Thanks! I'm planning on building a 6DOF motion simulator now!

@@RomanDesignCanada Very cool. At some point I will do one also but now I have no space for movement of such platform... unless I go on the balcony in the rain :D .

The yoke is actually custom, I just used the Saitek/Logitech yoke body. But it's irrelevant, because yoke has nothing to do with controlling the motion sim. Motion software gets all data from MSFS or other sims and commands the motion simulator. I use FlyPT Mover for that.

Thanks! Comments should be open in the Vancouver Island helipad scenery video, if that's the one you're referring to.

@@RomanDesignCanada they aren’t :( but it’s good I was still able to reach out! So u think you could look into doing CYYT next?

Yes, I planned it initially. But it feels so good even without it in flight simulators that I decided it's not worth the effort and the expense. If I'd do racing primarily, I'd add it.

Those appear to the windows as standard USB joysticks, so whatever functions you want can be assigned. For the helis on the cyclic it's trim, autotrim (if exists), autopilot disconnect. The left box has things like fuel pumps, fuel tank switches, magnetos, panel and cabin lights etc.

@@RomanDesignCanada Thank you for the answer, I will try to manage by putting the most useful functions. Great job

Not sure what you mean by cogging. I was smooth and nice, if a bit violent sometimes, but it's my flying :-) I haven't noticed any problems.

@@RomanDesignCanada Good to hear, "Cogging" is an known issue DOF is trying to fix with slight banking or gradual turns in GA. It's a small stepping feeling rather than a smooth motion. It's the only reason I haven't purchased an H3 or H6 yet. They stated they would be testing a new gearbox this past weekend at Flightsim Expo in Las Vegas. SFU upgrades have reduced this greatly. Since I mainly fly helos, I was interested to see how you felt it was with Helos over all. I was also told if you use bass shakers or buttkickers this masks the feeling greatly.

@@demdirtyboyz247 I see. Well, I think that the fact that my rig is made of wood plays to the advantage here. It's not 100% rigid, both in terms of frame and also there is a bit of play in the system. When I wiggle the top of the seat with my hand, it can move about 3cm, because between the U-joint, motor arms, and motor gearboxes, and the frame itself it's not absolutely rigid. I read some medal fames could be to jarring or clunky - not in my case. It can do rapid movements that I feel like I'm going to be thrown out of the chair, and some very fine movements too, but it feels natural. I have absolutely no sign of the "cogging". I feel no steps at all, all movements are 100% smooth, small or large.

@@RomanDesignCanada Thank you for this reply. Sounds like it may not be an issue with Helicopters then, our movements might be little better than ab1 or 2 degree bank of a GA

@@demdirtyboyz247 I had no issues with GA, airliners and helis. Helis have more motion which makes it more difficult and more fun at the same time. I also did some car racing with very abrupt motion, both rally and circuit, and the rig is fully capable of that too.

No potentiometers at all - they wear out quickly. I use a bunch of cheap Hall sensors (something like 10 sensors for $3 on Ali), designed and 3D printed a magnet holder that fits the hollow shaft end, and sensor holders. Then react and connect identically to potentiometers, only they have no friction at all and no moving parts! They only have 180 degree range (and another 180 degree repeating voltage curve), but as the motor arms should only rotate around 90 degrees max, that's fine. You can by Hall potentiometers, but you'd still have to connect axit to motor shaft, which chan break off and needs precision. My way - no precision, just fix the sensors a few mm from magnets in the shaft, no moving parts, no friction, no forces acting on any of that, so nothing to break down.

@RomanDesignCanada thanks for the reply the diagram in your construction photos listed a potentiometer. I am planning on using a rv40 worm gearbox a double output shaft and putting a geared output that I 3d print out a mount for. I'm hoping with a geared connection it shouldn't have reliability issues. Mainly what I was asking the impedance size ie 10k ohm etc.

@@acobabe The schematics are generic. It's an Arduino board, so whatever works with Arduino is usable. I think 10k pots are best, but it can work with many others...

@RomanDesignCanada hey thanks again for the quick reply sourcing parts now I'll let you know how it goes :)

Thanks, it's a whole new level of immersion when used in conjunction with VR and vibration feedback.

