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

[RCHeliguy]

I think this guy understands D-Box setup pretty well and his experience with some of these effects matched what I was seeing. I need to try some of this out. I had gotten some similar suggestions from someone else, but he explains how the sliders work on this.

 

[RCHeliguy]

The Alpha isn't quite as light as I thought, but still about half the weight of the A-10 stick.

 

[NetLawMan]

For a guy who has no plans to incorporate high-end tactile, you have this weird obsession for making assumptions on how motion haptics are good enough and how isolation is dampening the motion experience. Instead of constantly soliciting for thoughts and opinions from people with both systems to satisfy your curiosity, try exercising some patience or contribute something of value by validating any of your theories with your own testing.

I have. Check other threads. Your facts are off. Just like anyone else, I am free to say what is enough for me. And note, while stating that I am curious, I have not and don’t need to solicit anything because I made my own decisions about what works for me. That is Mr Latte steadily trying to demonstrate the value of his business plan.

BTW, I don’t need to validate any theories as I haven’t put forth any. No vaporware here. What I have done is share actual experiences, which I will continue to do. They are all that matters.

Clearly there is not much going on in this thread if the topic keeps coming back to why I have no interest in magic haptics

 

[RCHeliguy]

DUDE WOULD YOU GIVE IT UP!

THE ONLY REASON YOU ARE THE TOPIC OF CONVERSATION IS BECAUSE YOU WON'T GO AWAY!

I have moved on to building out my flight controls, but you seem to be ignoring that.

 

[RCHeliguy]

This is how everything bolted up.

The mount for it is about 4.5 hours of 3D printing away. Probably be first thing in the AM before I can get it setup.

 

[NetLawMan]

DUDE WOULD YOU GIVE IT UP!

THE ONLY REASON YOU ARE THE TOPIC OF CONVERSATION IS BECAUSE YOU WON'T GO AWAY!

I have moved on to building out my flight controls, but you seem to be ignoring that.

I simply responded which I can do at anytime. But glad you are talking to me again.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Perfect fit.

Mounted.

This is an instance where the sliding seat is helpful. Since the frame crossmember is fixed, I don't have any fore/aft leeway positioning the stick. I moved the seat as far forward as I could while still having full motion of the stick. My legs slightly impede full left or right roll, but the overall control should be much improved.

I increased the spring tension on both axis given the much longer lever arm.

The stick isn't resting far off center and with my hand on the stick it's easy to find center, however I'm printing a counter weight support as a test print. The larger calibration weights should arrive today, but I suspect what I have will get me pretty close to balanced.

 

[MarkModdy]

Very nice!

 

[RCHeliguy]

This is all working great!

I was successfully landing the UH-1 on a dime

The counter weight helped.
The Virpil calibration tool put the stick back 3%, so I just recalibrated the stick with that as the center viola'

I recalibrated with the space between hitting my legs and not quite as far forward and rearward and it felt great in flight.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I did get the D-Box settings for helicopter use working well enough. I cranked up the motion settings into the 50's and I adjusted the roll a bit lower than pitch because the actuators are not in a perfect square and that seemed to make things feel uniform. I was able to leverage self-centering like this and it wasn't throwing me off. I dropped from the max of 60 until the thunks stopped.

Keep in mind that helicopters tend not to do much in the way of barrel rolls or vertical climbs, and you need to feel the more subtle angles which the stock settings are not even close to providing.

It's not as compelling as the NLRv3 was for helicopter use for cyclic feel, but it's acceptable now and it brings other effects to the table. You can feel a take off and landing much better and some other feelings in the air.

The new G-Belt support for DCS helps sell motion without as much range, so that's working well and helping make up for the lack of motion.

For flight use the Engine RPM HAPTICS SUCK ROYAL DUNG! Being able to feel the engine at all in flight destroys the motion and you loose any smoothness. When you ease into a bank and can feel the engine haptics it makes the motion feel horribly notchy and like the D-Box has no resolution. When you turn the Engine RPM off or way down so you can't feel it, motion feels smooth again.

I had noticed the engine hapics destroyed motion with planes earlier and "thought" it was OK for helicopters. That was because I hadn't dialed things in to feel the cyclic motion at all. Now that I have some of the cyclic feel I was looking for, the rpm effect ruins motion just like for the planes.

