Tactile Immersion - General Discussion - Hardware & Software

[Mr Latte]

For those with exciter setups, are you modding the existing effects, or creating new ones?

It seems many of the existing effects are set up like Simvibe, with a transducer at each corner? I'm trying to wrap my head around how you translate that to multiple exciters on the seat back?

The seat is not the wheels/suspension but it is the largest part of your body/torso we can apply tactile too. It has been widely underused with the traditional tactile installation approach.

Additionally, most people's rigs with CM installations offer very little separation for L/R-based effects that their installation (supposedly) is meant to offer. They may have some stereo based effects but will feel mono for the most part from them due to leakage and crosstalk of the energy from opposite units being easily felt on the other side.

The best stereo is felt when we combine independently isolted pedals (something Ive not seen a single person do) and having much better isolation. This combined with a seat that uses 6-8 exciters allowing for stereo representation to be applied to multiple body regions per side.

Lets examine:

1) Toes/heel/ankle *
2) Underside of Knees *
3) Buttocks/Thighs
4) Lower Spine
5) Mid Back /Sides
6) Shoulders

Ive not seen any examples yet fully use* the above which is how this concept can be expanded or has been mentioned in previous conversations based on tests I did last year. Unfortunately I have not had tactile up and running since June this year and my own build is going through a re-design for improvements to its base support frame.

Some of the biggest challenges with tactile are:

1) Feeling individual effect sensations
2) Improving the directionality with lateral stereo positional effects
3) Improving the directionality with longitudinal positional effects
4) Better representation of front and rear engine mounted cars
5) Increased dynamics from low bass energy effects to higher frequency fidelity
6) Going beyond conventional ideas of a single transducer overloaded with lots of effects
7) Applying new effects development, understanding audio better and creating effects using multi-layers

The concept brings the ability for effect roles be applied to specific units as well as effects operating over an individual to multiple body zones. Finally, transitional effects start on one region but can over the effects operation, shift from one body zone to another.

I am keen to see people experiment with their own effects and how they apply them over multiple exciters or body regions.

Already these forums have discussed the benefits of being able to place sensations direct to body regions. So then how do we apply better engines/rpm but then also have better directional sensations? Do we give certain effects roles for certain exciters/channels? Or do we place different effect layers to specific units and have effects appear to move from one channel to another? Perhaps for some effect scenarios, we want them to operate over multiple channels for wider dispersion or impact.

My point is, we have much more freedom and options for creativity in effect creation far, far beyond what CM / EM offered on Simvibe or the now conventional approach of placing units in 4 corners.

I have played about with different possibilities for different scenarios and even having an engine based set of effects working over 6 channels with individual different layers for varying aspects of the rpm shift up the seat, yet all the units focused on just engine sensations. So it's possible we can load pre-made profiles to bring very different forms of effects immersion to suit different users' moods or preferences.

We need a few more people interested in developing effects and being creative to share what findings or preferences they have discovered.

Yeah much more still to be achieved and to come.

 

[motoyoshi46]

Thank you so much @Mr Latte for this explanation and advice. I guess then I will play around with the positioning and zones on the chair and the rig again. I guess at the moment I'm not patient enough to fiddle around with all that layering, but time will tell.

 

[Wmacky]

The seat is not the wheels/suspension but it is the largest part of your body/torso we can apply tactile too. It has been widely underused with the traditional tactile installation approach.

Additionally, most people's rigs with CM installations offer very little separation for L/R-based effects that their installation (supposedly) is meant to offer. They may have some stereo based effects but will feel mono for the most part from them due to leakage and crosstalk of the energy from opposite units being easily felt on the other side.

The best stereo is felt when we combine independently isolted pedals (something Ive not seen a single person do) and having much better isolation. This combined with a seat that uses 6-8 exciters allowing for stereo representation to be applied to multiple body regions per side.

Lets examine:

1) Toes/heel/ankle *
2) Underside of Knees *
3) Buttocks/Thighs
4) Lower Spine
5) Mid Back /Sides
6) Shoulders

Ive not seen any examples yet fully use* the above which is how this concept can be expanded or has been mentioned in previous conversations based on tests I did last year. Unfortunately I have not had tactile up and running since June this year and my own build is going through a re-design for improvements to its base support frame.

Some of the biggest challenges with tactile are:

1) Feeling individual effect sensations
2) Improving the directionality with lateral stereo positional effects
3) Improving the directionality with longitudinal positional effects
4) Better representation of front and rear engine mounted cars
5) Increased dynamics from low bass energy effects to higher frequency fidelity
6) Going beyond conventional ideas of a single transducer overloaded with lots of effects
7) Applying new effects development, understanding audio better and creating effects using multi-layers

The concept brings the ability for effect roles be applied to specific units as well as effects operating over an individual to multiple body zones. Finally, transitional effects start on one region but can over the effects operation, shift from one body zone to another.

I am keen to see people experiment with their own effects and how they apply them over multiple exciters or body regions.