@@RomanDesignCanadaHi Roman Design very impressive all round, could you design similar set up for R44 and would consider buying it from you and give you good price

@@donalloughnane3841 Hi, actually I'm currently working on commercializing this idea and basically offering an "IKEA" stile kit for sale (but with a proper metal frame), for easily assembling a motion simulator like that at home for less than half of the cost of a cheapest available system on the market. I'm working on arranging a prototype build. If it gets to a prototyping stage, I will be selling my rig. That should be clear within a month. And if it gets to a Kickstarter and then an actual product - then you could buy that. Email me through my website and I'll keep your contact and let you know as soon as I have some news.

I don't have a picture, but it's a very popular power supply, google it. You need to short some pins to turn it on, and take the current from others, it's easy.

LOL, thanks! I do what I can...

Thanks!

Thanks!

You're absolutely right. I'm sure with more experience it will get better. And starting with calm weather may be a good idea...

I don't play DCS really. But if those are sudden changes, you can filter them with SPIKE, in addition to EMALP. If it's just the values are too high, you can CROP the max values or use LOGISTIC to soft-crop them if they get too high. You can also add SPIKE to the whole rig - a good idea for sims with possible violent motion.

@@RomanDesignCanada Thank you for the hints, I will try to master the filters in FlyPTmover :)

I'll look into it...

@@RomanDesignCanada yesssss

@@RomanDesignCanada I don’t mean to bother you, but just wondering if you ended up looking into it after

@@nlhockey286 I will look into that once I finish my current project. It will depend on what other studios are doing and what would we available on the market then...

@@RomanDesignCanada yes take your time! Also may I ask what your current project is?

Thanks!

I don't think so. Direct Drive would need a much more powerful motor as opposed to geared. I'm happy with my used wheel though. More than enough force for me.

Yeah I mean you would have to use powerful motor , add separate power supply - I was just thinking - maybe there is a way to utilize the encoder and the existing USB connection to command that DD motor ? Also the current delivery to the small existing motors - you add transistors with separate power supply that would drive that new motor (like engine starter from a car) - you just utilize the already existing FFB system to drive your motor @@RomanDesignCanada

@@cocosloan3748 My guess would be that it would be easier to build from scratch then do deep mods like that. People on XSimulator forums are building DD wheels, so it must be possible...

The tricky part is that those pedals are Saitek rudder pedals and they are meant for flight sims. They are screwed on to the motion rig pretty tightly. The reason I didn't do a driving sim addon before is that I couldn't figure how to convert it for cars and mount the wheel. So basically I 3D-printed and programmed an addon gas pedal that I placed to the right of the right rudder pedal, and I blocked both rudder pedal longitudinal movement, leaving only toebrakes to act as brake and clutch. Obviously I can't move the brake pedal to the left in this setup. I can try to manage toe and heel braking - though it's not ideal, but it's doable, maybe I can learn to use it. But left foot braking is just not feasible because the frame is in the way and brake pedal is not movable. The whole idea is that I can convert it back to flight sim setup in a couple of minutes. It's good enough for occasional racing fun. Obviously I'm not aiming for a 100% esports "pro" level racing.

Yes, it's a driving add-on to a flight sim motion cockpit. I do have full control in processing the data. There are some Low Pass filters on the pitch and roll, but I dialled them down pretty low, because I did notice that the motion is a bit too smooth. There may be an issue with the actual data coming from the game. But I will also try removing the filters entirely from pitch and roll and perhaps replacing them with SPIKE filters that would just filter out very drastic changes. I'll see if it helps. The motors are capable of more rapid movements for sure. Though I've been careful with the motion because it's a wooden frame build and the motors are very capable of braking the mounts ot attachment points of any other part of the frame, and it did happen before - I had to fix and strengthen some points a few times until it seemed to hold well to rapid movements. Flight sims are more gentle (until you crash), so I will see if I can gradually increase the small movements without increasing the larger and more drastic movements. Also, I think while trying to dial in the settings I just decided to go with the strict "pose from motion" but there is "pose from suspension" that can be mixed into that, and perhaps that will give me finer movements.

Thanks for your tips! It's very valuable when someone advises on the basis of my driving, instead of just watching videos on how to do it. I am a good driver in real life, but that is a completely different skillset. I have never tried any racing or sport driving in my life. Your tips are useful. I'll see if I can get better at controlling the slide. Couldn't do it reliably so far in any car - RWL, FWD or AWD 🙂 My rig is flight-sim oriented, and so I can' do left foot braking, unfortunately, just because the way the frame is built. I could do a toe-heel technique to simultaneously press gas and brake, but it's probably more tricky than with a proper set of pedals. It is doable and I will test it and see if I can get used to it. I'll get better on getting both hands on the wheel, but I need to develop muscle memory so I can reach the gear shift and parking brake quickly and reliably in VR, because I can't see them. But that should come quickly.

