Interested in doing a sitdown driving setup

[GCS]

Hey guys, new here but been reading for many weeks.

I currently have a dedicated MAME 4 player machine in the works and should be done in a week or two (its the wife's birthday present).

One of the things that I would like to do for my next project is a sitdown driving game.  My preference would be one that could play several games but thats not 100% necessary.  Some sort of a 2 player game would be awesome but perhaps not practical.

I saw where one member restored a Virtua Racing setup (AWESOME JOB BTW) but I was more curious can a setup be done from the ground up ie are all the parts available to do this correctly or am I better off just getting a sitdown Turbo, Pole Position etc. and trying to clean it up??

BTW is ATARI's Final Lap a decent Racing game??  I've never played it myself.

Thanks

Greg

[Tailgunner]

You can build a sit down from scratch, but dead sitdowns can commonly be had for very little money. I'd scout around before deciding, you just might end up with a beast of a cab for a fraction of the materials cost of building a new one.

[ani]

I've been thinking about the two, but I would like to have a 2 player head to head setup. Are there any head to head games in mame? and if so how do you bridge them together?

[DaveJ-UK]

I expect you could get it working pretty easily 2 player on one screen.

For 1 monitor per player you'd probably have to have two pc's with a cross over cable between them and use network play.

[zaphod]

One of the better scratch-built sitdowns was the Sparcade.  He used to have a ton of pics on his site but has now shifted to ebay to eliminate the constant emailed questions.  When I was considering a sitdown six months ago, he was very helpful.  He has a current auction .  
At minimum, maybe the pics will give you some ideas.

As Tailgunner mentioned, you may be able to find a local Pole Position or similar sitdown for minimal outlay.

[rsoandrew]

You shouldn't need to netork the machines assuming that you're playing a game where both players are visible on the monitor (I think spyhunter did this). Just split the vga signal with something like this

I'd also try and figure out a way to include flying games in your sit down cab.

[Chris]

I've been thinking about the two, but I would like to have a 2 player head to head setup. Are there any head to head games in mame? and if so how do you bridge them together?

Outrunners is head to head.  You can go into the dipswitches to decide whether to show one or both monitors.  I have no idea how you'd get one of the displays to go to a separate monitor, though...

--Chris

[seibu]

I think it's worth pointing out here that MAME will currently NOT do any head to head dual screen driving games correctly. Furthermore, the impression given by the devs over at the MAME forum is that multiple monitor support will not be in MAME any time soon, and quite possibly will never be added. Worth bearing in mind.