SimXperience G-Belt review

[RCHeliguy]

Another rabbit hole that I'm trying to avoid tumbling down, that 3D printing....

With a Prusa the 3D printing part just works. I've used my 3D printer as a tool that I just let run. Some people turn the act of printing into a complete hobby, upgrading and tinkering. I've spent all my time designing things in Fusion 360 then I just export an STL file, pull that into Prusa Slicer using the built in Prusa profiles and export a file to print. I've only used Prusa filament so far and the results have been excellent.

I'd been thinking about getting a 3D printer for a while, but I didn't know what I would use it for and I was worried it would collect dust. I finally purchased it with the idea that once I had it, it would open my mind to designing things in a completely different way. Fortunately that turned out to be exactly the case.

YMMV, but for me now that I've gotten used to having a 3D printer, I can't imagine ever not having one. I still fabricate things out of aluminum and recently a bit of steel where it makes sense, but you can do a LOT with 3D printing.

For this G-Belt, I expect to at least design brackets to mount the control box to my profile. I may come up with other things after I see it in person.

These are a few things that I've designed and shared on Thingaverse.

RCHeliGuy's Thingiverse Profile

Having a lot of fun after assembling my first 3D printer in September 2020. Loving Fusion 360 that I've been learning since then as well. I think my designs are interesting, but I am very new to 3D printing and just using default settings from PrusaSlicer. I also know my STL files are...

www.thingiverse.com

Below are the most popular items that I designed from scratch.

Edit: This guy doesn't understand that there are only 8760 hours in a year, but still these things just keep going and going.....

 

[blekenbleu]

What type of "rollers" would you be mounting and how?

Lacking easy access to 3D printing, wide bed casters were repurposed:

These work for 2-inch belts, which should provide better feedback
than wider belts spreading tension changes over more area.
Others, including @fhoos on the SimHub discord repurposed US$12 fairleads:

My seat back ends below shoulders, so rollers are mounted on a separate frame
which is braced to appropriate attachment points on the seat.

For seatbacks with shoulder belt ports,
I would fabricate brackets to hook into those ports and clamp the port grommets.

 

[RCHeliguy]

My G-Belt arrived and I'll cover all the installation details in my build thread below.

Mobile Driving/Flying Cockpit with Motion and Tactile ( Build )

Thought I would edit this first post from over 2 years ago to put a "current" as of 5/11/2021 picture at the very top to get an idea of where things are going. It was suggested that I created a dedicated thread for this build so it wouldn't be buried in another thread and because it might be...

www.racedepartment.com

 

[lsmanley]

I've had my G-Belt up and running for about a week and a half now and it's a pretty cool piece of kit.

Ordered (in the UK) on a Tuesday and it arrived on the Monday so very efficient service from Simxperience it has to be said. As anyone in the UK who's ever bought anything from the states will know, you will end up having to pay FedEx around 22% in taxes and import duty. Final price for me was around £960.

I'm not using any other form of motion (and have never even tried any), just SimVibe chassis on all 4 corners of my rig. I race 100% in VR and play AMS2, iRacing and Assetto Corsa.

I just mounted mine directly onto the back of my fiberglass racing seat using the supplied screws. I didn't bother with the template (don't have a printer) but you don't need it anyway. You just need to mark a centreline between the belt outlets on the back of your seat. Then get the G-belt unit to a height where you can see your belts will exit the belt outlets on your seat at their widest point into the G-belt unit. Then mark where your drill holes will be. It uses 6mm bolts to attach so I used maybe a 5mm drill bit (not totally sure but better to go small and then realise you need to drill a bigger hole than the other way around). I was able to remove the cover of my seat which you'll need to do if you're mounting it this way. It fits pretty securely. Inevitably there is some give if you press it on the sides but not too much. I had a friend in my rig with it on and couldn't detect any side to side movement when they were going through corners. I mounted it on my own but I would say this is a two man job. The unit is very heavy. A couple of things to note, it comes with a US type plug on the power cable (kettle type) and the USB cable (type A to type B) from the control box to plug into your PC is very short. Fortunately I have plenty of spare cables lying around so this wasn't a problem for me.

I'm using a 3 inch 6 point Sabelt racing harness with shoulder pads (you can get these off ebay new for a reasonable price). It's attached to my 4080 rig using M8 eyebolts into t-nuts (making quick adjustments easy). I don't use the central belt hole on my seat for the submarine belt. I did find that slightly uncomfortable. Instead it's mounted under my seat and then the straps just go over the top/front of the seat. The two straps are mounted quite wide apart and if I pull on them when it's attached I find it puts pressure on the inside of my thighs rather than my... you know what

Setup up is pretty simple (plug and play really). There's no instructions in the box but they're easy to find of the Simxperience website. I already had the simvibe software installed and the G-belt didn't show up in SimCommander at first, but when I updated my licence with the new one provided when you buy the G-belt it then showed up (presumably this is a full SC4 licence rather than just one for simvibe).

Out of the box it's very impressive. It does what you would want I guess. Really makes you physically feel like you're breaking into corners. As for side to side cornering g-forces. I found these quite subtle using the default setting so turned it up (still experimenting here) and that made it much more noticeable which I like. The only thing I've added (the default effects are breaking, cornering, acceleration and bumps) is gear change. I also found when I set the profile to 'extreme' that the bump effects were more in sync with the bumps coming from my simvibe than they felt with it on the default profile. Again though, still experimenting. I'm currently running with:

Breaking 95%
Acceleration 50%
Cornering 85%
Bumps 55%
Gear Change 100%

Early days though and I'm currently just testing out lots of different settings . Would be interesting to hear what other people are finding works for them. I will probably end up going with less intense settings I reckon as I'm probably just trying to get short term extreme sensations out of it right now for the fun of it.

