Show us your Rig / Cockpit

[Simon Trendell]

I need a pedal box

Very nice Jaime, I think It'll be a while before I can sink any sort of money into a cockpit.

 

[Julien Dufresnes]

yes i think too that it is very cool i want the same ! lol

 

[Jamie Wilson]

Turning this thread into a full blown cockpit thread now, here are the images I posted in the other cockpits thread recently:

For the first time, some images of my current setup, with a new addition in the form of an SST shifter... Mainly for history-recording reasons, as the cockpit project proper starts now

The overall setup. Before today I had the G25 shifter on the left, might take me a while to adjust to shifting sequentially on the right now.

Arrived today

. Clamped to the desk until I have a solution for having it at the right height.

My ingenius pedal raising box

. My desk was built pretty high, so I had to raise them up, and it's angled such that the pedal faces are very nearly vertical.

My pride and joy, an Access Virus TI synth

My aging MIDI controller keyboard, tucked away out of use for tonight.


On the horizon:

Frex SimWHEEL

 

[Attila Domján]

Wheel choice for Jamie

heya dude, some pics for you

First is a pic from ECCI site about the Pocono 290mm leather, as i mentioned i felt it a bit big.

Second and third is my current 270mm Momo suede, i love it, both the smaller size fits me better, and the touch of the suede even now after more then half a year extensive usage when the surfaces where i touch is really shiny, still it is more soft feeling to touch then a leather wheel.
The pic is from the new condition status, at home i will make you one from the current look of it.

btw, all the Momo models you can get from 270-290mm size, but take care what you order, that the screwing is fitting, some wheels has 5 screw bolts others has 6. In case of my Momo with ECCI they customizing it for exactly matching the wheel base.

 

[Attila Domján]

Also from ECCI site a wheel, which i loved for the look of it, but it is quite large, 320mm

 

[Attila Domján]

what about this? 290mm Momo on the Frex site itself, so for sure it would fit to your future dream wheel

FREX GP

 

[Jamie Wilson]

Thanks Atti, but although I could be persuaded over the suede/leather issue, one definite requirement is that it has to be round.

 

[Attila Domján]

290 mm round Momo? (ok, this i did not found on the Frex site lol)

 

[Jamie Wilson]

I've found a 300mm leather OMP, and a 285mm Sparco as well, but in suede...

Man, this is going to be one hard decision process...

 

[Attila Domján]

If you are really preferring the leather, the 290mm leather Pocono wheel in my first post is really a great choice, it has a nice grip, and also the leather has dots/wholes to breathe. I liked that wheel too, just was a bit big for my taste.

 

[Attila Domján]

Ok, as i promised, here is the current condition of the wheel. Shiny parts clearly coming where i regularly touch it, but the touch of it is still soft there, not harsh at all, only smooth.

 

[Jamie Wilson]

Thanks for sorting the pic out Atti.

I know it's only cosmetic, but I'd be wearing 4 layers of gloves to avoid a suede wheel ending up like that after only 6 months. That said, having looked around a bit more now, I'm actually starting to think that maybe the 270mm Sparco LN - the most obvious choice for the Frex wheels since the DFP days - will be okay for me after all.

I've got a little while to make my mind up anyway. I'm still in "ooooh" mode today, looking at almost every steering wheel on the market has overloaded me a bit lol

 

[Attila Domján]

what u mean? it is in perfect condition lol

 

[Jamie Wilson]

Well the whole plan is down the shitter now, Frex will not put out Vista drivers for months it turns out, and no immediate plans to provide 64-bit drivers even when they do.

So, I buy a high-end PC with 4GB of RAM (so I must run 64bit), and then when I want to spend the money to buy a high-end wheel with it, I have to downgrade!

Vista32 and Vista64 support should be ****ing automatic by now, surely! What if it was a new printer or a graphics card or something; Vista32 support is unconditional, with Vista64 not seen as the awkward bastard that 0.003% of people run.

Pissed off now. Been doing research all day, when I close my eyes I see steering wheels. I could've put my order in on monday, but now the whole cockpit plans are off for at least a couple of months, great.

Jamie smash!

 

[Simon Trendell]

Harsh luck Jamie, Vista64 should defiantly not be seen as a minority. The whole 64bit driver situation is very much MS' making, Vista should have been a pure 64bit OS, like OSX. Instead we've got OEM's putting out 32bit PC's, while the pretty much everyone I know who's built a PC recently has gone with 64bit.

And to make it worse, it seems that even the next Windows will have a 32bit version.
To date the biggest problem I've had with 64bit is finding a wireless card with 64bit support, I gave up eventually and just run a cable.

Also, You seem to turn right alot Atti

 

[Jamie Wilson]

The only device I don't have 64-bit drivers for is the USB functionality of the synth pictured above, and it's known to be coming soon - and in that case I can use 99.99% of it's functionality through other means. Everything else I have 100% rock solid drivers for.

It just doesn't make sense that a company would release a product with the support only for an OS heading into retirement which isn't even being sold on PCs any more (as of this or maybe next month, I believe)

I'll probably end up caving in and downgrading but I spent lots of money on this system only 3 months ago, and by putting XP32 on it I feel like I'm being punished for having a high-end system. I may as well have burnt the money.

That's really, really shat on my day.

 

[Attila Domján]

Jamie, go for ECCI. The non-force -feedback there is actually an advantage for it, and the guys suuporting ECCI sales and customer service is incredible helpful, answering all stupid questions day and night, and not just until you paid the bucks.

Last time i order a 20 USD part to modify the wheel force, the support level was the same when i originally ordered my set for 1600 USD.

 

[Jamie Wilson]

I admire ECCI as a company, I've heard only really great things about them, but my two absolute must-haves in a wheel are multiturn (which they do) and FFB (which they don't). Similarly in the pedal department, load-cell pressure sensitivity is a must, so I'll be going the CST route rather than the ECCI route there too.

Obviously when you're spending this sort of cash, you need to get something which is absolutely right for you, and in my case that means that FFB is an absolute must. I could be persuaded over a suede wheel but converting me to non-FFB is going to require an act of God

I'll be getting the Frex wheel even if I had to run it on an Atari ST, but it's just such a disappointment that I have run an old OS that doesn't fully support all of my hardware in order to do so.

 

[Attila Domján]

About the need of FFB i understand your point, however i do not agree with it, but we are different.

About the pedals load-cell pressure question i can not even understand your point, and of course i do not agree with it lol
in my eyes ECCI-s solution is ahead in feel and precision of any other wheels, but ye, a point which can be hardly decided i think.
at this level where these pedals are all of them is good i think, still i would never exchange mine to any other type

 

[Jamie Wilson]

I think we're trying to achieve slightly different goals Atti; you're definitely so tuned in to your setup that it's allowing you to fully exploit your talent to go very fast and be in the top handful of drivers, but I'm more inclined to take the purist route and go for all-out simulation accuracy, which for me means a loadcell brake and - bit controversial here - a force feedback wheel.

That's not to say that your setup is deliberately unrealistic, but just like I can't limit myself to 260 degrees of lock, I can't go for a travel-based braking system now that I've read so much about the advantages and accuracy of a loadcell system.

Ultimately it's whatever works best for you.