magicfr
www.ivory-tower.fr
Simcraft mini review.
I went to Atlanta to SimCraft office, I was there to test/tune our game ( The Crew ) on the High end motion Rig of SimCraft, to use it at E3 Show.
I was welcome by Sean Patrick, one of the nicest guys I have ever met in my professional life.
So I tested the rig on our game, The crew, an arcade style game with some depth in driving ( not NFS like
), as seen in Live for speed, and iRacing.
The Rig.
It’s the Apex 3 GT Platinum : http://www.simcraft.com/modules/content/index.php?id=260
The rig was in a very nice blue livery.
As being a DIY enthusiast, I was really impressed by the quality of construction and design, very professional, definitively not a DIY project. It is really well done. It looks and sounds very robust, and it is. The rig’s base don’t move at all and there’s no play in the moving parts.
You can check the spec on their website.
Here the main angle specs : roll 50°, yaw 50°, pitch 25°.
To sit in the rig, it’s very simple and the system is smart, easy and fast.
Just remove a big pin, open the left screen like a door, then open the steering wheel mount that open like a lambo butterfly door. And you’re in.
It was very important for us because on a big demo like E3 show, swapping the drivers must be fast.
Testing the motion.
After some tuning for our game The Crew, I could test it.
First thing I was really impressed, is the no-lag, you don’t feel any, the rig reaction is very fast, so you can feel all the little bump on the road.
The other thing is the maximum angle the rig can take, it’s quite big, and it gives a great sensation when driving hills offroad, or on a banked track like you'd find on Nascar super speedways.
The Software.
The brain of the system.
This is the most important part of the motion rig. The way the software process the raw physics data to make the rig move.
You can tune everything, from max angle to acceleration or angle factors.
There’s also collision detection and jump reception detection.
I was especially positively surprised by the feeling of the yaw. That’s the most difficult part to simulate, because a car can turn more than 180° when the rig can’t.
And when driving long to medium curve it really feels good, you really feel turning into the curve. So you can feel if you enter with oversteering or not.
I also did some drift sessions on Live of Speed, and the rigs was really helping me to feel how much I was sideways.
Of course on very long turns like oval, the effect is a bit less felt because of the length of the turn.
That’s the only con I could tell for this rig, really.
But I know that Sean is working on that. That’s another thing to add to the product, it came with the software made by Sean, and Sean is very open minded to improve the software, which is a good thing for future improvements.
Conclusion and Vids
Best motion rig I tested so far.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f_3aHNSE6M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=I59tv67laxk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=l2vf1NwimXQ&feature=endscreen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSUnwabO7GA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWlPXKKRL9Y
I went to Atlanta to SimCraft office, I was there to test/tune our game ( The Crew ) on the High end motion Rig of SimCraft, to use it at E3 Show.
I was welcome by Sean Patrick, one of the nicest guys I have ever met in my professional life.
So I tested the rig on our game, The crew, an arcade style game with some depth in driving ( not NFS like
), as seen in Live for speed, and iRacing.The Rig.
It’s the Apex 3 GT Platinum : http://www.simcraft.com/modules/content/index.php?id=260
The rig was in a very nice blue livery.
As being a DIY enthusiast, I was really impressed by the quality of construction and design, very professional, definitively not a DIY project
. It is really well done. It looks and sounds very robust, and it is. The rig’s base don’t move at all and there’s no play in the moving parts.You can check the spec on their website.
Here the main angle specs : roll 50°, yaw 50°, pitch 25°.
To sit in the rig, it’s very simple and the system is smart, easy and fast.
Just remove a big pin, open the left screen like a door, then open the steering wheel mount that open like a lambo butterfly door. And you’re in.
It was very important for us because on a big demo like E3 show, swapping the drivers must be fast.
Testing the motion.
After some tuning for our game The Crew, I could test it.
First thing I was really impressed, is the no-lag, you don’t feel any, the rig reaction is very fast, so you can feel all the little bump on the road.
The other thing is the maximum angle the rig can take, it’s quite big, and it gives a great sensation when driving hills offroad, or on a banked track like you'd find on Nascar super speedways.
The Software.
The brain of the system.
This is the most important part of the motion rig. The way the software process the raw physics data to make the rig move.
You can tune everything, from max angle to acceleration or angle factors.
There’s also collision detection and jump reception detection.
I was especially positively surprised by the feeling of the yaw. That’s the most difficult part to simulate, because a car can turn more than 180° when the rig can’t.
And when driving long to medium curve it really feels good, you really feel turning into the curve. So you can feel if you enter with oversteering or not.
I also did some drift sessions on Live of Speed, and the rigs was really helping me to feel how much I was sideways.
Of course on very long turns like oval, the effect is a bit less felt because of the length of the turn.
That’s the only con I could tell for this rig, really.
But I know that Sean is working on that. That’s another thing to add to the product, it came with the software made by Sean, and Sean is very open minded to improve the software, which is a good thing for future improvements.
Conclusion and Vids
Best motion rig I tested so far.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f_3aHNSE6M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=I59tv67laxk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=l2vf1NwimXQ&feature=endscreen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSUnwabO7GA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWlPXKKRL9Y
