rock'n'ride simulator

[Dariusz]

Hi,

Just wondering if someone attempted to use an rock'n'ride simulator with MAME or any other emulator?

Thanks

Dariusz

[Fozzy The Bear]

The rock'n'ride seems to be an interesting product..... I havn't seen anybody use one yet for Mame. It'd be fabulous for driving games and for Afterburner and G-Loc.....

Trouble is that all the sites I found for it are in German.... I don't suppose that you have any good links for it in English do you??

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[Teebor]

Sadly it it looks like it suffers from the same problems as all the rest I have seen.

It takes its inputs from the joystick (as games are not designed to feedback to this type of machine) because the feedback from the joystick doesnt always represent what is going on, on the screen then it can easily become out of sync with the game.

For example I tested one at a show once and the whole chair played at a left angle whilst the screen showed a perfectly flat race.  This was very disorienting and made me feel a little odd

English site that sells the chairs and has info about them

http://shop.rightthing.nl/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=8&products_id=17

[RayB]

"rock n ride"?  Sounds like a sex toy for women.

[Fozzy The Bear]

Sadly it it looks like it suffers from the same problems as all the rest I have seen.

It takes its inputs from the joystick (as games are not designed to feedback to this type of machine) because the feedback from the joystick doesnt always represent what is going on, on the screen then it can easily become out of sync with the game.

The rock and ride is slightly different to that.... as well as direct joystick response being available, they also have a USB interface that actually takes force feedback information from the computer that would normally be fed back to the joystick and uses that to control the chair.  It also allows mixing of the information from the joystick and the returned force feedback. So it should actually stay in sync quite well.

That's assuming you're running a game that outputs force feedback information, which I suppose rules out Mame at the moment, unless you're just using a joystick response.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[codeena]

I have a Rock 'n Ride and used it for Mame (mostly for After Burner) and Final Burn (for Galaxy Force II). It worked great and added a lot to the experience of these games. Basically the more you move the joystick (or any other gameport device), the more the chair moves. You can also switch the Y-Axis if you prefer the chair to move up or down by pulling back/forward on the stick. The one downside to the R'n'R was that it had to be plugged into the gameport. After I upgraded to WinXP, it has been sitting lonely in my garage, and I'm going to put it on Ebay soon. I think that there is a gameport/usb adapter out now that would remedy this issue. I first got it for games like Rogue Squadron and Descent, but found a lot of games are great with it, like BeachHead and racing titles. It probably would have added to the experience to have a ffb joystick or wheel, but I used the Aura Interactor seat cushion with it, and that was more than enough fb.

[codeena]

I forgot to mention that they did have Playstation and Nintendo 64 adapters for the Rock 'n Ride, which I never did pick up. I think it'd be great for the PSX's Ace Combat series and N64's Pilotwings. But now that there are great emulators for these systems, you should be able to play these games on your PC, as long as the emulator supports analog or digital joysticks. In addition, if you have the R'n'R and find the PSX adapter, you may be able to use it with the Playstation 2 since the PS2 can use many PSX controllers.