Already these forums have discussed the benefits of being able to place sensations direct to body regions. So then how do we apply better engines/rpm but then also have better directional sensations? Do we give certain effects roles for certain exciters/channels? Or do we place different effect layers to specific units and have effects appear to move from one channel to another? Perhaps for some effect scenarios, we want them to operate over multiple channels for wider dispersion or impact.

My point is, we have much more freedom and options for creativity in effect creation far, far beyond what CM / EM offered on Simvibe or the now conventional approach of placing units in 4 corners.

I have played about with different possibilities for different scenarios and even having an engine based set of effects working over 6 channels with individual different layers for varying aspects of the rpm shift up the seat, yet all the units focused on just engine sensations. So it's possible we can load pre-made profiles to bring very different forms of effects immersion to suit different users' moods or preferences.

We need a few more people interested in developing effects and being creative to share what findings or preferences they have discovered.

Yeah much more still to be achieved and to come.

OK,Thanks, I lost my head

I had it wrong.

Example, Under channel assignments for the sound card(s)

Looking at road vibration - The initial 4 assignments were listed as left-front, right-front, left-rear, right-rear.

I thought this was referring to transducer placement, such as CM from Simvibe.

What I missed was this is referring to the incoming effect from each virtual wheel right?

Out of curiosity - (For road vibration) How would you distribute these 4 incoming feeds to say 6 exciters + a LFE on the seat? Obviously left goes to left, and right goes to right, but how to distribute front / rear?

I think this is going to be a lot of fun once I fully understand the process.

 

[Tom_Hampton]

Tempting if your curious but I would try to find a large used LFE or Concert for about $200 or less . Many of my BK were 2nd hand bargains guys but once you go with the bigger units you will not want the smaller ones.

Thanks.

Patience pays off. Lfe listed today for $130 free shipping. Score.

I guess I need to work on an amp next.

 

[Mr Latte]

@Wmacky, yes now your getting it. The effects are vertical on the on the left and the soundcard channels are horizontal above. You have to determine what channel numbers represent each transducer. Now sometimes Simhub can mess about with this or if people unplug then replug in cards. So you will see also a setting for loading/saving configs for the soundcard. This will save where you place all the effects to each channel.

Its a good help, bear with me as Im doing this from memory and its been a while but you can create firstly an "empty preset" as having to manually disable effects in all the channels is a real pain in the backside.

Yes as an example it's possible to take "rear left" bump effect and place it on all 4 channels of CM but why would we do that so understanding what each channel number represents as a transducer is important. It seems it can vary and isn't always the same for everyone.

It is possible to save mapped presets you want to compare. So trying the same effects from a loaded effects preset but comparing that effect on different channels via your differently positioned transducers is possible easily. Just by loading previous tests/channel mappings. What I can say for some in what feels natural is placing lower bass effects lower in the seat and higher bass frequencies mid or shoulders but really I'm actually interested to let you guys muck about and find then what you, yourselves like.

An example of being more creative was with bumps, rather than single units be used to represent this effect and lets assume the pair on the sides. As it can be quite an active effect one thing I done previously was to use multuple layers for bumps but to then have very different working sensitivities/thresholds for their operation. This way it was possible to have small bumps in shoulders, medium bumps in sides and large bumps on all 3 pairs. So this way even with just using exciters we were trying an example of using multi-channels/body zones to offer more varation and to also not place multiple bump layers onto a single transducer.

Now of course this can work even better if a user has large BK units as then they can get much more oomph from the mid and larger bump sensations. My point is you cant do this type of thing on single units or traditional based installations. Additionally when we have large BK we can then apply harmonically matched frequencies to what the BK is using onto the exciters. This helps give effects more body, we can also apply some delay to these to help hold the feeling of bumps a bit longer to make them more pronounced.

Really, until I get back at testing effects again myself I have a lot of early work/ideas that was done which I need to follow up on. With all that audio hardware I am for installing it will make it easy to shape effects that blend better together. This to help understand/learn configs for various effect maps. Which will help avoid different effects operational at the same time via similar frequencies from getting lost/mixed in the typical tactile mush standard configs are easily limited by.

Im sure some of the guys already going through this process have found some good working combos just by trial and error and eventually finding nicely working options.

 

[Mr Latte]

GULP!

Having missed out on one and been waiting 2 months in trying to get one of these as a re-conditioned unit for a bit less.

I bit the bullet as it's now ordered, the last (major) piece of audio hardware I need to enable this crazy compulsion and rather bonkers idea I have for sim audio and tactile. What this does is let me route 25+ Simhub channels (from multiple soundcards) along with the recently purchased EVGA 7.1 soundcards audio to the digital mixer. All the soundcards connect into this then just one RJ45 to the digital mixer.

I know its meant to be a simrig and not a recording studio (lol) but well maybe I need to blame someone. This with the X32 mixer and the X-Touch controller has been quite a lot to spend towards audio components for the purpose here it will be used for. Yet it will bring a level of connectivity and control that I never would of considered.

To some, it all may seem completely daft. Yet, this for me is to see how far I can push tactile and audio immersion to combine both in ways no other rig I have seen do.

