19 replies to this topic

[PharmEcis]

So I've been a mech fan since the age of ten when I bought the TT game. When I was a freshman in college I managed to play at Virtual Worlds in Chicago a few times. I dreamed of the day when I'd own my own Tesla II pod. Eighteen years later (crap I'm getting old!) here we are and this great game finally came to light. The day founders went on sale I immediately purchased it. Over the years I've seen sim pits for various games and have known eventually I'd build my own. The last five years of my life have been dedicated to building my automotive performance business. Now it's time to use some of my skills for building the not so immersive sim pit.

I have a different desire and design goals with my sim pit. I'm not looking for that complete immersive effect where I feel like I'm literally in a cockpit and everything has been made to look 100% authentic. My hat is off to you guys that have the motivation and more importantly, the dedication to take the time to custom build a sim pit like that. I'm 35, I have a 1 year old son and I run 3 businesses. I simply don't have the time, it would take me years to build something like that. I'm an entrepreneur. I've gambled and while I haven't come out big, I'm better off than being an employee for someone else. So of course, I see opportunity as well. Gaming pits are ridiculously expensive for premades. There are some fancy ones out there to be sure but I'm not rich and I don't think the majority of you are either.

Today I finally started working on the pit. I'm making it out of 304 stainless steel because I don't work with wood, I work with metal and I TIG weld. After thinking about the design of the pit, I basically came up with something that is fundamentally similar to what choowy made. Why is that? Because it's ergonomic and it simply fits the shape of a chair, the controls, the gamer and the display. However I'm not enclosing anything, basically I'm building a roll cage type structure. Something that hopefully won't take forever to build, won't be particularly expensive and fits just right. My other goal is to make it universal. I love driving games. I like flight sims. If this thing is modular, I can adapt it for any game.

What's even better? How about putting 8 or 16 of these things in the same room. Granted match making would need more tweaking and options for this to work, but when they are there, imagine a local 8 on 8 in these things. Talk about the ultimate championship setup eh? I'm a dreamer aren't I?

Overall dimensions will be 2'6"'w x 4'h x 6'l.

Got the first side partially welded up. Does show overall shape of sim. Vulturesque.



That's all I can do for today. If I don't get home soon my young wife will have me by the balls. Sometime this week I'll get the other side made and then build the base for the seat. Then the fun stuff of building bracketry to house the pedals, hotas, joystick, monitor, keyboard etc begins!

[Hakkukakt]

that's a good begining ... wait for the suit ^^

[PharmEcis]

So looks like I made a mistake when ordering supplies and shorted myself 2 of the 45 degree bends I need. Since I'm using 1" OD tube, the bends are custom not off the shelf. Hoping to have the rest of the supplies here sometime next week to finish up the opposing side so I can finally start tying it together.

Also found a cheaper alternative for my bends that don't come with 6" legs. 8' of the 1" tubing is $40, so $5 a foot. On the bends I was purchasing, the additional 1' of straight cost me over $12. Found bends with no legs, much cheaper and I can buy straight for less. Overall win! Should also make replication easier as I noticed the bends with legs weren't exactly the same length so each straight had to be custom cut to fit properly. With bends that are all identical, the straights should be identical from piece to piece.

It doesn't look like much right now, but once this thing fully gets birthed out of my mind, it'll be rad bro!

Edited by PharmEcis, 25 October 2012 - 06:48 AM.

[ScientificMethod]

I love this idea. Depending on how you put the rest of the supports up it wouldn't take too much work to cover the frame in sheet metal. Have that go only as high as someone's upper chest while sitting, paint that in a gloss black or something similar, and your pod could look like the other custom/insanely expensive pods you've looked at. Only it would visually fit in with the games you described above.

Edited by ScientificMethod, 25 October 2012 - 05:59 AM.

[Dr Killinger]

I'm more interested in the Evo in the background

[Losvar]

PharmEcis, on 21 October 2012 - 01:11 PM, said:

Overall dimensions will be 2'6"'w x 4'h x 6'l.

I have to say, I really like your project.
But how do you manage to make anything with such an insane measuring system?

[PharmEcis]

Would you rather I use mm or cm? I'm quite comfortable with feet and inches.

There are plenty of EVOs at my shop. 7 right now plus 2 3000GTs, 4 DSMs, an AE86, BMW 3 series for turbo piping fabrication...

Here's a shot from a few weeks back so you can drool:

[PharmEcis]

Oh and that yellow EVO is one of 3 automatic EVOs in the US. Heading out to Import vs Domestic this weekend to see if we can get her into the 9s.

[PharmEcis]

So finally I have an update. It took forever for the missing bends to arrive and then Sandy came a knocking. After wrapping up the shortened work week today, I spent a little time fabricating the opposite frame piece. It's tack welded together. Hopefully Sunday I can get back to the shop with time to spare to start constructing the ribs that will hold it together. The biggest hurdle is a **** notcher for the 1" OD tubing as normally I work with 2.5" or greater. I guess I might be notching these by hand with a die grinder and carbide burrs. I had an idea that should add more aesthetic appeal to the project than simply boxing the frame together but we'll have to wait and see how that turns out.

3 pics for today. Shows off the cars in the shop more than anything else.








MAGFest is less than two months away. As it's local to me and the guys who run it lease a unit in my building, I really want to finish this puppy so I can demo it there. Even better would be having at least 4 of them there for group dropping. Gotta send the wife to Russia for New Years so I can game for a week straight!

Evidently the word p i p e is on a filter. Is pole?

