Rllmuk racing wheel thread

[SneakyNinja]

Oops. It seems an upgrade has happened.

 

 

Still fiddling with the tunings, but it's an impressive bit of kit so far.

 

You basically mount the seat, pedals and wheel to a platform that can move in 3 degrees of freedom. Stick a VR headset on and you're IN the car.

 

[Shimmyhill]

10 minutes ago, SneakyNinja said:

Oops. It seems an upgrade has happened.

 

 

Still fiddling with the tunings, but it's an impressive bit of kit so far.

 

You basically mount the seat, pedals and wheel to a platform that can move in 3 degrees of freedom. Stick a VR headset on and you're IN the car.

 

 

Holy crap, that must be amazing - imagine its not cheap!?

 

 

[milko]

Daaaaamn, that’s fancy! I had a sort of half curious look at those a while back but I don’t see them being possible for me. Well jel!

[Valver]

4 hours ago, SneakyNinja said:

Oops. It seems an upgrade has happened.

 

 

Still fiddling with the tunings, but it's an impressive bit of kit so far.

 

You basically mount the seat, pedals and wheel to a platform that can move in 3 degrees of freedom. Stick a VR headset on and you're IN the car.

 

OMG, that looks amazing!  Where do you live, can I come round a try it with the VR hat? 🙂

[SneakyNinja]

13 hours ago, Shimmyhill said:

 

Holy crap, that must be amazing - imagine its not cheap!?

 

 

 

Got lucky in that regard - best mate and I were talking about these after watching a YouTube video about them. Then one came up on Facebook marketplace for a reeeeeally good price so we went halves on it.

 

9 hours ago, Valver said:

OMG, that looks amazing!  Where do you live, can I come round a try it with the VR hat? 🙂

 

Actually, I think we're not too far apart - Brands is my 'local' track, about 45 mins away  

 

[davejm]

Party at @SneakyNinja's? 

[Meers]

Can I come over too?

 

That looks amazing, Gaz!

 

"Now my setup is done! For reals! Honest guv'!"

[Meers]

 

@SneakyNinja @ Christmas 2022. 😜

[SneakyNinja]

Ooooh..

 

now you mention it, there is an upgrade that gives 6 degrees of freedom like that…

[Valver]

53 minutes ago, SneakyNinja said:

 

Actually, I think we're not too far apart - Brands is my 'local' track, about 45 mins away  

 

 

I'm in Hertford...  just saying 😄 

[Corranga]

Wow, DOF Reality content! Congrats, that looks amazing!

 

I'm hear to here to bring things back down to earth

 

Post elastomer shore failure on my Fanatec CSL Load cells, I've modified my pedals to use die springs, removing the weak (for me) elastomers.  I'm not 100% happy with it, but it feels pretty good, maybe needs a bit of a tweak.

Its simply 2 die springs and 3 nylon stand off / shoulder washers, though I'd prefer 4 (additional one at the load cell end, right of the first photo).

 

I wanted the shoulder washers as I didn't like other similar mods I'd seen on reddit, which left the die springs free to roam around on the fanatec's original shaft due to the diameter of the hold in the springs, but due to the shaft length, and the thickness of the washer collar, I can only fit 3 in.

The other issue is the collars touch at full braking pressure on the weaker of the 2 springs, so I might need to buy different sized ones, or file them down.

 

The silver (bzp..) washer right at the load cell end is the original from the pedals, so no real difference to what is making the pressure directly to the load cell area.

 

Pedal travel is now longer, and the 2 different springs is a touch more softer, then harder / less linear.

 

 

 

(another edit - decided to make this a bit of a fact finding / documentation post). 

 

These are the things I used (in black):

 

 

The bit marked as 'bush length' sits inside the die springs, but the ends of them just touch at full braking pressure (running 70 at the moment) and the 'Washer Thickness' could do with being less so I can fit 4 in (might need to switch to metal ones perhaps)

I bought an assortment, but I'm pretty sure I'm using...

M8

ID 8.10 (the shaft for the pedals is 8mm)

OD 10.00 (die springs inner diameter is 10mm so this restricted side to side movement)

BL 8.00 (this is too long, so it touches the other one facing it)

WOD: 14.20 (die spring OD is closer to 20mm, but 14mm is fine to separate them I think)

WT: 2.50 (this is also a bit too big preventing using 3, though 3 just fits perfectly, suggesting I have 7.5mm to play with.  Can perhaps shave 0.5mm off each, but, year, no idea how to do that so precisely without a lathe or something!)

 

Die Springs are 25mm long, you get them in 5 strengths, colour coded from weakest to strongest:

Yellow

Blue

Red

Green

Brown

 

I ordered 2 each of Blue, Red and Green so I can play around a bit.  I think the greens are too hard, and the ideal setup for me will be a combination of reds and blues.  2 Blue would give a longer but softer feeling pedal, 2 reds shorter and harder, but I think still longer than the elastomers.

 

Fitting is fiddly, but doesn't need any tools (well, I had to remove the pedal from my rig as I was struggling / experimenting).