That was at about 75% of the motion potentiometer/range setting. It would hit software limits quite soon after that, but I'm also afraid of actually braking my rig 🙂It happened a couple of times that I had to put my leg on the ground after a crash because I felt like I'd fall out of the seat. But there's no real danger of that with my range of motion. I could put a proper racing seat and a harness, but there's no real need for that, and it's not cheap. One could do that for more fun and immersion though.

You're welcome! If you're looking into building something like that - it's so worth the effort!

LOL, thanks!

Actually, the reason for NOT trying driving sims before was that I couldn't figure out how to make the pedals/wheel/shifter arrangement work with my flight sim rig. Once I got the idea of DIY add-on gas pedal, combined with blocking the flight pedal horizontal movement and making it a normal gas-brake-clutch arrangement, I knew what I had to do. I did a screw-on shifter + parking brake add-on, button box to hold the Arduion and add more buttons/switches. And it takes a couple of minutes to convert back to flight sims.

I'm actually a huge fan of space sim genre, but right now there are no space sims that fit the bill. I need it to have VR, be not an endless grind, but a meaningful, intelligent and interesting, and have FlyPT Mover support (source) or some other usable motion support. I did use the rig with Elite Dangerous, but got bored with the game long ago. ED is the reason there is an add-on thumbstick on my hotas - to control thrusters. It actually works and feels great with ED. Because you're supposed to be weightless you don't emulate gravity or turning - just pure motion cues (i.e. thrusters, acceleration, deceleration) and it feels superb as you feel every tiny thruster nudge when landing etc. After I upgraded to a good ship it got tedious - endless pirate skirmishes or cargo runs eventually bored me, mining was boring from he start. I wish Starfield had a true space sim with a proper VR support. Star Citizen may look good and have a decent space sim, but has no VR and marginal gameplay. I could do ED video, but the FlyPT source uses a direct memory hook, and those memory addresses change with each update. so default source won't work. I remember there was a guy who found and published the memory addresses for a custom hook that worked for me, but I'm not sure there are addresses available for the current ED version. Maybe I'll get to that at some point...

Thanks! The link is in the descriptiof of the video.

The technology is there. I even beta-tested Leap Motion with OpenXR Toolkit, and also Quest 2 and 3 have built-in hand tracking that can be passed to PCVR. Hand tracking already works well in DCS. The problem is that MSFS has not done a good job with VR implementation in general, and is not doing anything to fix existing problems. Even traditional VR controller support is extremely buggy and poor. There's nothing preventing a proper hand tracking it in terms of hardware or software - the technology is there. But somebody must be willing to implement it, and sadly, it's not happening with MSFS so far...

MSFS terraforming is very quirky, and it changes from update to update, so there will always be some irregularities with any kind of realistic elevation throughout the airport... If you like, you can use SDK to create a file overriding CYYJ but most likely whatever fixes you try to do will only make it worse. You can try of course.

See video description. Settings for every part of the rig are part of the packages on my website.

ok,thanks@@RomanDesignCanada

I spend 2 weeks on and off on building it, then a lot of tweaking. It gets the info from the sim directly (through FlyPT Mover software). But I also have a profile for StarField that only uses joystick position for motion, which works OK for a space sim where there's no gravity. It can get positional data directly from games FlyPT supports. Or simtools, but I don't own that one.

FlyPT Mover. It's free.

@@RomanDesignCanada thanks !

1. My website has photos and 3D models I designed and 3D-printed, those are hall sensors + magnets in the motor shaft, not pots, but they work the same. Only better as there is no friction and no alignment problems. But models work with my motors, so you may have to modify them. 2. 80mm. Yes, but it depends on the torque. If motor is not powerful enough, or gear ration is wrong - you can burn the motor or drivers. You can drill few holes and see if it works OK with 60mm for example, then switch to 80mm. It can be different for your motors and geometry. 3. SMC tools schematics shows where to connect it. It's optional but I recommend it. Schematics are also on my website, but you can find them elsewhere.

There's no issue with tracking whatsoever, it works just fine. With a limited movement there's no real need for motion compensation, however it works too: I use OpenXR MC layer that takes a OpenVR-compatible "virtual tracker" from FlyPT Mover software and compensates the motion rig movement, so I'm rock-solid in the virtual cockpit.

