driving cabinet front end/games questions

[ant2]

So i've been reading this forum now and then for a while.
Some of you guys have some great driving cabinets and gave me inspiration to build mine.

Anyway, I am hoping to do a video of my cabinet some time soon, but here are some questions.

The cabinet is a sit down racer, for racing simulation and Arcade.
It runs 3x 24" screens with eyefinity.
Logitech G27
Windows 7


1.) I boot hyperspin from startup and the best resolution I found it to work in is a single monitors resolution in windowed mode (so that it fills the center monitor) I then have a black desktop and hide the task bar.
 If i select the full screen resolution of 3000*X1920 it looks horrendous. Is there a way to set the full screen resolution to display just on one monitor ? couldnt find a solution anywhere.

2.) One of the guys on here modified the joystick symbol in hyperspin to a steering wheel, where can i get this from and how do I change it?

3.) N64 gaming, what controller plugin do you guys use? Is there any tweaks you can suggest? I didn't find the controls via the wheel amazingly accurate.

4.) Psx with the steering wheel, to play Gran Turismo etc, what emulator and plugin do you guys suggest? I am using Epsxe and it appears to use digital controls, so with the wheel this is kinda horrendous

5.) Is it worth setting up demul and Dolphin, are there any worthwhile games to play on here that work well with a wheel?

Will post videos,build notes,videos soon on the main forum

[BadMouth]

1.) I boot hyperspin from startup and the best resolution I found it to work in is a single monitors resolution in windowed mode (so that it fills the center monitor) I then have a black desktop and hide the task bar.
 If i select the full screen resolution of 3000*X1920 it looks horrendous. Is there a way to set the full screen resolution to display just on one monitor ? couldnt find a solution anywhere.

I don't have an answer for that one.  

2.) One of the guys on here modified the joystick symbol in hyperspin to a steering wheel, where can i get this from and how do I change it?

That was mbasile35.  You can try PMing him.  It's up to him whether he wants to share or not.  
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?action=profile;u=30996
He changed it to hyperpin mode to get the wheel on the bottom instead of the side.

3.) N64 gaming, what controller plugin do you guys use? Is there any tweaks you can suggest? I didn't find the controls via the wheel amazingly accurate.

Not sure which one I'm using, just used whatever the default one in Project 64.  Tweaking the sensetivity and saturation in Logitech Profiler helps some, but I've never been able to get any of the console emulators tweaked as good as I think they should be.  I don't know if the fact that these games were designed for gamepad joysticks is the problem.

4.) Psx with the steering wheel, to play Gran Turismo etc, what emulator and plugin do you guys suggest? I am using Epsxe and it appears to use digital controls, so with the wheel this is kinda horrendous

You have to press F5 after the game starts to activate analogue mode.  You'd be surprised at how many of the popular driving games didn't have analogue support because the analogue gamepad didn't come out until a few years after the playstation did.  An autohotkey script could be made to automatically post F5 if playstation games are important to you.

5.) Is it worth setting up demul and Dolphin, are there any worthwhile games to play on here that work well with a wheel?

I think so.  I have Crazy Taxi and Jambo Safari running on Demul .5.6 on my driving cab.
Demul .5.7 adds the atomiswave games Faster Than Speed and Maximum Speed, but I don't know how well they work with the new directx11 plugin since my driving cab has XP.  With the legacy plugin, it's real glitchy and the track disappears.  I have a leaked WIP version from before they switched over to directx11 that works fairly well, but it required a lot of workarounds to get working.

In Demul, the pedals must be set to combined which is different from most other emulators and games.  
Set up a profile in logitech profiler for each emulator.  It will automatically load the setttings whenever the emulator's exe is launched.

I'm using NullDC for Dreamcast games, but they probably work just as well in Demul.  As stated above, I've never been able to get the controls tweaked well enough for my taste (maybe just need to invest more time), but Hydro Thunder for Dreamcast is reason enough to set it up.

I've installed Dolphin and tinkered with it, but haven't spent a lot of time with it yet.
It seems well worthwhile.  Simpsons Road Rage is a hoot!
The burnout series for gamecube supposed to be really good, but I've only played a couple times to test it.

I'm sure you've seen it already, but if not, there is lots of info in the thread linked in my sig.

[kahlid74]

I can answer your first one by telling you to turn eyefinity off.  You're essentially spanning across all three monitors and nothing short of games in the last 2-3 years can support that.  So when you want to rock Hyperspin and arcade games turn spanning off and then set the middle monitor to monitor 1 and you can go full screen there.

[BadMouth]

I can answer your first one by telling you to turn eyefinity off.  You're essentially spanning across all three monitors and nothing short of games in the last 2-3 years can support that.  So when you want to rock Hyperspin and arcade games turn spanning off and then set the middle monitor to monitor 1 and you can go full screen there.

I wonder if there's an automated way to do that?
There's a hack to utilize this in the Supermodel Emulator and is.....beautiful.

[kahlid74]

Ewww, that looks super stretched.  It's better than one monitor but still, ugh.  I mean if you look at Crysis 2 on those three monitors it would be night and day difference.

There would be mods on a per game basis but at the end of the day, those old arcade games just need a single monitor.  You could certainly script a method or utilize something like AHK for switching back and forth between the two screen formats.

[ant2]

thanks for your replied, i'll look in to the autohot key script, after i tried out what the games are like with f5 selected.

I play a lot of pc games with eyefinity, which are launched via hyperspin, also its useful to have the emulators output 3X the same image to each of the monitors, as i can spin the right monitor around in the room where the cab is for someone who wants to play multiplayer. so i think i'll leave this how it is.

yes i've read your guide, nice guide btw.

i couldnt find information of the supermodel hack for eyefinity, is this only super model3? has anyone got a link? as that would be good to set up

ill give nulldc a try with the games you suggested, dolphin and super model3 when i get back..
then try and get a video up of the thing

want to try and get some more pc games on it too, been thinking about it over the last few days (as im on vacation) carmageddon, midtown madness i think would be worthwhile adding.

[BadMouth]

i couldnt find information of the supermodel hack for eyefinity, is this only super model3? has anyone got a link? as that would be good to set up

http://www.supermodel3.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=369&hilit=nvidia+hack
It's on a newer SVN (WIP build), not the official release on the supermodel 3 download page.
Someone compiles the SVN builds and puts them up on EmuCr for download though.

[ant2]

Finally got round to putting a video of my racing rig up -

[BadMouth]

Finally got round to putting a video of my racing rig up -

Killer sound system and I like that you have so many emulators set up on it.
Have you been able to get the sensetivity on the console emulators dialed in good enough that the games "feel right"?

Sega Model 2 (v1.0) emulator supports widescreen for Daytona and Sega Rally by the way.
Just set the resolution to custom in the drop-down menu and set your widescreen dimensions in the emulator.cfg file.

Is there a reason you don't have the side monitors out farther so the perspective flows better to the sides?

[ant2]

I am happy with the "feel" on all the emulators except the PSX.
Also the handling on the SNES and Genesis is not amazing, but good enough.

Okay thanks I need to mess with resolution for the model2 then, thanks for the tip btw.

The camera makes the side screen screens look a bit weird. I think it was the angle it was recorded in.
 But I prefer the angle to the side screens than having them flat because they are in your peripheral anyway and it makes it feel a bit more emersed.
It's also a good place to stick the side speakers too ! lol

Yeah there is a lot of games on there, I didn't really touch on how many are set up as otherwise the video would of been even longer.
Man I can't believe how long it takes to set them up, as nothing ever works out of the box, took me a while to figure out all the hyperspin fiddling too. Worth it thought I think!