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

[Enzo Fazzi]

This might be interesting for most people here: https://rogerrogerengineering.com/products/icarus-one

 

[stigs2cousin]

Looks interesting.

I´ve checked the website but still can´t figure what that thing is/does?

 

[Enzo Fazzi]

Looks interesting.

I´ve checked the website but still can´t figure what that thing is/does?

It's the pitch axis for a yoke. It has mounting points for wheel quick releases on both sides, so you when you want to do flight sims, you can mount it to your wheelbase, and then mount a wheel/yoke on the other side.

Means you can control roll and pitch without needing a separate base for a yoke.

 

[RCHeliguy]

That is interesting. I've never seen it and it would solve a lot of problems.

I'm just curious if there is any software to support an SC 2 Pro. If it had FFB it would be the bees knees.


Looks like you would need to move your wheelbase forward quite a bit or slide your seat back a bit for it to work.

That's the only obvious issue I see. I don't think I could make it work simply because of all my controls that are mounted on the same plane as the wheelbase. I've had to re-engineer a lot.

But I think is is exactly what many people are looking for. I'll have to think about this. I'm pretty happy with just a stick, but I don't tool around in commercial aircraft much, so it doesn't bother me, but I know that there are people this will appeal to.

 

[RCHeliguy]

So basically create an SC2 profile that limits wheel rotation an sets a reasonable constant drag/friction. That would be pretty simple.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Ikarus was founded this year, and other than "will be available soon" there is no estimated delivery date.

It appears that it can mount to an SC2 Pro with a quick release so it doesn't have to change your driving geometry and you could leave a yoke permanently mounted and just remove the whole Ikarus unit when not flying.

It doesn't appear finished since I can't see any USB cable to send pitch data.

A simple SC2 profile that limits wheel rotation +/- 90 degrees and sets a static friction should work with this. While aileron FFB is technically possible at a future date, the pitch is purely friction based with no chance of FFB.

I don't know how big a compromise the travel is.

Many simulator yokes have a range of about 6" or 150mm of travel. That is the travel of the yoke in Cessnas like I used to I take lessons in decades ago.

The Brunner FFB yoke has a smaller 90mm of travel.
The Ikarus has 76mm travel or about 1/2 of the travel of a yoke IRL.

I'm not sure if 76mm of travel is a deal breaker or not since I don't fly with a yoke.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I just measured my rig and it doesn't appear fitting an Ikarus device is even a possibility. With my seat slider all the way back I don't have enough clearance, and I can't move my vertical uprights forward if I wanted to. The D-Box is mounted directly ahead of the uprights and if I moved those closer to the front they would interfere with my driving pedal deck.

I guess technically I could move both the 40x40 profile above my tactile plate backwards and then move the seat slider backwards to add reach, but I think I would be losing the slider range I want when I have shorter people visiting.

 

[RogerRogerEngineering]

First of all, @Enzo Fazzi , thankyou for sharing this here



I see there are some questions surrounding Ikarus and the ways it should be used. From top to bottom I will try to answer those questions in the reply’s below!

Please note that Ikarus is, as mentioned, still very much in development and a lot can change about it’s mechanics, dimensions, esthetics… well, pretty much everything.



Ps; let me know if I missed anything that needs clearing up or if there are any other questions!

 

[RogerRogerEngineering]

Looks interesting.

I´ve checked the website but still can´t figure what that thing is/does?

As @Enzo Fazzi correctly stated, Ikarus adds the function needed to use your simracing hardware as a yoke for flightsims. It solves the issue that arises when a simracer wants to start flying, where he would either need to drop a lot of money on an entire new simulator or accept the need to replace the hardware everytime you go from racing to flying and the other way around. Also, to state the obvious, this is a product that's perfect for those who wish to use a yoke instead of a flightstick.

In contrary to what is mentioned here somewhere, it is not necessary to remove Ikarus for racing at all! Simply lock it in place at the desired position and boot up your racing sim. Why is this important? If this feature wasn’t present it would kind of defeat the whole idea; to be able to switch hobby’s faster than you can load your games.
Also makes it easier to change distance of steering wheel to user in case you have some guests over

 

[RogerRogerEngineering]

Ikarus was founded this year, and other than "will be available soon" there is no estimated delivery date.

