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Ditch the sim rig and use your car instead (2019)

outlandnish.com

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Re: Ditch the sim rig and use your car instead (2019)

#11

Post by outlandnish »

Blog post author here - Didn't expect a hack I did 5 years ago to show up here!

This project was a weekend project that I took on. I used to professionally reverse engineer cars for building self-driving research vehicles for companies.

Here's a demo of it using a VR headset that I made shortly after the blog post: https://youtu.be/jfWcgWdSK28

To answer the other questions, I made it work directly with PCs as a USB accessory. It doesn't require the Xbox gamepad in that variant.

I never bothered building out the FFB for the steering wheel - but it would be a nice addition. That said, slightly jacking the nose of the car up gave enough resistance on the wheels but it was still easy enough to turn.

It's still been a great tool for me to get seat time. Recently, I just taught at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium and the Nürburgring in Germany. I used this sim rig setup to get properly acquainted with the tracks before teaching in person.

Last, along with a production company in NY, we used the same technology in a big rig truck to make it into a super realistic truck simulator for Pilot Logistics. I think there's media on it floating around the internet somewhere.

Cheers and happy to answer any questions!

Re: Ditch the sim rig and use your car instead (2019)

#13

Post by seabass-labrax »

magicalhippo wrote: post #10
jrmg wrote: post #8

I don’t like that the Xbox adaptive controller is necessary for this. Microsoft gets praise for how it enables alternate controllers - and it’s great for DIY - but that is only necessary because they use a cryptographic protocol to disallow allow unlicensed controllers in the first place. There’s no reason home brew or third party USB game pads should not work on the Xbox in the first place. Sony is the same. Nintend…

I don't own a console, but I always imagined the motivation was partially to level the playing field for competitive multiplayer games. I recall playing COD4 online (on PC) and someone had hooked up a controller with rapid-fire and was pwning the noobs, quite literally.

I strongly suspect that the reason is more to do with producing artificial scarcity of hardware so that they can continue their loss-leader pricing strategy. Typical Xbox controllers go for £50 new; that's a quarter of the price of the Xbox itself, yet all one gets is a piece of moulded plastic with a few buttons on it!

PS. COD4 is apparently set in 2011 - do players not have automatic weapons anyway?

Re: Ditch the sim rig and use your car instead (2019)

#14

Post by magicalhippo »

seabass-labrax wrote: post #13
magicalhippo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't own a console, but I always imagined the motivation was partially to level the playing field for competitive multiplayer games. I recall playing COD4 online (on PC) and someone had hooked up a controller with rapid-fire and was pwning the noobs, quite literally.

I strongly suspect that the reason is more to do with producing artificial scarcity of hardware so that they can continue their loss-leader pricing strategy. Typical Xbox controllers go for £50 new; that's a quarter of the price of the Xbox itself, yet all one gets is a piece of moulded plastic with a few buttons on it! PS. COD4 is apparently set in 2011 - do players not have automatic weapons anyway?

> that's a quarter of the price of the Xbox itself, yet all one gets is a piece of moulded plastic with a few buttons on it

While I agree that they probably are having a decent profit on accessories like controllers, electro-mechanical parts are surprisingly expensive in my experience. A good potentiometer or joystick can cost way more than the rest of the circuit that uses them.

> COD4 is apparently set in 2011 - do players not have automatic weapons anyway?

Sure, but with games being games, to make single-shot weapons interesting game designers usually make single-shot weapons more accurate and do more damage as a trade-off for their lack of automated fire. Of course with a rapid-fire controller you can get best of both worlds in that regard.

Re: Ditch the sim rig and use your car instead (2019)

#15

Post by klyrs »

magicalhippo wrote: post #14
seabass-labrax wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly suspect that the reason is more to do with producing artificial scarcity of hardware so that they can continue their loss-leader pricing strategy. Typical Xbox controllers go for £50 new; that's a quarter of the price of the Xbox itself, yet all one gets is a piece of moulded plastic with a few buttons on it! PS. COD4 is apparently set in 2011 - do players not have automatic weapons anyway?

> that's a quarter of the price of the Xbox itself, yet all one gets is a piece of moulded plastic with a few buttons on it While I agree that they probably are having a decent profit on accessories like controllers, electro-mechanical parts are surprisingly expensive in my experience. A good potentiometer or joystick can cost way more than the rest of the circuit that uses them. > COD4 is apparently set in 2011 - do…

I think it's a design mistake to allow single-shot weapons to fire as quickly as your input device allows.

Re: Ditch the sim rig and use your car instead (2019)

#16

Post by falcolas »

klyrs wrote: post #15
magicalhippo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that's a quarter of the price of the Xbox itself, yet all one gets is a piece of moulded plastic with a few buttons on it While I agree that they probably are having a decent profit on accessories like controllers, electro-mechanical parts are surprisingly expensive in my experience. A good potentiometer or joystick can cost way more than the rest of the circuit that uses them. > COD4 is apparently set in 2011 - do…

I think it's a design mistake to allow single-shot weapons to fire as quickly as your input device allows.

That is actually how Cassidy works in Overwatch - the tradeoff is the exceptionally small hit radius of the projectiles. But there are other games where your ability to hit buttons quickly matters. Fighting games, for example. The recent kerfuffle around Razer's snaptap keyboard (and the software version with "Null binds") have well demonstrated that technological advantages in the controllers bring advantages into the games as well.

Re: Ditch the sim rig and use your car instead (2019)

#17

Post by magicalhippo »

falcolas wrote: post #16
klyrs wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a design mistake to allow single-shot weapons to fire as quickly as your input device allows.

That is actually how Cassidy works in Overwatch - the tradeoff is the exceptionally small hit radius of the projectiles. But there are other games where your ability to hit buttons quickly matters. Fighting games, for example. The recent kerfuffle around Razer's snaptap keyboard (and the software version with "Null binds") have well demonstrated that technological advantages in the controllers bring advantages into t…

On the flip side, I've played games which ignored the "fire" input for N milliseconds after triggering. Works well to prevent the issues mentioned, but was highly annoying as I would frequently click just a millisecond or so too early, and miss the shot.

Re: Ditch the sim rig and use your car instead (2019)

#18

Post by starkparker »

Reminded me of the Ridge Racer Full Scale recovery/restoration story: https://arcadeblogger.com/2022/11/20/the-last-ridge-racer/

In which a very limited edition version of Ridge Racer in arcades used a full-size Mazda MX-5 (technically the Eunos Roadster) shell and panoramic projection.

Re: Ditch the sim rig and use your car instead (2019)

#20

Post by spaceywilly »

batch12 wrote: post #9

That's one way to get a workout. Without the engine, there's no power steering, right?

BRZ has electric power steering assist. If he puts the wheels on alignment pads he should be able to move the wheel easily. I’d still be worried about wear and tear on the components (you really don’t want your tie rods to give out at speed) but it’s a fun weekend project.
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