Would Need for Speed Underground make for a good Mame conversion?

[Rockstead]

I have the opportunity to purchase a twin Need For Speed Underground cabinet.

1. Would this make for a good Mame conversion, like will the steering wheel, buttons, shifter, and pedals all make it possible to properly play all the Arcade racing games properly?

2. I’m not sure if the steering wheel has flippers, I noticed the shifter has 5 gears, I think I saw only gas/break but no clutch, so I don’t know if this is a good setup for all the other popular racers or if there will be games I can’t play.

3. Is the conversion challenging, I think I’m okay on the software side but specific to having everything work from Mame instead of the original game board?

4. Has anyone done this conversion before or are there any guides I could follow?

Thank you!

[Howard_Casto]

Analog controls are just pots and shifters are just switches so those are never the issue... it's the force feedback.  Thus far only model 2 cabinets have been successfully converted to work on the pc in regards to that. 

[Rockstead]

Analog controls are just pots and shifters are just switches so those are never the issue... it's the force feedback.  Thus far only model 2 cabinets have been successfully converted to work on the pc in regards to that.

That’s great feedback, I hadn’t even considered force feedback, and maybe I’m overthinking it now because you mentioned it but Personally I find the force feedback aspect so important for driving games, it’s so immersive....now just don’t ask me which games I remember actually having force feedback.

Typically is the force feedback in the steering wheel and the seat? It’s not clear to me if that’s the case for Need for speed underground.

Which are the model 2 cabinets that can be converted with force feedback?

Damn, do I walk away from this?

[Howard_Casto]

Well I don't know enough about the NFS cabs to tell you one way or another.  Newer cabinets often use a regular usb connection for the controls, but the force feedback is often proprietary so someone would have to hack it. 

Model 2 cabinets are old sega cabinets.  Think Daytona USA and ect. 

If you intended to use the original wheel and it's force feedback system there have been some that hacked in an old logitech pc wheel pcb in a model 2 wheel and gotten it to work.  I believe there are also some homebrew diy solutions now but I don't have a clue which cabinets they work with. 

If you don't mind just throwing a pc wheel in there and ditching the original controls this is a non-issue. 

When I say force feedback I'm referring to feedback on the wheel.... more advanced systems would need a custom solution based on that particular cabinet. 

[BadMouth]

IIRC, NFS Underground used a Nitric interface for the pedals, which there are no windows drivers for, but used an immersion pcb for the wheel which there are windows drivers for.  There is a link in the Driving Cab info thread to a thread with the immersion info and drivers. 
It's been years since I messed with this stuff and I have no interest in walking someone through it. 

[Rockstead]

Is there a PC compatible wheel, shifter, and pedals that are comparable to Arcade quality controls and I could just swap it out making all this a lot easier?

[Boomslang]

Sure there is

Just depends on quality you wanna go for.

Direct drive wheels are far more powerful then any arcade cabinet one but cost alot

Next step down is wheels such as fanatec csw v2 etc and then things such as T300RS

[nipsmg]

I’d use the immersion board for FFB, and you can just use an arduino mega with the ino code linked on this page to get the analog controls interfaces and all the buttons, and even outputs for lights.

https://github.com/njz3/vJoyIOFeederWithFFB

It’s worth the effort to use the arcade controls /direct drive wheel.

[landesmd]

My Need for Speed GT (the precurser to Underground which can be upgraded to Underground) uses a stripped-down Windows XP machine to run the game.  Force Feedback and controls plug in to USB.  I would 100% buy if I were you.  If you can look at it, take the back cover off the arcade and look at how it interfaces to the PC inside.  My controlls feed into a board mounted in the PC, but it only draws power from the machine and then outputs it to USB.  I moved those over to an upgraded PC and it showed up as a generic USB controller.