It appears that it can mount to an SC2 Pro with a quick release so it doesn't have to change your driving geometry and you could leave a yoke permanently mounted and just remove the whole Ikarus unit when not flying.

It doesn't appear finished since I can't see any USB cable to send pitch data.
View attachment 703928

A simple SC2 profile that limits wheel rotation +/- 90 degrees and sets a static friction should work with this. While aileron FFB is technically possible at a future date, the pitch is purely friction based with no chance of FFB.

I don't know how big a compromise the travel is.

Many simulator yokes have a range of about 6" or 150mm of travel. That is the travel of the yoke in Cessnas like I used to I take lessons in decades ago.

The Brunner FFB yoke has a smaller 90mm of travel.
The Ikarus has 76mm travel or about 1/2 of the travel of a yoke IRL.

I'm not sure if 76mm of travel is a deal breaker or not since I don't fly with a yoke.

Currently some readjusting the wheelbase is indeed necessary to make it all fit and be comfortable while flying or racing. The goal is to keep developing and make the final size quite a bit smaller compared to it’s current dimensions. How compact it can be is limited to the travel you want to have in a yoke like device like this.

The current 76mm in travel is an absolute minimum I want to stay above (the prototype in the demo actually has 82mm of travel ).

To comment on the “will be available soon” situation; well… there’s not much to comment actually haha. Ikarus is still very much in development. I do want to point out that pretty much all of the most important pieces of the puzzle have been developed and are currently being tested. Now the biggest challenge, putting all of those puzzles pieces together, still lays ahead.

Would you consider contacting me so I could ask you some more questions? You seem like you’re very passionate about the sim hobby’s and I’d love to hear more about the way you’ve setup your rig and how you use it!? If you’re comfortable with that you can reach out to info@rogerrogerengineering.com

btw, what's the project you're working on exactly??? looks interesting!

 

[stigs2cousin]

Hy Jordy,

welcome to RaceDepartment.

As a guy relatively new into Simracing and knowing nothing about Simflying I can´t comment on the technologie.

I was interested and looked at your website which didn´t help.
Could you add a short description what your device wants to achieve and how it works?

Regarding "Dual Use Sim Rigs":
there are several build threads for "Flight/Racing Rigs" here on R.D.

 

[RogerRogerEngineering]

Hy Jordy,

welcome to RaceDepartment.

As a guy relatively new into Simracing and knowing nothing about Simflying I can´t comment on the technologie.

I was interested and looked at your website which didn´t help.
Could you add a short description what your device wants to achieve and how it works?

Regarding "Dual Use Sim Rigs":
there are several build threads for "Flight/Racing Rigs" here on R.D.

Thanks for the welcome bud

And thankyou for the feedback, it's easy to assume everyone will know how something works if you've been working on it for almost a year already haha. I will definitely take a look at the presentation and explanation of Ikarus in the near future.
And i will check out the other threads as well, thanx!

 

[RCHeliguy]

Would you consider contacting me so I could ask you some more questions? You seem like you’re very passionate about the sim hobby’s and I’d love to hear more about the way you’ve setup your rig and how you use it!? If you’re comfortable with that you can reach out to info@rogerrogerengineering.com

btw, what's the project you're working on exactly??? looks interesting!

This entire thread is a running build log spanning over 4 years with pretty much every change I've ever made to my rig and should have all the gory detail you could ever want. There has never been an issue with my being comfortable sharing.

There are multiple iterations of both my driving setup and my various quick release mechanisms for the flight controls.

Realistically, my rig is an outlier compared to many much less complex rigs out there.

In particular the area in front of the uprights on my rig is extremely densely packed.
I need room for the levers to spin to allow the pedal deck to slide fore/aft.
I need room to remove the caster when my rig is in place. I have my D-Box motion actuator mounted as far back as I could fit it.

When my rig is setup for flight, as shown below, this wouldn't ben an issue, but my rig spends most of the time in sim racing mode and I am absolutely not moving my vertical uprights ever. They are very painful to move in terms of disassembly, re-assembly.

At the other end my seat is centered on an isolated tactile plate and while it has seat sliders, it does not have enough range of motion to accommodate the Ikarus yoke system.
I believe I could slide my flight pedals back far enough if the seat had the ability to slide back far enough.

