How can I get more recent driving games onto my driving cabinet?

[unclet]

Most of you know about my rotating 6-panel driving cabinet which I built many moons ago:

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

All of the steering controls and buttons are wired to multiple Microsoft DualStrike SideWinder controllers.  I have 6 sidewinders total which are all connected via a USB Hub.  This allows me to rotate the cabinet's control panel to select a controller and then be able to play with that controller without having to unhook/hook the controller every time.  Basically, every control is active at all times, just rotate and play.

Now, since my kids are growing up and no longer play the "Mame" driving games anymore, I was thinking it is about time to update the driving cabinet with more recent driving games.

It would be neat to be able to play Xbox games with my arcade steering controllers.   Is it possible to interface my arcade controllers (ie: Spy Hunter steering wheel, Star Wars yoke, etc...) as input to Xbox games?   Does someone make some sort of converter which will take input from the sidewinder dualstrike controllers and make it act like an Xbox controller?  Would I be able to use the sidewinder joystick POTs for this or are they not compatible?

I guess I can always connect my Xbox driving controller up to the cabinet to steer with, but I think it might be more fun to drive with a Spy Hunter Steering wheel instead.  I am not that interested in hacking an Xbox controller to get it working, so some quick method of conversion would be best.

Now, if I can not easily interface my arcade controls to the Xbox, then I might look into simply buying some cool PC driving games for the kids to play (ex: Midway Arcade Treasures Deluxe Edition, etc..), however, I am not sure whether the driving games would interface nicely with the Dualstrike sidewinder controllers.  Would I be able to use any of the Dualstrike sidewinder controllers (connected via the USB hub) to control the driving game, or would the PC game limit input from the "first" USB device encountered only?   If my analog brakes are considered my "firs" USB device existing, then that would be bad since I would not want to steer using my analog brake controllers..... hope this made sense.  Since I have multiple sidewinder controllers connected at one time via the USB hub, I can not be certain which sidewinder controller my PC will determine is the first, second, third, etc ... device to be connected.   The order in which the sidewinders init themselves seem to determine the order my PC considers the devices to be connected to the USB Hub .... so this changes whenever the USB Hub loses power and then is turned back on.  I guess I am asking whether PC games will allow "any" sidewinder which is connected to the PC to control the movement of the cars in the games?

What are my options in updating my cabinet with better driving games (Xbox or PC)?

[Kajoq]

I'm betting you can make something work for both Xbox and PC.

Xbox controllers are wired as USB basically.  Its pretty easy to make a dongle from a quick disconnect to go straight to USB.  I'm not sure if anyone has done that in reverse, but google around I wouldn't be surprised if its possible.

As for PC... I don't have a lot of experience with many PC racing games but I know there are some out there that are supposed to be top notch.  I'm betting what will happen with your controls is some games will default choose a device, whereas others will have a drop-down to let you choose a device.  For the ones that auto-choose you might even be able to find a config file and change where it defaults.

Just throwing out some ideas! 

[brandon]

there are lots of good driving games for PC.  Need For Speed, Test Drive, GTR,  plus you could get something like Midway Arcade Treasure Deluxe for PC.  It has some of the arcade racing games that dont run very well under Mame like Hard Drivin’ ,Hydro Thunder, Off Road Thunder: Mud, Sweat 'N GearsTM, Race Drivin, San Francisco Rush the Rock: Alcatraz Edition, San  Francisco Rush 2049.  I personally wouldnt go to all the trouble of hooking up an Xbox when there are so many good games on PC but that's your call.

http://www.gamespot.com/games.html?type=games&category=Racing&platform=5&mode=all&sort=score&dlx_type=all&sortdir=asc

[NoOne=NBA=]

Have you tried the Logitech Driving Force Pro, or G25 wheels, yet?
I think you'll be losing a great deal of the experience with anything less.
They don't officially support the Driving Force Pro for PC, but it does work with their drivers.

[brandon]

I have one like this for PC and it works great! http://gear.ign.com/articles/676/676257p2.html

but if the one NoOne=NBA= mentioned will work for Xbox and PC then that'd be sweet!

