Rig recommendations for racing and flight sim

[dj420]

Hi guys,

Recent lurker and first time poster here. I’m in Australia and am progressing through my private pilot licence at the moment. I am using Xplane and PilotEdge for radio comms and instrument awareness. Also a long time gamer who absolutely loves racing titles.

I discovered the forum when looking at setups for race/flight sims. I am looking at building up a rig that would be able to handle both racing and flight sims.

Does anyone use their rig for race and flight? It doesn’t seem to be a topic that is covered a lot, so figured I would ask the question.

Obviously the depth or degree of movement is not as critical for racing titles, but for flight that additional depth on actuators is going to be very beneficial.

I was considering a ProSimu 1000 with 3/4 DOF as they have a decent amount of depth on the actuators. There may be much better solutions though that I have not considered.

Any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I have a build thread on this subject.

https://www.racedepartment.com/thre...cockpit-with-motion-and-tactile-build.165289/

 

[RCHeliguy]

What I will say is that motion systems work really well for cars, but for flight I only find them semi-realistic for helicopters that don't have a wide range of motion. Granted you won't feel the drop if you are auto-rotating, but for most other flight in a helicopter, it is pretty close. Maybe it's because I've flown planes and sail planes IRL and there is so much of a vertical component to them that can't be reproduced like stalling and banking at high angles. If you are flying sedately like you would most of the time it might be close enough.

That is not to say you can't share the same rig for both driving and flight as long as you are using a center stick. It only takes me a few minutes to convert my rig from driving to flight mode. My stick and throttle move with my seat, but my flight pedals are stationary. The seat mover is capable of a lot of angle similar to a full motion system with long travel and it works really well with car pedals such that I don't notice it in game. With flight pedals a full chassis mover would work better. It's workable with a seat mover, but I find it more distracting than I do with driving pedals.

If you want to fly with a Yoke, that would be a trickier conversion since it would want to be exactly where your wheelbase is.

 

[Joe Extraknow]

Hi guys,

Recent lurker and first time poster here. I’m in Australia and am progressing through my private pilot licence at the moment. I am using Xplane and PilotEdge for radio comms and instrument awareness. Also a long time gamer who absolutely loves racing titles.

I discovered the forum when looking at setups for race/flight sims. I am looking at building up a rig that would be able to handle both racing and flight sims.

Does anyone use their rig for race and flight? It doesn’t seem to be a topic that is covered a lot, so figured I would ask the question.

Obviously the depth or degree of movement is not as critical for racing titles, but for flight that additional depth on actuators is going to be very beneficial.

I was considering a ProSimu 1000 with 3/4 DOF as they have a decent amount of depth on the actuators. There may be much better solutions though that I have not considered.

Any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

For flight sim, 6dof is the best you can go.
Go with 6 PT actuators, I believe the model is pt25. You probably can get all 6 actuators and servos and controllers under $7k.

 

[dj420]

Thanks for the suggestions RCHeliguy and Joe. There is a lot to think about, it’s shows it’s pretty obvious that the setups require quite different movement.

I can see why you want the 6DOF for flight sim. But then it looks like too much movement in a 6DOF for racing, I assume different profiles in the motion software would allow you keep the rig more stationary for racing.

I’m having a look at your other thread now RCHeliguy. Cheers

 

[RCHeliguy]

Hope they are helpful. I think you would be better off optimizing for car racing since that works so well and is so believable.

Any flight system easily available even that 6 DOF system wouldn't do justice to flight. The only flight simulators that have worked for me are fully gimbaled and allowed the whole cockpit to roll fully 360 degrees on both axis. They were commercial grade and they really work well. When you are upside down you get a full -1 gee which helps sell it quit a bit. Stalling basically rotates you backwards until you are almost hanging completely upside down. Climbing rotates you more on to your back. You are once again limited to 1 gee, but it is definitely enough to sell it to your brain.

I'm sure this is a YMMV situation. Other people may feel it works great for flight. I'm just not one of those people.

BTW, I bet that 6 DOF system could work really well for car racing simulations. In fact depending on the software for it, it could be amazing. I'm just suggesting that you can sell the fact you are in a virtual car in VR easier than you can that you are in a virtual plane without going that far. But I'm not suggesting that system wouldn't work well.

Keep in mind that that motion is trying to convince your brain that things are happening through acceleration forces so you are going to see more motion than you might think you would see in real life because it tries to recenter itself between the large effects so that it has access to more motion when it needs it.

 

[Wmacky]

I'm also constructing a dual purpose cockpit. As RCheliguy Says, I'm optimizing for racing with some motion benefit for flight. This is the least expensive path, and my understanding is even limited motion with VR can be very nice for flight. I'm doing a P-1 8020 frame with the DIY SFX-100 motion system which is just now beginning to offer some support for DCS and X-plane.

Convertibility is the real head scratcher. I've bought top line rudder pedals, race pedals, extended joystick, throttles ( both Cessna, and FA18 style) shifter, a heavy yoke system, and a heavy DD wheel system. I need a quick disconnect / change out system for everything, but nothing seems be available for a 8020 frames in this regard. Let me know if you find any good ideas......

 

[dj420]

Thanks very much for suggestions guys. A lot to think about and will have a look at those threads.

What do you think minimum DOF and depth on actuators should be for a rig that will be used for flight sims?

Cheers

 

[RCHeliguy]

Thanks very much for suggestions guys. A lot to think about and will have a look at those threads.

What do you think minimum DOF and depth on actuators should be for a rig that will be used for flight sims?