You have to be careful not to break / loose the little Fanatec shoulder washers where the shaft meets the pedal.

 

Any questions, fire away.

[SharkyOB]

On 04/06/2022 at 13:44, sbrandon111 said:

Thanks for the replies, I’ll stick with the paddle shifts. Annoyingly I couldn’t get my wheel to work with Euro Truck Simulator (maybe a blessing in disguise).

 

I think that's the way to go at first, it sounds like you've just started to use a wheel so there's enough to learn at the moment!  I drive a lot of older cars in AC though, so an h-pattern shifter is needed if you're going to do that properly.  I had one for years, but only really started using it properly during the first lockdown when I decided to teach myself how to heel and toe.  It really does add something to driving old cars, defo recommended!

[sbrandon111]

3 hours ago, SharkyOB said:

 

I think that's the way to go at first, it sounds like you've just started to use a wheel so there's enough to learn at the moment!  I drive a lot of older cars in AC though, so an h-pattern shifter is needed if you're going to do that properly.  I had one for years, but only really started using it properly during the first lockdown when I decided to teach myself how to heel and toe.  It really does add something to driving old cars, defo recommended!

Using the wheel and pedals really does transform racing games, or even just driving games. I got my wheel to work with Euro Truck Simulator and it sounds trivial but it really does make the games a lot more fun and immersive. The learning curve isn’t so steep once you get used to it. I’m a far way off troubling the leaderboard top times but I’ll get there

[Benny]

Well that's my arcade stick thread upstaged.

[Meers]

40 minutes ago, sbrandon111 said:

Euro Truck Simulator

 

Now there's something I reckon I should give a try.

[Shimmyhill]

52 minutes ago, Meers said:

 

Now there's something I reckon I should give a try.

A mate of mine is very into this and has full truck style cockpit, it makes our rigs look a bit basic 😂

 

The best bit, as far as I can tell, is that it uses real-time weather and internet radio so as you drive through (insert place here) you get the actual weather and tunes on the radio! Not really played it may self, apparently mashing the throttle is not how one goes about it 😉

[EuroVapeSim2]

1 hour ago, sbrandon111 said:

Using the wheel and pedals really does transform racing games, or even just driving games. I got my wheel to work with Euro Truck Simulator and it sounds trivial but it really does make the games a lot more fun and immersive. The learning curve isn’t so steep once you get used to it. I’m a far way off troubling the leaderboard top times but I’ll get there

Ha yes another trucking fan. I haven't played it in ages but I've put a lot of hours into euro truck sim 2 and American truck sim. I used to play with a steam controller and used the built in gyro to steer. It worked surprisingly well but nothing like the immersion having a wheel, I used to love cruising with some good music, there was also a lot of hours spent customising the trucks in my fleet. I have a h-shifter and if you plan to put a lot of hours into EVS2/ATS I'd recommend looking into them. There's some decent and relatively cheap ones available on the likes of aliexpress.

 

1 hour ago, Meers said:

 

Now there's something I reckon I should give a try.

You should, it goes on sale pretty often not just the base game but a lot of the dlc as well. Last time I checked about half a year ago SCS were beta testing official multiplayer with AI traffic. I'd love to do a rllmuk night chatting and doing jobs in one of our off weeks from the league.

[Meers]

So is ETS like FS2020 in that you can traverse the globe in an unlimited way? 

[milko]

2 hours ago, Meers said:

So is ETS like FS2020 in that you can traverse the globe in an unlimited way? 

 

not the whole globe, but they've a pretty vast amount of terrain, especially once you add the expansions. They're condensed though, so even then it's not like Flight Sim doing an accurate rendition of the world.

[Meers]

So say a trip from, say, Groningen to Bristol would take me as much time as it would in real life?

[milko]

42 minutes ago, Meers said:

So say a trip from, say, Groningen to Bristol would take me as much time as it would in real life?

 

Nah, that's where it's condensed. It could still take a while but definitely not realtime. 

[Meers]

1 minute ago, milko said:

 

Nah, that's where it's condensed. It could still take a while but definitely not realtime. 

 

Ah then I misunderstood. I thought it was condensed just like train simulator*, where you can only see the 'trackside' for half a mile or something but the road and route itself was fully modeled.

 

* also a very fun game, my son loves it!

[EuroVapeSim2]

The map itself is very well modelled, if you wanted you could just freely drive around but the game is focused on doing jobs and building your company, there's quite a decent micro-management style game in it as well as you get into the guts of buying depots, trucks, trailers and hiring drivers, I believe in the setting you can turn off fines for crashing and breaking other rules. Not sure if you can turn off the fuel consumption, you could easily enough adjust your money with a mod so you would never have to worry if you just wanted to drive.

 

Here is a video showing a log delivery job with G29 and H-shifter.

 

 

 

And here's another one from the same guy showing one of the heavy haul jobs.

