Racing Bartop?

[CoryBee]

Just wanted to throw out an idea.

What do you fine fellows think about a bartop with a steering wheel. Just for racing games. I saw a hack on YouTube where they made a cheap 360 steering wheel using a ball mouse inards. Anyways, has this been done before? The bartop part not the hack. Thanks.

[CoryBee]

Also I figure if it has the wheel you might as well attach pedals to it too. Perhaps through a 3.5mm headphone jack cable and jack. 

[BadMouth]

I think 360 degree would be the way to go for a bartop so you don't have the force of someone pushing the wheel against the stops.
Generic Eric had a cheap little wheel bought off ebay where you just strapped a mouse to the steering shaft.

You may want to see what pedals you find to use before deciding on a connector.
Sometimes you can find orphaned pedals that were part of a pc wheel combo cheap.
The old logitech ones use a telephone jack (whatever that's called). 
The newer ones use a serial port jack (whatever that's called).
You'd have to buy an A-Pac to interface the pedals though.

There were a few old arcade pedals that were optical. 
That could be hacked into the other axis of the mouse hack or a basic Opti-Wiz is only $15.

If it is going to sit on an actual bar, having pedals might be awkward. 

Just a heads up......driving setups aren't like joystick setups where you can drop in a bunch of roms and have thousands of games to play instantly.
Every game needs to have the sensetivity set individually to play correctly.
Some games will need to have the pedals inverted, some won't.

This won't be something you can make cheap and fast to sell.

Just my $.02

[CoryBee]

I hear you on the price thing, was something I would want to keep. I also didn't think about the sensitivity of a pedal press, figured it would be like a button press...then again like I said didn't think it through.

There are not that many games I would want on a setup like this so that would be okay.

[BadMouth]

I hear you on the price thing, was something I would want to keep. I also didn't think about the sensitivity of a pedal press, figured it would be like a button press...then again like I said didn't think it through.

There are not that many games I would want on a setup like this so that would be okay.

The games are playable with just a switch in the pedal, but you won't get as far in some of them.
You lose time in Pole Position if you don't have an analogue pedal because the tires squeal and the car doesn't take off a quickly.
I always just mashed the pedal anyway.

In the driving cab info thread, there is a link to a spreadsheet where you can see how many playable games used a 360 degree wheel and if they had analogue or digital pedals.

[brad808]

Some wheels such as the Logitech driving force have paddle shifters that use pots. The reason behind this is if there are no pedals hooked up then those shift paddles will work as gas and break. Just thought i would toss the idea of that out there.

Sent from my Desire HD

[CoryBee]

Thanks for the quick info guys. Just bought some t-molding to pretty up a bartop build, not sure what I want to do with it yet. Maybe two-player.....thought racing would be a good idea....perhaps 1-player and a mini trackball? 

[cw]

what about a racing bartop that has a top down display and 4 sides like the demo derby 4 player cab.


http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=7551

[leapinlew]

I built a full sized racing game. Big mistake. It had a 360 wheel and switch pedals. The amount of games it could play accurately was under 5 or 6. Besides that, Mame arcade games have little replay value. It sat empty for big chunks of time in the gameroom.

[Minwah]

I built a full sized racing game. Big mistake. It had a 360 wheel and switch pedals. The amount of games it could play accurately was under 5 or 6.

If you replaced the pedals with analog ones though, that would jump up to 30-odd IIRC, and some of them are great. I am assuming you have a shifter...if not that would seriously limit the games but not too big a big deal to add one.

[CoryBee]

I really like this input, seems like I wouldn't get the amount of games I would be after doing it in a bartop this size. I have been working on plans to make a set of sit-down racing cabinets. Something in the shape of this but with car seats and all the good stuff for a proper racing setup.



The idea is to network them and have it play all of the top pc racing games (that have LAN play, would still do wireless over hamachi too) and some old ones on N64 (got to have mario kart too!)

That is something I would like to undertake before summer. 

[leapinlew]

I built a full sized racing game. Big mistake. It had a 360 wheel and switch pedals. The amount of games it could play accurately was under 5 or 6.

If you replaced the pedals with analog ones though, that would jump up to 30-odd IIRC, and some of them are great. I am assuming you have a shifter...if not that would seriously limit the games but not too big a big deal to add one.

MinWah! You are alive!

Yeah, the shifter was another factor which caused issues. I used a return to center shifter. All in all, not a good experience.

[Vigo]

Just food for thought, I did make a little mini race cab.

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,120992.msg1283705.html#msg1283705

Well, it's not a bartop, but for as little is housed in the bottom, I have no doubt a true bartop could be made.

I churned it out in two weekends and gave it to my dad. It gets constant use, so design wise, I call it a success.

[CoryBee]

Just food for thought, I did make a little mini race cab.

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,120992.msg1283705.html#msg1283705

Well, it's not a bartop, but for as little is housed in the bottom, I have no doubt a true bartop could be made.

I churned it out in two weekends and gave it to my dad. It gets constant use, so design wise, I call it a success.

I have this bookmarked already

What games does it run? Besides mario kart 

[Vigo]

Thanks! 

I mostly have more of the theme fun racing games rather than the simulation games running on it. A 5 or 6 of the Need for Speed games, the Carmageddon series(which took a lot of effort to get working), Lego Racers, Dirt 2, and a NASCAR simulation game(that never gets played). Split Second is the newest game I have on there, but it is a laggy with the speed of the PC. Of course Mame and N64 games are on there as well. I will probably add more when I visit over the holidays.