]

Found my old GoPro 3 Black today and thought I'd do a cheeky POV video.

For sure not broadcast quality, as it is only 1080p60 and a bit blurry (low-ish light recording)
But it showcases the advantage of the ultrawide Samsung G9 when cornering. Bezel free look to the corner apex.