So yeah (good idea who to blame?) its @Tomber fault after showing me his X32 Rack and it helping me spiral down this path.

 

[Mr Latte]

Showing these as potentially interesting from a recent discussion with a friend.

This highlights the Sound Output "Test now" feature from Simhub for confirming an output from the soundcard for each of the soundcards channels.

Here we see that it does indeed generate a center value of 40Hz as previously assumed.
Everything else you see is the harmonics it generates. This test was done with both soundcards at 100% and with no EQ or Crossover being applied.

Now, do you notice any differences from these two soundcards even with just this test example? This helps confirm that different soundcards will not output the same amplitude for different frequencies. In this comparison, the X3 clearly is better than the U7 with stock settings.


Creative Soundblaster X3


Asus U7

While one card could be adapted to feel similar to the other with a bit more volume, it shows that the same settings and effects will feel a bit different from different soundcards. Having a bit more output gain in this example then increases the 40Hz peak but also the user feeling more of the harmonics which would produce a difference in feel

 

[Tom_Hampton]

What are the acceptable DSP amps?

1. NX3000D
2. NU3000DSP
3. SXD3000? (this shows up in "similar items" when searching for the NX3000D).

I've seen both the Behringer products discussed....but, I don't recall any others? I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel, or use untested hardware. I'm just trying to widen my searches beyond the strictly the NX3000D, which I haven't found any used / refurb units for a non full-retail price. Everything NX I've found is basically $380 US.

 

[Mr Latte]

One of the things you have to factor is that any amp powerful enough to cope with two large BK is going to be quite costly. You can spend a heck of a lot more when it comes to amps.

 

[Tom_Hampton]

One of the things you have to factor is that any amp powerful enough to cope with two large BK is going to be quite costly. You can spend a heck of a lot more when it comes to amps.

Yes. That's understood. But, that doesn't preclude looking for the best deal between different viable options. As I'm sure you are keenly aware...costs (or savings add up). The NU version seems to run ~100 less than the NX, for instance. They don't pop up very often, though.

 

[Wmacky]

Yeah, Were not getting Euro pricing on many Behringer products here in the US, though some Item are priced the same? It's like the US distributor is all over the map on pricing?

 

[Mr Latte]

Guys, show me a better option...

Musictribe is a company that offers refurbished units here in UK

I would of thought that in USA a similar company dealt with factory repairs or reboxed items and also sold them cheaper to retail prices like over here.

 

[Mr Latte]

Yes. That's understood. But, that doesn't preclude looking for the best deal between different viable options. As I'm sure you are keenly aware...costs (or savings add up). The NU version seems to run ~100 less than the NX, for instance. They don't pop up very often, though.

IIRC the NU was the previous/older models in silver called "iNuke"

New models are called NX and NX D in black

 

[Wmacky]

I had decided to just bite the bullet and and bought 1 NX3000D. I only plan on 2 large BK's, so I only feel the pain once. Not a big deal, but it always feels bad paying more. We get the same lousy deal here on aluminum profile. The US distributor for the metric stuff charges top dollar.

I have found that Sim racing is more Eurocentric, and seems to cost more this side of the ocean.

 

[Mr Latte]

It varies on products and brands.
We have an advantage with Behringer but you guys in USA should be laughing at prices for transducers.

Two High End Examples:

BK Concert
USA $279 (@ £210)
UK £315 - £325

Clark Synthesis 429 Platinium TST
USA $570 (@ £425)

UK £675 -£700

 

[Wmacky]

Yeah, we have you on transducers, but everything else Sim racing seems to come from Europe. At least the good stuff.

That said, I am still very happy with the quality of everything I've purchased from small European producers, and shipping has been very fast ( Looking at you SRB). Nice to see things comming from places other than China as usual. Europe still has plenty of craftsman it seems.

 

[Tom_Hampton]

Lfe repair?

The ebay seller did a shiite job of packing the lfe I bought. A single layer of small bubble wrap. As a consequence one of the mounting tabs was broken in shipping. I'm working with the seller... But hedging my bets. Maybe I'll get a new unit out of the deal....or not.

Has anyone repaired or dealt with a similar failure?

 

[EsxPaul]

Has anyone repaired or dealt with a similar failure?

I haven't personally but I'd think that a good quality liquid metal/epoxy type glue would be up to the job. Hopefully the seller will sort out a deal that makes both parties happy and you won't have to find out.

 

[Mr Latte]

Lfe repair?

The ebay seller did a shiite job of packing the lfe I bought. A single layer of small bubble wrap. As a consequence one of the mounting tabs was broken in shipping. I'm working with the seller... But hedging my bets. Maybe I'll get a new unit out of the deal....or not.

Has anyone repaired or dealt with a similar failure?

This happened me once with a unit I bought. I was able to superglue the leg but only the top inch or so was broke off and I got some money refunded via eBay claim.

 

[Tom_Hampton]

This happened me once with a unit I bought. I was able to superglue the leg but only the top inch or so was broke off and I got some money refunded via eBay claim.

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