Motion base/cab for flight/driving sim games?

[Afterburner]

I've built one two player standup arcade machine already (dual trackball, dual 8-way rotary joysticks).

The last couple of years I've had this idea nagging at me to build a sit-down style cab for driving games and flight sim games.  I like Afterburner (obviously) and G-LoC.  And of course all the old driving games as well.

My wife gave me a Playseats leather seat and mounts for driving controls and pedals for Christmas last year.  So I've slowly been collecting pieces.  I now have a 22" widescreen LCD and a decent PC to drive everything.  And I've got an old Microsoft Force Feedback II joystick.

So I'm planning to mount the steering wheel and pedals on the seat, and the joystick on the right side (as a sidestick) and a throttle quadrant on the left side.  This will be used not only for MAME games, but for other PC-based games and sims as well.

But I'm tempted to go further and add a bit of motion to the whole thing.  I'm doubtful that any version of MAME has support for this as the vast majority of games wouldn't benefit from it anyway.  But for the PC-based games and sims, I think this might be cool.

I have built a couple of fixed base flight sims at work with real aerodynamic data and dynamics.  So I understand how these work pretty well.  I may go grab a copy of X-Plane at WalMart for $20 as the flight sim.  I'm pretty sure I can extract the parameters necessary to feedback to a couple of servo motors.

So finally my question.....has anyone else done this, and if so, do you have recommendations on cheap motor hardware, etc?

[RyoriNoTetsujin]

Hey there, I'm interested in the same kind of project; have you ever heard of the guys over at www.x-simulator.de ?

It's an international site, so translation is sometimes an issue, but there are some amazing projects over there.  It sounds like you have enough experience with this that you may find they've done most of the work for you.

I, on the other hand, was trained as a stage artist... and have no clue when it comes to the electronics/engineering involved here ... I would just love to have a 6DOF platform!

[Afterburner]

I was looking at that site the other day, but I'll go back and check it out some more.

I honestly don't think a 6DOF motion base is necessary.  With good visuals, a small amount of motion is adequate.  I've even thought about a simple air bladder on the bottom and back of the seat to simulate accel and decel forces.

I think even a 2DOF would be OK.  Just a simple roll axis and pitch axis ought to be more than enough for a home motion-based sim.

[rusolinio]

Frex GP FTW!!!!

http://www.frex.com/gp/