In Which Joey Builds a Pretend Race Car

The following warnings occurred:

Warning [2] Undefined property: MyLanguage::$archive_pages - Line: 2 - File: printthread.php(287) : eval()'d code PHP 8.2.30 (Linux)

File	Line	Function
/inc/class_error.php	153	errorHandler->error
/printthread.php(287) : eval()'d code	2	errorHandler->error_callback
/printthread.php	287	eval
/printthread.php	117	printthread_multipage

In Which Joey Builds a Pretend Race Car - Printable Version

+- Madison Motorsports (https://forum.mmsports.org)
+-- Forum: Madison Motorsports (https://forum.mmsports.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=3)
+--- Forum: Lounge (https://forum.mmsports.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=6)
+--- Thread: In Which Joey Builds a Pretend Race Car (/showthread.php?tid=11093)

Pages: 1 2

Re: In Which Joey Builds a Pretend Race Car - rherold9 - 05-03-2016

SlimKlim Wrote:Some magician made an app that turns an android device into an AIM/Telemetry display via wifi, kinda gimmicky, but I was home yesterday so I made a stand for the phone out of some left over aluminum I had kicking around.

That's awesome. You should record yourself playing with a side view and camera above your head

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

Re: In Which Joey Builds a Pretend Race Car - Senor_Taylor - 05-09-2016

[youtube]5n5TTA_n01E[/youtube]

Re: In Which Joey Builds a Pretend Race Car - BLINGMW - 05-09-2016

SlimKlim Wrote:Some magician made an app that turns an android device into an AIM/Telemetry display via wifi...

pssh you're supposed to design and build your own from an arduino, casio watch display, and paperclips. 0 points. Tongue

Re: In Which Joey Builds a Pretend Race Car - SlimKlim - 05-10-2016

That's an awesome setup Taylor, I wish Project Cars had a camera view similar to that, my in-car view is a wider angle that shows the steering wheel and more of the interior, which isn't exactly what you want to focus on.

BLINGMW Wrote:
SlimKlim Wrote:Some magician made an app that turns an android device into an AIM/Telemetry display via wifi...
pssh you're supposed to design and build your own from an arduino, casio watch display, and paperclips. 0 points.

I bring shame to famiry. I'm pretty sure someone actually did build an auxiliary switch panel that'll work with the PS4 out of the ingredients you listed, no idea how.

On a related note, I FINALLY discovered the last piece of the puzzle with regards to configuring this thing. When you calibrate the steering wheel you are supposed to turn it to full lock for the first step, then adjust it to the "steering lock" ratio. That figure needs to match the lock-to-lock rotation of the steering wheel or your FFB values will be all fucked up.

After having that eureka moment the steering inputs perfectly match what the wheel on-screen is doing, the steering ratios finally make sense and I can sometimes maintain control when the cars lose grip. I spent a while the other night recreating one of my favorite youtube videos, attempting to thrash an '87 Ruf CTR Yellowbird around the Nurburgring without destroying it.

Re: In Which Joey Builds a Pretend Race Car - JPolen01 - 05-10-2016

I stmbled across GPX Lab (GT simulator) on instagram yesterday. Holy cow the simulator they have is incredible. Leh Keen was there doing some 24 Hours of Le Mans testing. The sim even has a hydraulic brake set up as well as real time telemetry!
[Image: 13113029_1729071827377539_4356525047165957173_o.jpg]

[Image: 13113029_1729071827377539_4356525047165957173_o.jpg]

[Image: 12729323_1697442247207164_46678806720480...e=57E5B237]

Re: In Which Joey Builds a Pretend Race Car - Ken - 05-10-2016

SlimKlim Wrote:3.) VR. Sweet Baby Jesus VR. P.cars already supports the Occulus Rift and it. looks. amazing. Unfortunately it looks like the cost of entry is about $2k because I don't have a PC powerful enough to support VR (or a PC at all, actually), so I'm gonna have to play in regular-reality for the time being.

This just got way more cost efficient. No more 1K Titan X card needed. new NVIDIA GTX 1070 or 1080 will do it, at a fraction of the price and power. Insane.

http://www.engadget.com/2016/05/06/nvidias-new-gtx-1080-gpu-is-even-faster-than-the-titan-x/

Re: In Which Joey Builds a Pretend Race Car - RawrImAMonster - 05-11-2016

Yeah I'm thinking I might upgrade to one of those later this year when the price comes down some. I skipped the 800 and 900 series so I'm still on a 770.

Not that I really need it. Newer games run fine, just not on super ultra mega high graphics.