[Neuromancerx]

How much for a 3000 please? I still can't believe they don't have those around anymore. Such a sexy car, for a reasonable price.

Anyways, that looks excellent!

Make sure you get good pedals and joysticks that last. I would recommend CH Products, because they last just about forever, and can take a beating. The software doesn't change much either, so what you program in is what you get out. There are flashy options to pick from, but if you want something that someone can step into and just work, CH is the way to go. If I didn't go CH, I'd swap to something that is less software based than some of the newer choices. The last thing you want to do is spend $5000 on joysticks and find out they won't work with the next generation of OS'.

[PharmEcis]

Managed to spend some time today on the pit. Notching the pipes was done by hand and I ended up notching my thumb too. Lots of blood. That means this will turn out great right, sacrifices to the gods and all! Lol

Pics!

Edited by PharmEcis, 04 November 2012 - 05:59 PM.

[Dirk Le Daring]

Good work, look foreward to seeing how it turns out. Judging by your work quality, pretty good.

[SmackZ]

If you would like some info on building button box's and other tech tips and Ideas check this site out.
http://www.thewayipl...forum/index.php they would love to follow your progress also. Hope this helps ya out a bit.

Edited by SmackZ, 06 November 2012 - 03:45 AM.

[PharmEcis]

So a little update. Spent some time yesterday working on figuring out how to mount a seat. The problem I have is I can't make up my mind as to what seat I want to use. I have a Recaro out of an EVO 8 that would be perfect for driving games but I have a feeling that over long periods of time the seat would become a little uncomfortable. I've got a seat out of a Stratus Coupe that is leather, very comfortable and has power for front/back, up/down and tilt if I simply supply it 12V. Of course, since they are out of different vehicles the attachment points aren't the same which means that they would require different solutions for mounting. For now I'm making a temporary mount that lays over the tubing so I can swap to whatever I want when I want to or until I determine what my final solution will be.

On another note, my 27" IPS panel came in yesterday to replace my 28" Hanns G that died on me. Catleap FTMFW! $330 for a 2560x1440 panel that I can't find a single dead pixel in yet! Gaming at 2560x1440 was definitely nice! On my system, i7 3770k @ stock speed w/ an ATI 6970 I'm pulling a consistent 30 to 40 fps with everything on it's highest settings. Can't complain!

[Urban UK]

I'd go with the comfort seat

[CyBerkut]

Comfort definitely matters. The other possible consideration comes down to what control scheme/layout you plan to use, and how well your seat choices will accommodate those controls. I've seen some racing seats that probably would not be the best choice to combine with side mounted sticks and throttles (HOTAS), due to rather large side projections that could restrict arm movements (remember, joysticks tend to have more sideways deflection than stick shifts do.).

If you plan to use a center mounted stick, you may want to use something less expensive, in case you decide that you want to notch the seat front to make room for the stick to deflect back more (or just to mount it further back).

[PharmEcis]

Update, or rather lack there of.

Yesterday was a great opportunity for me to continue work on the simpit. I had a solid 6 hours at the shop by myself. What did I do though? I spent the entire time at my desk playing MWO leveling up my cats and watching my K/D ratio continue to rise. Finally got them to Elite with speed boosts. No I didn't do a damned thing otherwise. Shhh, don't tell my wife. She thinks I was doing paperwork!

Since today is technically a holiday in the US of A, I'm going to work on some intercooler piping for that M3 for a bit and then turn my attention to my pit. Ahhh the joys of being the boss. No one to tell me what to do! Hopefully I'll have some pictures up later tonight of some progress.

On another note, I REALLY want to pick this up: http://torchmate.com/ I think I could make some really neat additions for my pit with that and my plasma cutter!

[repete]

Hi PharmEcis

Firstly always nice to hear from a fellow old-school TT player. My pilgrimage back in the day to a Virtual World Battletech Center was a journey of 8000+ miles. :-) And yeah, there was no question around the Founders package purchase. I voice inside my head asked "Just how much would you have paid if you had to?", and my wallet didn't like the answer. :-)

Always love seeing someone join the group of simpit builders. Do you mind if I add yours to the MWO simpit summary thread? I check semi-regularly to add updated pics.

Can you advise if there is any Battlemech you feel your simpit would be particularly inspired by or suited for?

PharmEcis, on 12 November 2012 - 07:02 AM, said:

...I had a solid 6 hours at the shop by myself. What did I do though? I spent the entire time at my desk playing MWO leveling up my cats and watching my K/D ratio continue to rise...

Yeah. I'm REALLY needing to clean-up after building my simpit, but any time I get goes in to playing and not cleaning. :-(

PS - The comfy chair!

Edited by repete, 18 November 2012 - 04:43 PM.

[Keisuke Nagisa]

This looks awesome. Like you i also love driving games and flight sims so I've been looking around for modular options but sadly there are none (affordably at least). I will definitely be taking notes from your design. My idea is to start with a simple seat on a tube frame (adjustable of course) with mounting for controls and such built into the frame and expand from there. If this game and others get support for the occulus rift there might not even be any need to go farther than that beside maybe some shakers.

Edited by Keisuke Nagisa, 18 November 2012 - 10:25 PM.

[Keisuke Nagisa]

After doing some research I found this build which frankly looks amazing.

http://forum.arcadec...p?topic=94941.0

http://i92.photobuck...thagerty/23.jpg
http://i92.photobuck...thagerty/33.jpg
http://i92.photobuck...thagerty/34.jpg

http://www.youtube.c...d&v=i-rjs7-CJ3o

Edited by Keisuke Nagisa, 20 November 2012 - 07:48 AM.