 

[Valver]

On 13/06/2022 at 09:39, SneakyNinja said:

now you mention it, there is an upgrade that gives 6 degrees of freedom like that…

 

I'm interested to know what you need to run software wise to get this working.

 

Have you got any motion compensation software running (so the VR headset will alter your view based on the seat throwing you about and the frame of reference moving - some software can counter this so your view stays relatively still and you just feel the G's instead - reduces VR sickness)

 

Something like  https://ovrmc.dschadu.de/ maybe?

[SneakyNinja]

1 hour ago, Valver said:

 

I'm interested to know what you need to run software wise to get this working.

 

Have you got any motion compensation software running (so the VR headset will alter your view based on the seat throwing you about and the frame of reference moving - some software can counter this so your view stays relatively still and you just feel the G's instead - reduces VR sickness)

 

Something like  https://ovrmc.dschadu.de/ maybe?

 

The software is called Sim Racing Studio, and it handles a wide range of hardware from motion rigs to fans and base shakers etc. You get a license for it with the hardware.

https://www.simracingstudio.com/

 

I'm not running any motion compensation as I thought I didn't need it  Funnily enough, it makes use of OVRMC but needs a sensor cabled tied to the platform and a subscription to SRS. Also, they say it only works with SteamVR which runs ACC like a dog.

 

https://www.simracingstudio.com/post/motion-compensation

 

Still might look into though as it might be what I need. (And it's a new techie toy!)

 

I expect I'll need a pre-race checklist soon...

 

PC on - check.

SRS started - check.

Audio output set to VR hat - check

PC Display extended - check

Crew Chief started - check

Oculus loaded ok - check

Oculus guardian disabled - check

Oculus link started - check

ACC started - check

Velux closed - check

Room lights on - check

...

 

 

 

[Shimmyhill]

I do fancy a buttkicker on the rig, I see they work with consoles these days so I am tempted as I remember years ago trying one on an office chair setup a mate had and it was surprisingly good!

 

Motion must be mad and incredible to play with - very jealous and while ive resited going back to PC its getting harder and harder to ignore the whispers….

[Meers]

13 minutes ago, SneakyNinja said:

I expect I'll need a pre-race checklist soon...

 

PC on - check.

SRS started - check.

Audio output set to VR hat - check

PC Display extended - check

Crew Chief started - check

Oculus loaded ok - check

Oculus guardian disabled - check

Oculus link started - check

ACC started - check

Velux closed - check

Room lights on - check

...

 

Holy shit, I thought my list was long:

 

PC on

Headset on

Wheel on

Start Crew Chief

Load car setup in Fanalab (wheel settings)

Start game via Fanalab

Start Sim Dashboard app on phone and insert phone in case on wheel base

[Valver]

1 hour ago, Shimmyhill said:

I do fancy a buttkicker on the rig, I see they work with consoles these days so I am tempted as I remember years ago trying one on an office chair setup a mate had and it was surprisingly good!

 

Motion must be mad and incredible to play with - very jealous and while ive resited going back to PC its getting harder and harder to ignore the whispers….

 

So Buttkickers do work on consoles, but read the small print carefully to avoid disappointment.  The console versions use the general game audio output and basically vibrate when any low frequencies are kicked out.  There's no nuance to what they output.

 

On the PC they work quite differently and the games telemetry data is streamed to a separate bit of software (I think SRS that Sneaky uses above works well for example) and that software can then be configured for each buttkicker to react in any way the user wants.  So you could have two buttkickers, and make one rumble when you go over kerbs, and the other vibrate in when ABS kicks in.  You need separate USB soundcard/amps for each one you connect I think - I'd imagine its a cabling nightmare 🙂

[SneakyNinja]

22 minutes ago, Valver said:

 

So Buttkickers do work on consoles, but read the small print carefully to avoid disappointment.  The console versions use the general game audio output and basically vibrate when any low frequencies are kicked out.  There's no nuance to what they output.

 

On the PC they work quite differently and the games telemetry data is streamed to a separate bit of software (I think SRS that Sneaky uses above works well for example) and that software can then be configured for each buttkicker to react in any way the user wants.  So you could have two buttkickers, and make one rumble when you go over kerbs, and the other vibrate in when ABS kicks in.  You need separate USB soundcard/amps for each one you connect I think - I'd imagine its a cabling nightmare 🙂

 

So basically you're quietly whispering "join usss...." into @Shimmyhill's ear  

[jonathanhoey]

I bought ETS2 and hated it. 

 

At the time I was living in Cambridge and seeing my girlfriend in Kent at weekends, so I was very used to that particular driving route (Cambridge > M11 > M25 > Dartford Crossing > A2). 

 

So of course as soon as I got the game I decided to replicate the journey, to see how faithful it was. 

 

The answer: not at all. Cambridge didn't look anything like Cambridge, the motorways were totally generic and the Dartford Bridge (which is pretty distinctive) was unrecognisable, again just a generic bridge model. 

 

The actual game might be completely brilliant but I just didn't really enjoy it at all and bounced off it. 

 

I should probably give it another try and drive to Belgium or something.