So haptics for flight are a complete waste. Unfortunately I don't have Simshakers for Aviators set up which I've mentioned repeatedly. I plan to do that ASAP now that I have the rest feeling pretty good and I'd like to feel some tactile too.

All that said, I feel like I now have motion feeling good enough all around that I'm "overall" happy with the D-Box. It could definitely use more travel for flight, and probably feels better in Rally with more travel, but it nails track use, does a pretty compelling rally, and handles flight "acceptably".

 

[Atak_Kat]

Hi again. Thanks for the consistent updates.

I’m curious why you decided to go with the control mounted to the frame? Only because I had that for a while and then moved it to be mounted to my seat so when I move the seat forward/back it’s always there.

Thanks for any insight. Always learning.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Hi again. Thanks for the consistent updates.

I’m curious why you decided to go with the control mounted to the frame? Only because I had that for a while and then moved it to be mounted to my seat so when I move the seat forward/back it’s always there.

Thanks for any insight. Always learning.

For a number of years with a seat mover, my only option was to mount the stick to my seat and it worked well, but left me no opportunity to mount a longer stick like this to give me more control. It also meant that there was no fore/aft adjustability for the stick.

There is no way for me to physically mount a long stick like this to my seat on my rig. It just won't fit and the things in the way are not things I would move.

My seat will always be in the exact same place when using the stick, but my flight pedals do move and I've moved them forward. So when people come to visit, I'll have to slide the flight pedals to fit them to the rig. Unless someone has very long arms and then we could slide the seat backwards.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Good news is that it appears Simshaker for Aviators supports 6 channels now.
Bad news is that I get this. Maybe I'm missing something I need to install.

More Bad news, I tried setting up SimCommander options for Chassis or extension mode tactile in the hopes there was support for DCS, but I found none no effects that looked flight related.

More Bad news, when I clicked the check box for to enable SimVibe ALL my G-Belt settings disappeared for every title! So I need to reconfigure those again

Even worse, now my profiles are corrupt. So delete and auto detect and start over.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Noticed a very active DCS thread going since 2016 where the author of SimShaker is active

[Official] SimShaker for Aviators

forum.dcs.world

It appears that I will have stereo available and unfortunately my first two channels are the ones that I disconnect when I remove the pedal deck.

So I'll need to rotate the channels of my Pedal and seat TST's and BK's in order to get this to work. Another day....

 

[RCHeliguy]

Printing a slightly shorter counterweight support using a 500g weight.
That should get me close enough for center deadband use.

 

[RCHeliguy]

It got me to 0.1 degree off plumb and I think I'll call that good enough.

My only option would be to have a lockable slide involved so you could fine tune the balance. The upside is if that were designed properly you could handle a 1000g Thrustmaster grip. The downside is increased complexity. For now I think I'll stick with simple.

 

[RCHeliguy]

None of this works on my rig without a quick release

Here is my first potential solution. I'm hoping that gravity will be plenty to hold this in place. I may want to put a bit of UHMW tape on the back of the CM2 base unit so both it and the profile do not wear.

The release is basically a two directional wedge on both sides, with a few steps and a stop at the bottom.

 

[Petterio]

Printing a slightly shorter counterweight support using a 500g weight.
That should get me close enough for center deadband use.

View attachment 602908
View attachment 602909

I wonder, have you thought about adding an exciter to the counterbalance? That way you'd have some feedback also on the stick when using SimShaker

 

[RCHeliguy]

I wonder, have you thought about adding an exciter to the counterbalance? That way you'd have some feedback also on the stick when using SimShaker

One step at a time. For the moment I have no tactile for flight. D-Box haptics are not well integrated. SimVibe doesn't have flight support for DCS yet, Sim Hub does not support it either.

That leaves me with Simshaker for Aviators which will be limited to stereo. I'll only be driving my seat's TST and BK for now. Likely I'll have the engine going through the TST and other effects going through the BK.

Given my limitation to the first two channels for stereo, I see anything beyond that as being highly unlikely at this point. For now I'll be happy to get that working. Simshaker for Aviators handles a large number of effects, but gives you little control compared to SimHub.

 

[RCHeliguy]

That will work