Build Report: Tactile Immersion in Motion

I'd just built what seemed to me the perfect immersive racing platform. What had started off as a modest attempt to dust off an old hobby had turned into something of an obsession -- messy, mismatched, and ridiculously inadequate at first, but now finally coming together.

After years of disuse, I'd pulled an old Thrustmaster wheelstand, wheel base, and pedal set out of the basement, plopped it down in front of a large screen television, sat myself in a comfy chair and gone racing.

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I'd had an on-again-off-again interest in SIM racing since the early nineties, culminating in the release of GP Legends, which I'd played with a wheel bolted to my computer desk. That's about as far as I'd gotten in terms of hardware. But even I could recognize that this whole setup left a lot to be desired. It was of course annoying to have the stand slide out from under my feet under even light braking, to have only minimum feedback from the wheel and no resistance from the pedals, and to endure the 60Hz television refresh rate. I was having fun, but wanted more. So I started out on a project that I thought had reached its pinnacle before this thread even starts.

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Over the course of the next four of five months, I took a jagged path through a stand just rigid enough to support a direct drive wheel, a better chair that still had to be strapped to the stand once I added a hydraulic brake pedal, eventually forcing a decision to build an 80/20 cockpit, install a proper racing seat, add a motion platform, belt myself in, and put on a VR headset. It was everything I had imagined it could possibly be and was responding beautifully to my efforts to dial it in.

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Then, on a whim, I decided to try out one of those Buttkicker Gamer2 packages. I honestly thought it was a gimmick and didn't expect it to add much to the immersive experience. Even so, despite my already low expectations, I found it singularly unimpressive. Almost every other step I'd taken in this process had not only shown promise, but delivered a substantially improved experience. This thing just did nothing for me at all. I sent it back almost immediately.

Still, the idea of adding tactile stimuli made sense to me. Although that specific product in that particular configuration on my individual platform had not delivered, I couldn't stop turning over in my head that it could be done right and in a way that wouldn't just add a bit of rumbling noise, but would complement the immersive experience of motion and VR. I soon discovered the exhaustive tactile immersion tread and began a correspondence with @Mr Latte that has transformed my thinking about what it should be possible to achieve. Without his guidance, I'm sure I would have given up on this idea.

This thread will chronicle my efforts integrating tactile stimuli on my platform. It may take me a while to cover everything, but here's the plan: After describing my starting point and some of its idiosyncrasies, I'll outline my objectives, general philosophy, specific hardware choices, challenges I've faced and solutions discovered for isolating the 80/20 frame and motion platform while conducting stimuli to the body, explore a few dead ends that haven't worked for me but may be instructive for others, and finally look at software configuration and tuning, which I've only just begun to explore.

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Can you share some photos of how you have them mounted under the plate? So you are perceiving stronger vibrations under your heels vs in your thighs from the seat?

Hopefully, this will give you a clear idea of how they are attached to the underside of the heel plate. I do feel them more distinctly than I did when they were under my thighs. I also like the additional spatial separation and will try to play with that some more.
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I run the DAEX each as an independent channel, however, I usually split individual effects between left/right or fore/aft, depending on the effect.

I was never really very satisfied with the exciters under my thighs, so eventually relocated those to my heel plate. The ones near my hips (outside the seat) aand behind my shoulders work very well.

Thanks Screamin,
So is this the wiring diagram or do instead go with 4 x singl
.0.e3.5 to XLR?

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Hopefully, this will give you a clear idea of how they are attached to the underside of the heel plate. I do feel them more distinctly than I did when they were under my thighs. I also like the additional spatial separation and will try to play with that some more.
View attachment 436671

Interesting, I did not suspect that these exciters would be able to effectively drive the heel plate?
 
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Design Files
In case anyone would like to use my work as a starting point for their own, here are the design files I created for the aluminum plates.

Lower plate
Top plate
Screamin,
Impressive and inspiring work on the sandwich plates for the NLR Motion Platform V3. I love the path that you have charted. Thanks for providing the files for the Top and Bottom plates.

I am also planning on adding an NLR V3 to my rig along with tactile units.

Did you make them yourself or did you have a Machine shop do it for you? If it is the latter, who did you use and how much did it cost to make all 4 plates?

When I tried to upload your Top Plate Final for a quote, I got the following error "File Top Plate Final.dxf has 2D geometry that does not have closed curves and will not cut correctly. Please upload a fixed DXF or a 3D model." The bottom plate did not have an issue.
Other sites could not give me a quote because they were looking for other file formats , especially stp(step), prt, and sldprt

I am trying to figure out the cost and then see if I can work with the height of the "floating" option
 
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Design Files

Screamin,
Impressive and inspiring work on the sandwich plates for the NLR Motion Platform V3. I love the path that you have charted. Thanks for providing the files for the Top and Bottom plates.

I am also planning on adding an NLR V3 to my rig along with tactile units.

Did you make them yourself or did you have a Machine shop do it for you? If it is the latter, who did you use and how much did it cost to make all 4 plates?

When I tried to upload your Top Plate Final for a quote, I got the following error "File Top Plate Final.dxf has 2D geometry that does not have closed curves and will not cut correctly. Please upload a fixed DXF or a 3D model." The bottom plate did not have an issue.
Other sites could not give me a quote because they were looking for other file formats , especially stp(step), prt, and sldprt

I am trying to figure out the cost and then see if I can work with the height of the "floating" option
I used this online service. They do good work at a reasonable price, provide good feedback and guidance, and seem pretty quick, but I don’t have much basis to compare them with alternatives:


I’d initially made 3D models, but this service wanted the 2D dxf sketch files.

I had them cut from 1/4” 6061 aluminum and recall that the longer plates that sit on top with the LFEs on them cost about $75 each and the lower plates cost about $45 each.
 
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Stumbled over a post regarding wheel slip and tactile feedback on the AMS2 forums, which led me to this thread, which led me to Amazon, and next week I receive a four-channel amp and four DAEX32's in the mail.
Can't wait to fully fall into this rabbit hole :D
 
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