EDIT:  wow, that G25 looks sweet!  Eats my Momo wheel for breakfast I bet! 900 degree steering?  very nice.

[NoOne=NBA=]

The Logitech wheels are for PC and Playstation.
I don't think there are any Xbox drivers for them.

The Logitech FF and 900 degree steering make everything else seem cheap.

For the high-end games, like Forza and Gran Turismo, you need a good FF wheel to do well.
You need to feel the car starting to lose control, so that you can run that fine line between in control and out of control.

On the more arcade-like games, it's not that big a deal, but still provides a better experience than a non-FF arcade wheel.

[unclet]

I do not want to buy any extra controls.  I was just trying to look into what it would take (if possible) to get my existing arcade controllers (ie: Star Wars yoke, Spy Hunter Steering wheel, etc..) to work on PC driving games.   Thanks for the input though.

[Dmod]

Most of the PC games accept keyboard inputs as well as buttons so you should be able to get your existing rig to work, albeit without force feedback.

I'm currently in the process of bringing driving games up on my PC based cab.  Crazy Taxi works great in a cabinet as does Need for Speed Underground 2.  Lego Racers 2 also works well.  These games all run smoothly on my 933MHz PIII.

I tried the Midway Treasures but the PIII is a bit too underpowered for those ports.

Another PC based alternative that's worked out for me is running the Project64 emulator which will run Nintendo 64 ports of the Midway games, the Cruisin series, and Ridge Racer and can be configured for keyboard inputs.  The PIII can handle a lot of these games but not all.

I've also tried running nullDC (Dreamcast emulator)  but the PIII has been too slow for the games I've tried.

[unclet]

Dmod
You mentioned most PC games accept keyboard input as well as buttons, but what about analog controller input connected via USB?  All of my arcade driving controllers are connected via USB since they are really all Microsoft Dual Strike Sidewinder gamepad hacks.   I think my main problem might be is that all of my arcade controllers are connected via USB at the same time and I am not sure whether PC games allow for a person to select which USB controller to use for the game.  I would assume most PC games would simply find the first USB connected controller device and pick that as the controller by default.  However, I could be wrong .... but I have never bought any PC games yet to find out.  Would you know if PC games allows for this type of controller selection?   

Perhaps someone can try to plug in a few analog joysticks via USB at the same time and then bring up a PC driving game and see if you can choose which joystick to use in the game .......

[Dmod]

Dmod
You mentioned most PC games accept keyboard input as well as buttons, but what about analog controller input connected via USB?  All of my arcade driving controllers are connected via USB since they are really all Microsoft Dual Strike Sidewinder gamepad hacks.   I think my main problem might be is that all of my arcade controllers are connected via USB at the same time and I am not sure whether PC games allow for a person to select which USB controller to use for the game.  I would assume most PC games would simply find the first USB connected controller device and pick that as the controller by default.  However, I could be wrong .... but I have never bought any PC games yet to find out.  Would you know if PC games allows for this type of controller selection?   

Perhaps someone can try to plug in a few analog joysticks via USB at the same time and then bring up a PC driving game and see if you can choose which joystick to use in the game .......

Don't know much about the sidewinder drivers but hope this helps...

I'm using a Logitech Driving Force Pro with the Logitech Wingman Software and Windows XP.  XP has an active gamepad device and if you use the Advanced setting on the control panel you can select which of your controllers is the active one.  All the PC games I've tried recognize the active controller as the correct one.

Wingman has a nice feature which will automatically set my DFP to be the active gamepad when it's present and you can also remap any of the buttons to a keypress or a macro on a game-by-game basis.  The application runs in the background and automatically reconfigures the driver based on which game is active.

edit::  I should have added that I also have three other USB controllers plugged in:  two Ultimarc U360s and one Red Octane dance pad.  If I unplug the DFP, I have had to use the control panel to set the active controller back to one of the other devices.

edit2::  You don't have to buy anything to try out your setup.  Many of the games have downloadable demos online.  Here's one to try the NFS demos.  I recommend trying NFSU2.

http://www.nfshome.com/demos.php

[unclet]

Ok, thanks for the information.  Reworking my driving cabinet is on my list of to-do items right after I finish with my jukebox build.