Re: In Which Joey Builds a Pretend Race Car - SlimKlim - 05-11-2016

Phase 2 has officially been initiated.

I just cashed in on an overdue Christmas gift and the Thrustmaster T3PA pedal set and TH8A shifter are now en route to my door.

I actually decided not to go for the "Pro" pedals, it was only $50 more, but they seem like they are the same unit internally, the Pro version just has a metal outer case, can be inverted, and might be a little more adjustable, but I don't like the metal lip in front of the pedals since I play in bare feet, and the upright portion would sit at a weird angle because of the way I built my stand for the pedals that came with the wheel.

[Image: T3PA-compare.jpg?3d0ae7]

The TH8A is the only shifter available for the Thrustmaster wheels and the price is bordering on downright offensive at $160, but they really pulled out all the stops on the thing. It uses a "contactless magnetic sensor" and claims an unlimited product lifespan. Both the shift travel and the amount of resistance are software-adjustable, and you can swap out the plate to turn it into just a sequential shifter if you want. It also uses a threaded knob in an almost-standard size, so you can swap out the knob if so desired.

[Image: TM-4060059.jpg]

The one thing I need to figure out is how the hell to bolt the shifter onto my existing rig. I'm thinking I want it to come off of the seat instead of the stand, so my own body weight will dampen overly enthusiastic gear changes, but I'm not sure how just yet.

Re: In Which Joey Builds a Pretend Race Car - Senor_Taylor - 05-11-2016

Time for a road trip to your house to bring you an MM coozie.

Re: In Which Joey Builds a Pretend Race Car - SlimKlim - 05-11-2016

I'm always there. HMU.

Re: In Which Joey Builds a Pretend Race Car - SlimKlim - 05-16-2016

ALL GLORY TO THE TH8A.

[Image: jJPliQA.jpg]

This thing definitely stands up to it's price. Very direct and fairly realistic shifting feel, not to mention the limited gates, which is about as close as I'm ever going to get to owning an R8.

Its also highly customize-able, I've already cracked it open (what's a warranty?) and put a rubber band around the lateral centering spring to give it more side to side resistance, and I'm eyeballing an upgraded tensioning pin that has a ball bearing on the end of it to allow you to increase shift resistance without causing drag (if you overtighten the standard tensioning pin it won't want to fully engage a gear). If I get that pin I'm also going to replace the rubber band with a slightly stronger o-ring.

[Image: SPCcuux.jpg]

Some people have also come up with 7th gear block off plates which might be nice to have because it's easy to accidentally hit 7th instead of 5th, which the game reads as Neutral if the car doesn't have a 7th, but continuing to increase the lateral tension might solve that problem without having to make a plate.

The upgraded pedal set requires more braking force, which is nice, but also causes me to go scooting around the room under enthusiastic braking, definitely not good for a sense of immersion or lap times, so the very next step in this project is coming up with some sort of "quick-disconnect" bracket to hold the seat to the stand.

I'm thinking I'll just pick up some threaded rod, cut it to 4 equal lengths, run it through the rear lower part of the stand and use some nuts and brackets to make little catches to drop the front wheels into. That should keep me in one place, not add bulk, and be adjustable for when other people play.

I also hard mounted the wheel to get rid of the bulky clamp, but the particle board for that piece is getting pretty worn out and is probably going to start pulling itself off the screws (the FFB exerts a LOT of force when it really gets going). I want to rebuild it out of 1/4 plywood and make it wider for more strength and give room for accessory mounting. It also needs a more durable coat of paint on the whole thing, and some cable management wouldn't hurt nobody.

Another thing I'd like to do is pick up an old USB numeric keypad to use as an Aux button box. Its a little silly, and out of my budget to spend $100 on a cute little box with an engine start button and toggle switches when I can accomplish the same thing using a $5 keypad.

[Image: rK1YWni.jpg]

As you can see there's a ridiculous amount of things that can be mapped, but not very many of the wheel options actually come with unassigned buttons. Mine has two, only because they aren't being used by the gas and brake, and right now i HAVE to assign them to the ignition and starter because it won't restart the car for you if you stall during a spin.

Maybe I'll turn it into an art project and try to make some custom key stickers in Photoshop I could have printed and cut out to stick over the keys so I don't have to remember what everything is.

Re: In Which Joey Builds a Pretend Race Car - *insertusernamehere* - 05-16-2016

I feel like you're having more fun fiddling/adjusting/fixing the whole setup than driving it lol

Re: In Which Joey Builds a Pretend Race Car - SlimKlim - 05-16-2016

*insertusernamehere* Wrote:I feel like you're having more fun fiddling/adjusting/fixing the whole setup than driving it lol

I totally am, not that actually playing the game isn't super fun too, but the process of building the stand and modding all of the toys satisfies the same part of my brain as fiddling with an actual car, but a fraction of the cost and heartache.

