Driver Cab Controls...???

[Taborious]

I'm going to be starting my second cab soon. It's going to look like your basic UAII but the top half will rotate around and the backside will have a seat for driving/flying games. I have been looking at happs for driving controls but they are VERY expensive. I was wondering if there was a better place to get driving/yoke controls & pedals/shifters, any ideas???

Below is a quick jpg of the unfinished design but you get the idea...

[PoDunkMoFo]

What kind of controls?

360, 270, Analog?

For analog you could just go with a regular steering wheel CompUSA Bestbuy etc.

360 is basically the same as a spinner except for it has a steering wheel attached.  Obviously needs to be beefier than a spinner considering the forces and leverage involved.  You could make your own 360 with some bearings and a hacked mouse.

Otherwise EBay is always an option but shipping on items such as that usually kill you.

[Taborious]

I guess I'm looking for 360 but I have a 5 & 6 year old so I want to make sure it's sturdy. I'm looking for something a little stronger that what I can get at bestbuy or compusa but I hate the prices at happs, so expensive and I know they will get me on shipping as well...

As for analog I'm not really sure this is my first dive into the driver pond so I'm not sure what exactly I should be looking at or what options I have...

[struby]

This is really random, but I just thought I'd mention how cool it would be to use the Steel Batallion controller for a pc game, or any game, I wonder if that is convertable and what system it is for?

[Taborious]

I don't know Steel Batallion so I'll have to look it up.

So far not many suggestions so I may be doomed to work with Happs...

[Taborious]

Maybe someone can float some knowledge my way. If I was to purchase an old driver cab with the controls how would I integrate those into a custom cab, meaning would they plug into something similiar to the IPac or one of the other type encoders? or does it really depend on what game I were to purchase... On the norm those were all analog correct?

[Minwah]

Maybe someone can float some knowledge my way. If I was to purchase an old driver cab with the controls how would I integrate those into a custom cab, meaning would they plug into something similiar to the IPac or one of the other type encoders? or does it really depend on what game I were to purchase... On the norm those were all analog correct?

It depends...but basically:

Pot-based controls can be interfaced using an A-Pac, or Dave's AKI board (or 1UP Dual-Strike hack).
Optics based controls can be interfaced with an Opti-Pac, mouse hack or equivalent.

Pedals are almost always pot-based, unless it is a digital (on/off) pedal which can be interfaced using a keyboard encoders,
270 degree wheels are always pot-based (excluding RoadBlasters),
360 degree wheels are always optics-based.

Gear shifters are usually microswitch based, but sometimes are analog sticks (ie pot-based).


That should get you going

[Silver]

Heres my current thoughts. Bit long, so cut to the bottom for my opinion in summary(!)....

Not sure what the 'Analog' option is above - both 360 wheels (they spin forever like a spinner) and 270 wheels/yokes (spin less than 1 revolution) are analog devices....

Either way, I would recommend 2nd hand arcade controls - these things are built to last, and generally go quite cheap on ebay (with the exception of star wars 270 yokes). Shipping can be high-ish as they tend to be heavy, but nothing compared to buying new from Happ.

First off decide what controls you want - a 360 wheel or a 270 wheel/yoke. Or everything:

http://unclet.arcadecontrols.com/MomsArcade/MomsArcadeMain.html

Note that it does not really work trying to play a game designed for one type of driving control (eg 360 wheel) with another (270 one). So you may want to consider what games used what:

Pole Position = 360 wheel, shifter, 1 or 2 pedals.
Champ, Super or Sprint = 360 wheel, pedal.
Off Road, Indy Heat, Badlands = 360 wheel, button, pedal.
Outrun = 270 wheel, shifter, 2 pedals.
Chase HQ = 270 wheel, shifter w/button, 2 pedals.
Spy Hunter = 270 yoke w/5 (IIRC) buttons, shifter, pedal.
Roadblasters = 270 yoke w/2 buttons, pedal..

There are loads more games but those are some popular ones. Generally a 270 yoke will work fine for 270 wheel games. There are several posts in the past about this.

Once you've decided on 360 or 270 (or both), interfacing:

360 wheel.

This is basically the same as a spinner, except bigger. They come with optic boards that can be interfaced using a mouse hack, or an Opti-pac, or an A-Pac or an Opti-whiz... basically anything that can be used to interface a tackball/spinner/mouse.

270 wheel/yoke. (and also analog arcade pedals)

These tend to be 5k (or 100k) pot based devices (I believe Roadblasters is a notable exception, but it had a unique setup).  These can be interfaced directly with a gameport (I think you have to replace any 5k pots with 100k pots - try a search), or and AKI interface (http://dave.bit2000.com/) or the popular Dual Strike Hack. (info for this on unclet's site linked at the top). This is handy as its cheap (dual strikes a v cheap on ebay) and are already configured for 5K pots so you can plug in a yoke directly. If you don't like hacking and a little soldering, look at the AKI.

Gears/pedals.

As mentioned analog pedals are just single axis pot based devices so you can use the same interfaces as any pot based device. Note that some arcade controls had digital pedals - simply on/off (eg a microswitch under the foot pedal). I would recommend analog pedals as you can play ALL games with these (Mame lets you use analog pedals in digital pedal games perfectly, but you can't go the other way). Several people have just used cheap PC analog pedals. These work absolutely fine, although arcade ones are usually welded metal and will last 50 years.

Gears - bit fiddly here. There are hi/low games, hi/low/turbo, then 3 to 4 to 5 gear games too. Worse, some hi/lo games used 1 microswitch (on high/off low) others used 2 switch (switch a high, switch b low). Even Worse, Mame is not currently consistent - certain games expect inputs that is NOT how the arcade game was setup. The Good News - its all probably quite fixable, and its on the to-do list in PowerMame (both fixing the correct inputs, and also allowing different type of driving games to be played with whatever gears you happen to be using). To cut a lot of waffle short, a 4 gear microswitch gear stick will let you play most driving games (IMHO) - with the possible exception of some ridiculous 6 gear games I've never
played.


Don't forget some games need buttons too - theres a nice thread (with some spreadsheet attachments) here:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=28960.0

that has info on all the driving games, what pedals/buttons/wheels they need.


Overall, If I was building a general driving cab, I'd try and support 270 and 360 wheels, I'd have one 4-gear gear stick and 3 analog pedals. There are very very few driving games you can't play with that. (Of course, that assumes you don't want multiplayer 3-wheel games....  )

My favourite cab that does this:

http://arcadegames.home.mindspring.com/driving/index.html

EDIT: Curses! Minwah beat while I was rambling and summarised it all in few lines....Typical!

[Taborious]

WOW, now that is the information I was looking for! That gives me a lot to work with and I think I'll take your advice on the "If I were building it" section Silver, thanks for all the feedback from you and Minwah, whose front end I use of course 

I'll post some more pics of my cab as things progress but I'm just in the planning and Wife shocking price phase now. I think I am going to switch to PowerMAME as well; currently using basic MAME.

Thanks again...