Cheers

How big is your wallet? How much space do you have to dedicate to the system? How much time do you have to build your rig?

If you are going to spend a lot of time in flight sims, you probably want a chassis mover.
I'd say 3-4 DOF and 3" minimum depth. I see a LOT of people very happy with 4 DOF systems. That seems to be the dominant motion system on the forums here.

Typically a 5 DOF is a 4 DOF system on top of a pivot with a side to side actuator that slides the back of the chassis back and forth. This is more for racing sims to simulate traction loss. To me these systems look overly complex and aren't worth the extra effort.

The 6 DOF system has enough motion to give you all of your motion in a more organic way. These systems look very clean, however they look very bulky to me, and the chassis way up in the air. The chassis they typically use looks very light and I wonder about how well they would handle DD wheelbases etc.

I got my 2 DOF seat mover because it is very compact and allows my rig to be mobile. It also has great game support and is very simple to configure and have work well. It is not the ultimate motion system out there but it works well enough to make me believe I'm in the car while driving in VR. So for me it is doing a great job. I haven't been using my flight sim stuff a lot lately, but I'm looking to do more of that shortly and I may find some way to tweak things a bit to my liking.

 

[Joe Extraknow]

Thanks for the suggestions RCHeliguy and Joe. There is a lot to think about, it’s shows it’s pretty obvious that the setups require quite different movement.

I can see why you want the 6DOF for flight sim. But then it looks like too much movement in a 6DOF for racing, I assume different profiles in the motion software would allow you keep the rig more stationary for racing.

I’m having a look at your other thread now RCHeliguy. Cheers

Not sure if you notice or not that Xsim community is working and improving 6dof for flight:
https://www.xsimulator.net/community/threads/writing-a-motion-cueing-software-from-scratch.13108/

PT25 actuator is direct driven inline (very small backlash), not belt driven one though. In commercial 6dof flight simulator often use powerful belt driven actuators. Cost million$.

I agree that SimTool SW maybe not ready yet for racing sim with 6DoF. Below the one, with in-house SW, claimed 98% accurate up to 2 g

 

[pt-actuator]

For flight sim, 6dof is the best you can go.
Go with 6 PT actuators, I believe the model is pt25. You probably can get all 6 actuators and servos and controllers under $7k.

Thank you, bro , for your great recommendations, but, actually , we also have many hardware solutions that both flexible suit for racing/ flight sims, but , like you guys said, we have to save different software motion configurations when playing different games, you can never use a racing software tune to play with flight, cause, it will make your screaming to death... lol.

 

[pt-actuator]

Not sure if you notice or not that Xsim community is working and improving 6dof for flight:
https://www.xsimulator.net/community/threads/writing-a-motion-cueing-software-from-scratch.13108/

PT25 actuator is direct driven inline (very small backlash), not belt driven one though. In commercial 6dof flight simulator often use powerful belt driven actuators. Cost million$.

I agree that SimTool SW maybe not ready yet for racing sim with 6DoF. Below the one, with in-house SW, claimed 98% accurate up to 2 g

Actually , this monster 6dof couuld play many roles, with the capacity not only 1tons, but, the key question is , whether you have so much big budget for your rig ?

 

[pt-actuator]

Thanks very much for suggestions guys. A lot to think about and will have a look at those threads.

What do you think minimum DOF and depth on actuators should be for a rig that will be used for flight sims?

Cheers

Hi, buddy, this is one of the guy that already using a classical 6dof , but also making a commonly standard aluminum profiles most of guys are using for 4dof, you can see, 6dof shown the biggest perfornace during flight simulation ,but also, never lost any motions when playing the racings.

 

[pt-actuator]

Thanks very much for suggestions guys. A lot to think about and will have a look at those threads.

What do you think minimum DOF and depth on actuators should be for a rig that will be used for flight sims?

Cheers

 

[RCHeliguy]

One thing that bothers me about these large 6 DOF systems is that they are all shown using screens. Without VR a LOT of the immersion is lost even if the physical queues are better.

 

[manu68]

I have an Rseat RS1 and i think they offer flight sim optional acessories.
Just look on their website

 

[RCHeliguy]

The Rseat options are limited. I looked at them seriously before getting my Sim-Lab P1. 8020 solutions have almost infinite adjustment and options.

 

[dj420]

Budget is ~5-8k, I’m starting to think either a chassis mover with longer stroke on actuators or seat mover combined with VR may be best option.

Maybe a setup that does racing really well and a decent job for flight sims. Those rigs with 6 DOF take up a lot of space! They also don’t look really friendly for racing sims.

 

[Joe Extraknow]

Budget is ~5-8k, I’m starting to think either a chassis mover with longer stroke on actuators or seat mover combined with VR may be best option.

Maybe a setup that does racing really well and a decent job for flight sims. Those rigs with 6 DOF take up a lot of space! They also don’t look really friendly for racing sims.

My recommendation:

3 PT actuators for chassis mover (~$3k) runs with SimTool SW, plus
SimXperisence seat mover on top (2 SCN5 actuators kit < $2k) runs SC4 SW

DD wheel, petals, 8020 profile frames...,~$3k ?

 

[pt-actuator]

My recommendation:

3 PT actuators for chassis mover (~$3k) runs with SimTool SW, plus
SimXperisence seat mover on top (2 SCN5 actuators kit < $2k) runs SC4 SW

DD wheel, petals, 8020 profile frames...,~$3k ?

Thanks for your hardware configurations, Joe, and what's more , 750w X 3, it could be easily lift 300kg by efficient payload.