Now that things have settled down somewhat from the renovations and moving house, the urge to get back into sim racing has strengthened. The previous blog post showing the arcade machine design I’ve been working on had me thinking. ‘Can I put together a temporary setup to tide me over until I have the space to actually work on that arcade machine?’ I got to work rearranging boxes and furniture downstairs where my temporary office and 3d printing workshop is and it seems that it was possible to free up the necessary space to reassemble my old home-made cockpit frame and add a new triple monitor setup to it.
To be fair, this post doesn’t have a lot to do with design or 3D printing but bear with me! I’m planning to design a new steel frame cockpit and build it myself once the back shed has been built. It will be nice to get back to some round tube design like in my job making engineering drawings for telecommunications infrastructure. The sim world also brings the opportunity to design and build 3D printed parts for custom dashboards and cable routing,
The temporary sim racing setup in its now usable state.
The Setup
Anyone not interested in sim racing feel free to tune out now since I’ll be getting into the specifics of the hardware!
Chassis
Self designed and built using 70mm pine stud and 19mm MDF. Dimensions based on a VZ Holden Commodore which has the original Logitech G27 sim wheel, seat and pedals in the same positions as the vehicle.
Seat
Found at a swap meet for $20. Believed to be from a VC Commodore.
Sim Wheel & Pedals
Logitech G Pro wheel and pedals. Newly upgraded from the old Logitech G27 wheel, pedals and shifter set. The wheel can produce up to 11 Nm of torque during force feedback which is plenty (up from 2 Nm on the G27). The force feedback also features TrueForce which emulates vibrations from the sound but I haven’t experienced this yet since the simulator titles I’ve used don’t support it.
Pedals feature a 100kg load cell on the brake pedal and interchangeable foam inserts to adjust the resistance and feel of the pedal. This emulates the feel of an actual brake pedal very effectively and the load cell allows you to use muscle memory to modulate your brake which results in a far more consistent lap time. Accelerator and clutch pedals use a more reliable hall-effect sensor instead of the potentiometers found in the G27 which can be affected by dust ingress.
Shifter
The Logitech wheel doesn’t come with a H-pattern shifter and the old G27 shifter isn’t compatible at this stage. The Fanatec Club Sport shifter is a nice step up from the Logitech item and features both seven speed manual plus reverse and is switchable to sequential up and down if desired.
Monitors & Stand
Three Samsung UJ59 32 inch 4K units are arranged at 120 degrees from each other which adds significantly to immersion. They are propped up by a Trak Racer triple monitor stand which is specifically designed for the task.
PC
After ten years of service the old Lannix Design PC has finally been replaced by a newer and more up to the task version. The old girl was really struggling with any 3D modelling task that involved medium to large assemblies so I finally bit the bullet and splurged on a new model. Conveniently, the new design PC is also capable of running any of the racing sims!
The new PC features an Intel core i7 12700KF CPU, 32GB of memory, GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card and a liquid cooling setup to keep running temps under control. It’s a significant upgrade from the previous PC and I’m very happy with it’s performance so far.
The old PC will still be used for blog creation and other admin tasks for the time being.
Sound
A set of Logitech G607 5.1 speakers have been used. They work great for being able to hear where the cars around you are when sim racing.
Racing Games
I’d bought Assetto Corsa for PC about ten years ago but the old PC could never run it that well. Since I’ve had the sim setup I’ve put in a few hours with it and installed mods to get it looking nice. The game is well made and the cars seem to handle very nicely. The triple monitors are great for immersion and being able to see the cars beside you when you’re making a pass. The sound of turbos spooling and wastegates opening are well represented especially with cars like the McLaren P1 and Nissan R34 GTR.
I’ve had a go with BeamNG which offers the state of the art in crash physics and realistic vehicle simulation. The threat of permanent car damage really adds to the intensity when racing or completing vehicle missions. The steering ratio feels a little off at the moment in some vehicles but luckily this can be tweaked in the settings. I just haven’t had the time since I’ve spent what little available time I have with Assetto Corsa and MS Flight Simulator.
Other Toys
I’d seen a few reviews of Microsoft’s Flight Simulator 2020 so I thought I’d check it out. Their algorithm to recreate the entire world from satellite images looks mighty impressive. I thought it would be fun to try out a HOTAS sim peripheral for flying a virtual plane so I acquired a Logitech X52 Pro joystick and throttle setup. I was surprised how much I enjoyed flying a virtual plane around and using VFR navigation to make my way around the place. Of course, the first flight was over my own house and around the city of Brisbane. I was impressed to be able to fly a Cessna under the Gateway bridge! (I splurged on the Brisbane detail pack)
What Now?
The plan is to enjoy it as is until the back shed is built which will free up a lot of space downstairs. This sim rig will live in the Lannix Design office since it will share the PC with the design desk. I’ll need to design and build a solution for manoeuvring the monitor stand around so they can be used for CAD when needed. The PC will need a cradle on the monitor stand too so it can be moved as a unit.
I’ll build a new chassis for the rig in time as the old one wasn’t built with aesthetics in mind. Most likely out of steel tubing so that I can also practice some welding. I’ll either get brackets laser cut or maybe acquire a plasma cutting CNC table to produce my own in house. The design needs to incorporate facilities for mounting the keyboard and using the mouse and be easily switchable from race driving mode to flight sim mode.
Of course, there is so much work that needs to be done before I can get too carried away with upgrading the rig. The design office and workshop will need a lot of work to get it working and most of my time is spent either looking after my son, finishing off house renovations or taking time to relax with my partner. Special thanks to Jade for allowing me time to work on my projects occasionally and to have a bit of fun with the sim rig!
Gallery - Sim Racing Setup