Thanks!

Did you mean static aircafts? I only use some GA ones. My policy is no static airliners, so you have all the gates and you can use FSLTL or MSFS traffic to populate the airport. CL415s and a DC3 are in the empty areas so they don't interfere. Static models are not very detailed so shouldn't affect performance much. An "option" is not a good solution because MSFS Marketplace can only have one package with no options, and most sales happen there. I can't afford to manage several packages individually, it needs to be one or everything...

​@@RomanDesignCanada It's the photogrammetry 😂 Disabled it in the Canada world update. I'm using a 5800X3D CPU and PG brings my PC to it's knees.

Thanks, enjoy!

FSimStudios is working on CYUL...

LOL, that's exactly what I plan to do tomorrow...

I'm not sure what I'm doing next yet. But I'll check it out.

First time I hear of that one - I'm not local, though I had 3 locals providing photos for the airport. It's outside the airport bounds though, so not modelled.

@@RomanDesignCanada It's a popular fly-in location for the airport for the last 86 years. Aviation themed. Dates back to WWII. Across Canora Road.

@@CallsignMunch Well, I will add it to my update list. There was so much work with this one that it will need to sell well to at least cover my development time. If it does and I get to adding things, I'll look into that. Local sources didn't mention that one, but I'm sure it's known... The area is full photogrammetry, so I'm sure it's actually there already, albeit a bit melted if you look too close. But it may look OK from the pattern or approach already.

@@RomanDesignCanada I was just curious if it was there. Brings back some memories.

It's larger than it looks 🙂 Remember that it includes a seaplane dock with a start and an invisible water runway with taxiway connected to the main airport. Also many helipads, openhangars etc. The price may be a bit above the basics, but the modelling is way above the basic level. The default jetways actually work the best - most or all custom jetways clash go into the airplane body much more. They match the look of the real ones well too. The problem in Ottawa is default jetway LINKS - not the animated jetways themselves. The bug has been open with the Asobo dev support for ages, but it's not being fixed. The jetway links get randomly disconnected from the jetways. But not for everyone and not all the time, just sometimes. And it worked fine up until some of the sim updates, where it started glitching. Nothing I can do for that bug. So for CYYJ I have created a custom jetway link model (it's used on stands 1 and 2, with CYYJ sign) that matches perfectly with the default jetway. Now that I have this, I will update the Ottawa soon, as Asobo doesn't seem to be fixing this bug. As for the price - it took me 11 months to develop this - not full-time of course, but the time investment borders on the ridiculous. I'm not sure it will even pay for my time spent on the project. Time will tell. The modeling turned out to be much more than I expected for the airport of that size. More work than Ottawa. The USD price is about average as far as I can tell, and it can change with the market, of course. As for taxiway signs - I reprogrammed every sign from scratch but using the default constructor. I don't think creating individual models for the signs is worth the effort and possible performance hit - they won't be much different from the default models visually, but will have to use unique textures, filling your GPU VRAM. The default constructor uses a single texture, I believe, and it's very efficient.

Don’t let anyone tell you this wasn’t enough work. They don’t know.

@@marionetteworks you’re gonna tell me I don’t know. The use of default assets is nothing but laziness from a developer. The developer even admits taking the easy way out when those default jetways look nothing like the real thing as well as the taxi signs. Make custom models. Why do I say this? Because other have done this and do it. To turn around and charge people this ridiculous amount of money is ridiculous. I could care less how long this was worked on because at the end of the day you are charging people that much money for default assets. Also when you watch the video and google how the terminal looks, there are a lot of inaccurate details as well. So before you say “I don’t know”, perhaps you need to open your eyes first.

​​@@Cdawg-vb7no So you have a right to bash people's work just because you can't afford it? I bought it and clearly a lot of work was done here. It's so detailed I have to lower my settings. Ah it's the photogrammetry from the Canada world update. ✌️

@@Randomy5428 welcome to 2023 where criticizing a company selling a product is considered bashing. I hope for your sake you never criticize anything you buy because you may have to eat your own words because you're bashing it. I can easily afford it. But clearly you don't understand words very well. Where paying that kind of money for default assets that look nothing like the real thing and the size of the airport. Plus how inaccurate some of the texturing is. Everything at that airport looks like a shiny object. The jetways look nothing like the real thing. Perhaps you need glasses or maybe you can't afford them?