While I find the design exercise of trying to figure out how to make this work interesting, I only have so much interest because I primarily fly helicopters which use a stick and otherwise I fly fighters which also use a stick in DCS.

Your primary audience will be people who fly personal and commercial planes in MSFS.

Below is my typical configuration for flying helicopters.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I verified this print works, and shared it for people who might find use for it.
It made all the difference with OpenXR Motion Compensation allowing it to work for me when hitting rumble strips or using any somewhat abusive tactile effects.

Vive Tracker Isolation Mount for 40 series Profile by RCHeliGuy

This is a vibration damping mount for a Vive Tracker to be used with motion compensation software. EDIT: This absolutely will not dampen my D-Box haptics on the race track over a rumble strip or in Rally. It might be suitable for MSFS and smooth flight. SorryIt utilizes Drone anti-vibration...

www.thingiverse.com

 

[RCHeliguy]

Somewhat related, I just saw the ASR Pro Adjustable Wheel Deck. If I didn't have an elaborate button box on my rig, I would be very tempted to just grab this. They have a SimLab P1X and front mount option that should just bolt directly to my rig and fit my SC2 Pro.

It uses levers to slide the wheelbase Up/Down and Fore/Aft.
And it has bolts to adjust wheelbase angle.

ASR PRO Wheel Deck

You asked, we listened! The adjustable wheel deck from our brand new industry leading SimRacing Chassis, the ASR PRO, is now available as a standalone product. The most easily adjustable wheel deck ever produced, with quick adjustment handles and sliders for horizontal and vertical position...

www.advancedsimracing.com

This would even allow me to slide my SC2 Pro out of the way and slide in a completely separate yoke.

The easy of adjustment would be great by itself when I have visitors. I've had visitors shorter than me who would have liked me to drop the wheel lower.

 

[mechsicko]

There have been some nice yokes made with Rhino kits

 

[RCHeliguy]

There have been some nice yokes made with Rhino kits

I could see how that could be done.

FYI, just to be clear, I still don't have any interest in a yoke, but just saw that as an option for people who were interested.

 

[mechsicko]

I could see how that could be done.

FYI, just to be clear, I still don't have any interest in a yoke, but just saw that as an option for people who were interested.

Me either. Anything I'm interested in flying uses a stick. Except Tie Fighters and at least half of the other ships in Star Wars Squadrons but it's not a normal yoke either. Left/right grips are sticks that stay parallel and pivot at their bases in pitch/roll, while being attached to the mechanism resembling normal yoke Surge/Roll on a center axis. Here's what I was building for that when the games population cratered. Still might though, as my kinematic mockup proved out the concepts of pivot point relations. Had to move things around a tiny bit to accommodate the reality of cross-talk between axis that will easily influence each other if sticking to the game's relations.

Olukelo type cam centering on pitch/roll, Milan (Crosswinds) type cam centering on the central roll, friction slider for yoke slide. All axis Hall sensors with adjustable friction rubs using Nyogel 767a damping grease (when done right it is literally as good as real deal hydraulic damping).. projects projects projects

Can't find my pics of the kinematic mockup I used to validate the pivot relations for the Tie Fighter yoke but I just found another space yoke I was working on when I still thought Star Citizen was going to be real

 

[RCHeliguy]

Just because of my comments about SimLab removing slots, it's probably worth showing how ASR removed ALL the side slots! Rather than using curved corners, it has a large plate on the back with slots for the seat mount to move. It's definitely interesting, but is even less flexible than the new SimLab chassis. I couldn't make that work for me.

However, I think they have one of the best and easiest to adjust wheelbase supports I've seen and I'm glad they are selling that separately, because I find it tempting.

I'm debating redesigning my button box to fit it. I'm just hoping it comes with silver or black profile for the interior connecting pieces.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Damn! I couldn't resist. That wheel mount just looks too well thought out.

Compared to my SimLab Vertical Mount.

Easy vertical motion, fore aft motion and convenient enough tilt motion.
More leg space
Allows higher positioning

Cons... Looks like I'll be redesigning my whole dashboard, but it will be all new and improved with everything I've learned in the last couple years since I first designed it

Importantly, I can't reach the bolts on the left side to move my wheel deck behind my current button box, or it's painful enough that I don't. A VERY important design element for the next button box will be to allow accessibility to the wheel adjustments.