Show us your Rig / Cockpit

Hi Everyone,

New here and to sim racing, (and racing!) in general. I mostly built this as a fun project and something to enjoy with my son, but now I am getting into racing/driving. I kind of just made it up after looking around here for inspiration. We built the PC last year and I got him the Occulus for Xmas. Also, thought it would be cool to teach him how to drive manual transmission, he is 18 and doesn't know yet. I mention all this, b/c I probably am doing this backwards, not being previously into racing. I left a place for some buttons, though I wonder why everyone has so many toggles and buttons???.. I did know that a cup holder and stereo were important though...:)

I will probably bother you guys with a bunch a questions, as we can barley make a lap in Automobilsita or Assetto Corsa without hitting a wall, so far American Truck Sim has been more my speed!

On to the pics..

Went with a Black and Gold theme:

sim1.jpg

Mounted his old stereo in the dash:
sim3.jpg

Need a better overall pic, but I left a lot of room for monitors. For now it is VR and a 50 in 4K on the facing wall. Got the Thrustmaster TX with extra wheels/pedals and shifter off an ebay auction.
sim2.jpg

Pic of the facing wall with TV and PC. Note handle in corner, made of 1/2 inch black pipe, for us old guys that may need help getting in and out. ;)

sim5.jpg
 
My little Frankenstein's monster...

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  • Fanatec hardware.
  • An old cannibalised office chair with Gametrix Jetseat guts built into the seat foam.
  • 2 Dayton mini pucks under the seat.
  • 34mm steel scaffold tube chassis.
  • Birchwood pedal-board with another 2 mini pucks underside.

It also does an air-miles configuration but takes about 20mins to re-configure...not exactly hotswapping! (here's an older shot of that config from last year before the jetseat went internal)

IMG_1.png




It's served me well for the past few years and was fun to build and iterate on - but the time has come for a full upgrade. Soon to be superseeded by a SimLabs GT1 + NLR V3 Motion Platform + Proper 5.1 tactile setup by the end of the month. Nice!
 

Totally awesome! Every bit of the Fanatec gear I've got I'm super happy with.

Although, my experience of sim racing gear is somewhat limited...I went straight from a G29 setup to what I have now. So in that respect the above totally applies.
 
Very nice. What are the button boxes? The mini one attached to the shifter looks really neat.

the main one on the right hand side is one of the ones I made for DCS and flight sims (it's left on in that config as it's attached to the mousepad mount)
The small one on the shifter is a little one I put together for racing - 2x encoders, 2 momentary toggles and 6 buttons.
 
the main one on the right hand side is one of the ones I made for DCS and flight sims (it's left on in that config as it's attached to the mousepad mount)
The small one on the shifter is a little one I put together for racing - 2x encoders, 2 momentary toggles and 6 buttons.
Cheers. This stuff's on my to-do list so I'd love to see some more specific pics of each if you have the time. The larger one looks much better than the typical plastic box covered in carbon wrap (which is what even most commercial products amount to).

I notice it matches the throttle pretty closely. That looks like it's based on a Logitech one but is the base customised?
 
Nothing special, I´m building my rig, for now I´ll leave it as it, last addtions was GTomega wheel stand and the LG 38UC99-W. Will buy the bracket and the seat to upgrade tha GTomega :)
 

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I built a PVC rig about 10 years ago as a "prototype" and just kept on using it. Got away from sim racing for a while and then got back into it last year. New wheel and pedals and then VR made me decide it was time to build another rig. Being unreasonably stubborn, I decided to go with PVC again.

My original rig was made from 1 1/2" plumbing pipe. This time I decided to go with 1 1/4" furniture grade pipe. This has a thicker wall, and is a lot more rigid than construction pipe. More interestingly it has some unique fittings that would never be useful for plumbing but that are extremely handy for building furniture or other structures. It also comes in a wide range of colors. The downside is it is about 2x to 3x as expensive as construction grade PVC...

I came up with a design I liked in Blender:
blend.png


The helpful thing here is I could experiment endlessly with various lengths of pipe for each section and be sure that it would all fit up correctly when it came time for assembly. This blend is actually based on the physical mock-up I have constructed. I tweaked a few of the measurements when getting the correct angles for the wheel and pedal deck, for example.

mockup.jpg


For the mock-up I used construction grade pipe with the furniture grade fittings and just stuck everything together. Aside from the small tweaks I made for wheel and pedal height and angle (about six extra cuts, total), everything fit together exactly like I drew it up in Blender.

Obviously there is still work to be done, but I've raced for a few hours now shaking down this setup and am satisfied with the design. I haven't glued anything yet, but it is already far more rigid than my original prototype. The ergonomics are also much closer to the "ideal racing position."

Next steps are mainly just tweaks and refinements... and figuring out an elegant design for mounting my new HOTAS system I bought to use with Elite Dangerous. I plan to hide the cables inside the pipes, and to wrap the MDF panels in "carbon-fiber" style vinyl. I'll post more pics when I get done.
 

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