Main > Driving & Racing Cabinets
Real Instrument Panels
twistedsymphony:
--- Quote from: Howard_Casto on May 07, 2014, 03:21:52 pm ---Well, I always say... you don't have to be a rocket scientist to work on MAME, but fortunately we've got two or three hanging around the forums just in case. ;)
Literally you are like the 5th or 6th person over the years that I know of that has been on this forum that works in aerospace, even if you design software.
--- End quote ---
I actually have a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Rensselaer, my programming knowledge is mostly self taught (I did take a couple of classes on it on college "for fun" :laugh: ) my electrical knowledge is 100% self-taught.
I like programming because most engineering work can be soul-crushingly tedious. In the bearing world it's like doing the same set of math problems over an over again just with different starting variables... at least with programming I get to develop new apps all the time and I'm always trying out new techniques or adding fancy new features.
As for Arcade machines... I think us engineering types just like to tinker. I'm big into car modification too and there are A LOT of aerospace engineers in that hobby as well.
Howard_Casto:
Well my strange medical stuff has left me a bit out of sorts so I'm just now starting to get back to this stuff. This is probably more Outrun related but....
One of the things I could work on while I was more heavily medicated was outrun radio. While the lag is simply too great for a speedo, the iDisplay method works great for a radio, which doesn't really have to be in real time.
Check it out:
Xiaou2:
Im not a huge fan of video display for mechanical gauges. I really love the analog nature of real gauges.
However, a compromise would be a gauge that looked nearly indistinguishable from the real deal.
Maybe if you used a half-silvered mirror that has a Display under it.. and the gauge face behind it. Show a black background which will become transparent.. with the Red Needle graphic. The Needle will appear to float above the gauge face.
Or you could just use an LCD coupled with a front face mirror at 45 degrees, to show the gauges indirectly. At least with them being indirect, and with distortions from glass lens (as a sort of bezel) from the gauge face, ... it may appear less like a display... especially if you use a good photograph(s) rather than making some brand new looking vector / 3d model crud.
Howard_Casto:
Yeah an lcd for the gages is a hard sell for me. I'm just exploring all options atm. It'd be nice if there was some sort of compromise.
The only thing about mechanical gages that I don't like is the fact that I can't adjust the scale. If I put a 220mph gage in there then I'm stuck with it, even when playing an arcade racer that doesn't go much beyond 100 mph. It's not a huge deal for a tacho though... those generally are all in the same range.
As I've been going over in the thread, the main problem with any solution is space. Arcade dash boards are around half scale, so it's hard to find anything that'll fit period. I found lots of nice motorcycle gages, but they use the old school "spin a wire" design so that'd be hard to implement. Ironically my Grandma's old 99 Ford Taurus has a really nice gage cluster and it's very compact,I had to replace the speed sensor as well, so I know it's digital, but all the graphics would have to be scrapped as it only goes up to 100 mph.
twistedsymphony:
--- Quote from: Howard_Casto on May 14, 2014, 02:17:19 pm ---Ironically my Grandma's old 99 Ford Taurus has a really nice gage cluster and it's very compact,I had to replace the speed sensor as well, so I know it's digital, but all the graphics would have to be scrapped as it only goes up to 100 mph.
--- End quote ---
it looks like the SHO trim cluster goes to 150
Honestly most non-sports cars only go up to 120 or 140... and sports cars rarely have speedos that go above 160 or 180
generally the speedo wont go much past 10 or so MPH over the cars top speed.
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PRO TIP: the UK typically uses MPH on their speedometers as well and many of their speedos read at higher speeds than US Models... I swapped my USDM Nissan cluster out for a UKDM cluster from the same car because the UK cluster reads to 180 while the US cluster only went to 140.
IDEA: Clusters from Germany or Japan (or anywhere else outside of the UK or US) will read in kph... since a kilometer is shorter than a mile (~64MPH = 100KPH) their cluster will have substantially higher numbers.. sports cars with KPH speedos will generally top out over 200KPH. Since you'll be controlling the driver you can mapp the in-game MPH to read the "number" on the kph speedo.
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