Re: In Which Joey Builds a Pretend Race Car - SlimKlim - 05-23-2016

So I picked up Dirt Rally over the weekend to get a little bit of variety.

I'm starting to think no game has truly perfect FFB settings out of the box, but in this game the settings are at least in English, unlike Pcars which leaves you to figure out what things like Relative Adjust Clamp and Scoop Knee Reduction are on your own.

Dirty Rally gives you a few controller preset options for the popular brands of wheels, and then some easy to understand settings to personalize the amount of resistance, self-centering force, and force from various inputs like suspension, traction loss, drivetrain, etc. The dirty little secret of this particular game seems to be that the "soft lock" feature (which is supposed to apply the steering ratio of the car in the game to the wheel) doesn't really work, so you have to manually put the steering wheel to its 540* mode every time you boot up the game, but that's nothing compared to Pcars' sins of taking 12+ months after release to get mostly-consistent FFB performance for most players.

First thing I noticed is this game is ridiculously difficult, had I been in a real rally car I would've died at least 40 times on Saturday. Second thing I noticed was how greatly my rig would benefit from a dedicated handbrake. I tried driving in sequential mode and assigned the handbrake to 4th gear on the shifter so I could just pull the stick back when I wanted to get rotation for a hairpin, but having like an on/off switch didn't really work.

Then I got a crazy idea. Why not crack the steering base open and tap the wiring behind the spare L3 and R3 buttons, then hack up one of the pedals and use it to make a handbrake lever. Shit, I could do this without buying anything, which just makes me all tingly inside.

I dropped Lauren off at the airport yesterday morning for a work trip and rushed back to the garage in a crazed fury to start tearing apart electronics and voiding more warranties.

I took apart the pedal set and the switch looked like a potentiometer with a constant power and ground and a blue signal wire that send out the actual input. After some trial and error and fiddling with my multimeter I managed to rewire the potentiometer to activate the L3 button.

Then it was simply a matter of soldering it all together, sticking in some blade terminals for easy removal, and fabricating the actual lever. I had some spare U-bolts that just happened to be the right size, so I cut some threaded rod to size, roughly cut a little scrap of 2x4 to shape and went to fuckin' town with the sand paper.

[Image: 2V1ML76.jpg]

I needed some way to keep it from springing too far forward when released, instead of trying to make something I figured I'd just use part of the case of the pedal set. And this beautifully ugly bastard was born.

[Image: rVDFGXe.jpg]

I stopped there because the entire thing goes together under tension and the little gear on the potentiometer needs to be aligned just right so that it is activated in the right spot, so it has to be assembled while plugged in and on a test screen where you can see the controller inputs, and there is something hinky with my soldering work that was making it short out unless I kept my finger pinched on it so I need to sort that out before I can get it bolted together.

Re: In Which Joey Builds a Pretend Race Car - SlimKlim - 05-28-2016

I finished up my handbrake and stained the handle because why not. The positioning isn't ideal but it makes a HUGE difference in Dirt Rally vs trying to press a button on the constantly moving wheel. I think I'll put a dog-leg bend in the rod that it's mounted on to move down and back.

[Image: tGFjGsi.jpg]

More importantly, I stumbled across some physics genius on the P.cars forum that helped me really dial in all of the force feedback settings for my specific wheel. I had my overall force settings way too high which was causing it to clip out a lot of the larger forces and exaggerate the smaller ones like kerb feel. With this guy's settings you get the full range of road feel, tire scrubbing, kerbs, gravel/grass, and the weight of the car when the rear gets loose. I still have an intermittent issue where the FFB suddenly stops working but a hard restart of the system corrects it every time so I can live with it.

I also figured out how to get the field of view set so that it is mathematically correct for my screen size and distance from the screen, which makes a huge difference for the sense of immersion, it's almost hard to explain why exactly.

Here is a casual lap of the 'ring I did this morning in a stock GT-86 on street tires, @ 3:12 and a few other places I'm able to correct it when the tail steps out, which was almost impossible before these latest FFB settings. Yes, I know I blew most of my downshifts, I'm still getting used to playing with the shifter.

[youtube]FHCsB6ka_TM[/youtube]

Re: In Which Joey Builds a Pretend Race Car - SlimKlim - 06-03-2016

I recorded a quick standing start race in the underpowered little Ginetta G40 starting from towards the back of the pack to show how awesomely chaotic this game can be.

[youtube]Fqhta0cbOYA[/youtube]