I'm happy with my purchase. It's not cheap but it really adds to the immersion and the sense you're actually in a real racing car!

 

[RCHeliguy]

Sounds like SimXperience has a winner with this product based on all the people here who have recently gotten one and like it. I haven't heard one person who sounded disappointed yet.

Congratulations SimXperience !

 

[herve45]

@lsmanley
some pictures please

 

[RCHeliguy]

OK, I've got my 3" harness installed and it does look like the 3" belt is a tight fit in the NRG Prisma's belt holes. The left shoulder belt hole grommet is loose in this picture.

I feel like I cinched them up as tight as I could stand and I can see how a 5th belt would make this more involving. The G-Belt will always take up a bit of slack before you feel anything with a 4 point harness. This belt buckle will take a 5th point, and I will be looking for a way to make that work at some point.

 

[lsmanley]

Here are some photos of my g-belt. The back of my rig is quite close to a wall so I can't get round the back and take photos from there:

 

[RCHeliguy]

Here's a shot from the back.
For the moment I'm using the pass through seat belt installation.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I'm double posting this, but just so there is no confusion what-so-ever about my seat and the placement of the anti- submarine slot.

I could easily use the right 2" lap belt from my Tanaka harness as an anti-submarine belt.

The slot is lined up with the top stitching of my right cargo pocket flap.

This seat was designed for someone MUCH thinner than me or a UNIC.

This imprint doesn't look comfortable either.

 

[vannib]

Hi,
does the device on the back of the seat "push" on the seat belts grommets?

Did you do any experimentation with the V3?

 

[RCHeliguy]

Hi,
does the device on the back of the seat "push" on the seat belts grommets?

Did you do any experimentation with the V3?

Not at all. It's only touching the center area of the seat back directly where the bolts touch down. It's a pretty narrow contact area.

However there are two completely unused bolts with welded nuts on both the left and right side of the G-Belt unit. They support nothing internally and don't attach anything. They would be perfect for attaching side bracing.

I haven't had a chance to try it out at all yet.

Unused bolts and potential support mount points.
Obviously I was wrong about the PEMS. They welded nuts inside instead.

Depending on how concerned you were about this, you could also add a couple 6mm locknuts to the inside to make sure the center bolts never came loose. Just don't overtighten them if you do. I'm using slightly longer than stock SS 6mm bolts.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I'm considering possibly trying a pair of these split cushions for my seat.
My only concern is that it doesn't look like they are nearly as thick, but the opening for the anti--submarine belt should work pretty well with the belt resting on the front lip of the seat bottom shell or something pretty close to it. I might consider cutting a slot once I have it dialed in.

Amazon.com: OMP (HB/700 Racing Seat Cushion : Automotive

Buy OMP (HB/700 Racing Seat Cushion: Seat Cushions - Amazon.com ✓ FREE DELIVERY possible on eligible purchases

www.amazon.com

I can pretty easily secure the 5th belt to the profile I use for my flight stick as shown below and it is easy to remove when I put it into flight mode.

I'm going to think about this a bit and try the system out as is.

 

[vannib]

I'm considering possibly trying a pair of these split cushions for my seat.
My only concern is that it doesn't look like they are nearly as thick, but the opening for the anti--submarine belt should work pretty well with the belt resting on the front lip of the seat bottom shell or something pretty close to it. I might consider cutting a slot once I have it dialed in.
View attachment 490362

Amazon.com: OMP (HB/700 Racing Seat Cushion : Automotive

Buy OMP (HB/700 Racing Seat Cushion: Seat Cushions - Amazon.com ✓ FREE DELIVERY possible on eligible purchases

www.amazon.com

I can pretty easily secure the 5th belt to the profile I use for my flight stick as shown below and it is easy to remove when I put it into flight mode.
View attachment 490358

I'm going to think about this a bit and try the system out as is.

can I ask you what kind of brackets did you use to fix the seat? Mine when fixed to the motion platform are too narrow to fix a standard seat (42cm wide attach points)

 

[anton_Chez]

The V3 platform pre drilled holes are annoying. They don't line up with the seat brackets well at all. I had to drill out the holes in my V3 to make the seat fit but I would not recommend that at all if you can help it.

I've attached the sub only belt through the bottom port on my Sparco Rev. No issues so far. I'm going to go and test now what it feels like without the lap belts and only have the 2 shoulder harnesses and the sub belt. See bow it goes and if it's worth having it running between my legs rather than how I had it before.

 

[RCHeliguy]

No joy
This is a first. All of my other devices have come up with zero issues.

My computer recognizes the Acumotion X4 Controller, but won't download the driver. It says the driver is unavailable and to contact the manufacturer.

I'm running a fully patched windows 10, i9-9900K system with 32Gb ram, SSD's.

 

[vannib]

No joy
This is a first. All of my other devices have come up with zero issues.

My computer recognizes the Acumotion X4 Controller, but won't download the driver. It says the driver is unavailable and to contact the manufacturer.

I'm running a fully patched windows 10, i9-9900K system with 32Gb ram, SSD's.

Check on SimXperience learning center, there's a specific procedure for when the driver does not automatically installs.

 

[RCHeliguy]

My system is setup to automatically download drivers.

I never see the SimXperience drivers to download and Install from the Optional Updates screen.

It doesn't appear to know where to look for their drivers.

Model accuMotion X4 Controller Status: Driver unavailable
Category: unknown
Status: Needs troubleshooting

 

[RCHeliguy]

I've tried both of my USB hubs, direct connection to my computer and I swapped out the stock USB cable that came with it.

Phone support is only for people with a level 5 contract and they say support emails are answered in 2 business days, so I guess I don't get to play this weekend

 

[John Bruno]

Send them an email, Josh is usually pretty good at responding same day.