Since I am on my way to have my Sim Rig finished in terms of base model I thought I'd share my build.
Wasn't going to buy a premade thing and wanted to go creative myself and save me alot of money !
Overall I think I have spend bit less then 100 Euro on materials in total.
Anyway here is my build:
Made a sketch in google sketchup to get the measurements and a idea how it would have to look.
Alright first off I got me a chair out of my old now rip Renault Clio RSI '94.
Cut some pieces of MDF and attached it to the chair its rails.
Had to make it level since one rail was higher as the other and placed more forward. Blame Renault for that.
The small boxes under the chair:
Result ! :
Next I was gonna make me a nice big cockpit box around my chair.
Had to do alot of measuring to make sure the sitting position was spot on and also
the distance and height of my wheel and pedals.
Due to the rails and little extra space even my taller or shorter friends can race as you can slide the chair !
First get alot of MDF and start cutting it into the right sizes. Can see my little messy workspace as well.
The
Sidepots made:
And a quick mockup of all the loose MDF to see how it would look like ! Not to bad I thought !
Next was to find a way to have my wheel mounted the way I wanted.
I mounted the Fanatec GT3 RS V2 wheel on a angled plate as this feels more comfortable for racing.
Same goed for the Club sport pedals, angled them up somewhat.
The angle on the wheel so the wheel sits near horizontal.
And little box I made to have the pedals rest on. Made this quit sturdy as with heavy braking you don't want the
pedals moving or whatever.
After all that was done it was time to put it all together in my cave and see how it would actually sit !
Decided I would finish the cockpit box later in terms of making it look more pretty and smooth.
Will use the router on it still and place the button box and shifter first. Then I can make a final assembly.
So here the quick setup I made to test it out. Did a 90 min race the next day and it is fanatastic,
really comfortable and realistic position in the chair.
Next it was time to get me 2 more monitors and sort the triplehead setup out.
So I went and sourced me 2 secondhand hand Samsung 22" 226BW's extra and also a Matrox triplehead2go.
The last one I got for a bargain as well so all in all that costed me just over 300 euro. Which for 2monitors and the matrox was pretty ok !
Now with 3 monitors I ad to have a monitor stand that supports 3 monitors since I could not place them on their own mounts on the rig neither.
So had a look on the interwebs and found most cost more then the whole setup together !!!
So decided to make my own out of MDF and started measuring everything.
Made some backplates first so I could attach the monitors to that with the 12 bolts I bought for a euro or so
And
screwed it on, perfect !
Now the hard part came as measuring it all was one, making somethign with those numbers was another.
First the main brace:
After that I made 2 vertical pieces that would hold the brace. I made sure the brace was really really tight in the stands.
This way no screws or anything is needed and it will stay upright perfectly. Quit heavy the 3 monitors together !
Made a bottom plate as well where the 2 vertical stands would be attached 2.
I drilled 8mm in the centre of that so I could use a simple bolt and nut to fit it to my rig.
Only 1 is needed and this way I can still easily remove the whole thing if needed.
And this is needed as when I race gt5 or anything else on the ps3 I need to use my 40'TV.
Sadly can't use the monitors for that.
Now
I could start attached the monitors !! woohoo:
Result !
So I had a look and see if I did it all correctly and found out it was damned close to perfection !
Offcourse it was CLOSE to perfection as the gap between the left monitor and the middle is slightly out of line.
Meaning: top is 2 mm ( arrg !!! ) more out then bottom.
Can't do it all perfect at once ! ( really hard to see proper on the image I noticed .. anyhow..: )
After sorting that few mm out I directly plugged in all cables, sorted the software setup for the matrox and had a go.
Now I have to say I tried the triplehead earlier with the monitors just loose and my graphics card only lasted 10 minutes !!
I use a GTX285 and it goes to 100% workload for this resolution of 5040x1050 @ 60hz. this resulted in the card getting to hot and
showed me a nice blue screen of scaryness. So I went about and made my pc case tidy, better cable management and added 2 more fans 5 in total now.
Anyway had that sorted earlier this week so off I went for some laps in GTR Evo!!! And
gosh....triple 22" is plane awesome !!!
Wiiiiiiide view
:
The rig and monitor stand together:
So
The base model of it all is now ready and all that is left is add a button box to the left of the wheel and add a shifter to the right of the wheel.
Then I can sort me some nice cable management, use the router some more to make it all even smoother and perhaps engrave some words into the box here and there.
Will make sure it gonna look a less boxlike and make some changes to the design, put some more curves on the model as it stand now as I think it can look wya nicer !
Also want to add some pc fans next to my wheel for some cooling of me and the wheel itself
.
Then sand it all down, fill any small gaps and screwholes and put a nice coat of paint on the whole thing. Still need to figure out a colour scheme.
On a side not, I mentioned that it all didn't cost to much. Less then 100 Euro for material on the rig and about 300 for the monitors and matrox.
But I have to get me a new graphics card which will be able to display all games I want to play on this setup as the 285 just won't cut it with all eye candy on.
Hope a new card will run cooler as well, might add 1 more fan to aid the GC in my rig.
Anyway in the future some more pictures of the completly finished setup. Think this will take a long time as I will move to a new house this or early next year and
I can't move this rig in 1 piece. I want it to be smooth and all that and when I have to take it apart again the whole paint job would get messed up anyway.
So paint has to wait ( I hate painting anyway !! ) but I can race like a king now, chuffed to bits !!
Sure enough will do more racing again now and sign up for some events !
Hope you liked the read and build and will update once last things are done.
