Ignito's Generic VR Cockpit Build

[ignition22]

Was browsing the forum the other day, came across this section and clicked that it would be a good idea to start a thread for my cockpit. Hopefully help me keep motivated and just generally add to the collection of ideas out there for others to draw from when planning and building their own.

 

I guess first some things about me, my approach and my home cockpit pit.

 

There are some amazing, high quality, super life like home cockpits in this forum. I can tell you right not this build will not be one of those :P

 

I am unapologetically not a perfectionist, my personal approach is to do whats needed to achieve the objective so this will be a for the every day person type build. Im not really the type who enjoys the building of things, more so the type who enjoys using the things and so you wont see me spending a pile of time getting some minor thing just right. I do enjoy being creative in finding solutions though so hopefully there might be some outside the box ideas in this build.

 

I fly solely in VR and all types from helis to WW2 to the Sabre and modern jets. For my purposes it would not be suitable for the cockpit to resemble one particular plane but more to be multi purpose with many design choices based on whats easy to build and what space i have available. Because I fly in VR i need to be able to find buttons and switches and my mouse etc based on memory, feel or the occasional glimpse out the bottom of the VR headset without being able to fully look around the cockpit.

 

Couple other things / points about what you are going to see..

 

1) I like to do things on the cheap, most things will be sourced second hand, previously broken or repurposed. My Thrustmaster HOTAS is second hand, my Fanatec and Heusinkveld race gear is second hand, my PC, my Obutto Rev, pretty much 90% of my stuff i own.

 

2) I tend to build things in temporary form and try them out for a bit then either finish it off, completely redo it or decide its fine as is. So you will see things done to a rough standard and things done and then redone again.

 

 

 

Alright so this will focus on my flight sim but is actually part of a larger project to fit out a spare room I have as a sim room. With both flying (DCS) and racing (mostly iRacing). I had been working on, flying from and racing from a single Obutto Rev and just switching gear around depending on what I was doing. Even though it would only take 10mins to swap racing gear with flying gear etc i was finding this was still enough of a mental and time block that it would stop me from flying sometimes. Add to that the realisation that car seats with their large side bolsters really are no good for flightsims as they somewhat prevent you from turning around to look behind you etc. I really was making a lot of compromises for my 3 in 1 solution.

 

So first step was to split my work setup and race setup with a plan to then build a flight setup. I bought a secondhand, broken, but near new office chair for $20. The original owner had tried to use it without the arm pieces and bent the bracket the holds the chair back to the seat. I took the obutto seat of the obutto and mounted it to the office chair legs/wheels making my new office chair. A sheet of waxed mdf and a couple of ikea trestles became my new office desk + we did the same for my wifes office desk so they match.

 

 

I found a used replica bride racing seat for a $300 ish locally and mounted that to the obutto instead. I know this is a flight sim build.. ill start getting to that shortly :P

 

 

 

Ok so now i just had my office chair seat and back. Found some dimensions online for an A10c ejection seat and use those roughly to determine height and angles of the ejection seat. Cut up a couple of bits of MDF to hold the seat to those angles, rest the chair seat and back in place and try to sit / balance on it to gauge the feel without it all collapsing.

 

 

Next thing was to see if i could cut a piece out of the seat for the center mount. Using a multi tool I cut out a square of the wooden base from the seat and the using a knife cut through the seat padding. The outer seat vinyl I cut in a triangle pattern so that i could then fold it back into the whole i had cut and for now have just used black duct tape to cover from the top of the seat, through the hole and taped onto the wood underneath. I thought this might not work out and i might just ruin the seat but it actually went pretty well. I'll try get a better shot of that sometime. Here is a pic of me putting the joystick on a bunch of boxes to try determine what height and angle would be best to mount the stick.

 

 

Now that I knew the seat wouldnt be a total right off i added to the base that the seat rests on so it could balance without throwing me on the floor when i tried to sit on it.

 

 

Next was time to design and cut the sides. This was mostly just designed as i went, doing one side first incase i decided to scrap it and start again. Its based loosely from the A10 seat and other peoples seat designs found on pintrest. One thing i wanted for certain was front of seat handles i could use to help turn around when looking behind during dog fights etc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I finished off the top of the seat for now.. added a top piece and a piece behind the top of the seat on the vertical plane for aesthetics. I am going to come back to this and also i removed the vinyl cover from the back of the chair so i can make a ejection seat looking headrest at some later stage with a cushion of the same material. Im hoping that will make it look a lot less like an office chair but thats for another time.

 

 

I have been a bit of an audio nut since i was a teenager and will be trying out a bunch of things as part of this build. Here you can see two of the four dayton puck bass shakers / vibration motors that i added next. However its my first time trying this particular type and i cant say im a fan. Unfortunately they seem to have an extremely narrow effective range of 30-40 hz. Anything within that and they will vibrate you like crazy but below is nothing and above is barely noticeable. I am controlling them with major eq adjustments for now but they will need to be changed to something better at some point. Unfortunately the likely hood of finding them second here is near 0 and shipping costs as much as the bass shakers do but i guess thats just what happens when you live in New Zealand.

 

 

At this point im just using a couple of old speaker boxes along side the seat for placing my throttle and mouse on and i have started to make this spare room my sim room. The race setup moved from my office to this room with the flight setup. I use my old triple monitor stand i got with my second hand obutto but never used so that i can mount a monitor in front of each setup. I scored a couple of 19" monitors for now for free from my brother in law and i built a box to sit under the monitor stand with spaces to eventually mount a home theatre amp (explanation coming later) and a larger pc case for when i build my next pc (when RTX 3080 comes out).

 

 

 

And.. i have reached an image limit..

[ignition22]

I started building the sim cockpit side pods with basic size and shape taken from how the F16 cockpit looks in VR within DCS. They taper in towards the front and the ribs are more rounded at the back getting slightly straighter towards the front as well. I flush mounted my warthog throttle and scored a near new razer tartarus v2 for $100 as well. The gaming keypad will come in super handy for additional buttons and is easily programable with macros etc as well. These are very much first stage and im currently trying them out for a bit before making further adjustments and starting the right side pod.

 

 

 

 

 

On the black friday sales I did the side grade from my Oculus Rift to the Rift S. That little bit better picture, inside out tracking and much better fitment for glasses all made for a worthwhile $200 upgrade (after selling my original rift). However the audio from the Rift S is nothing short of tragic. I first tried out some ear buds but it felt completely unnatural to have the sound originating from inside my ears. I had an idea and wired up some old speakers i had so i could play the game sound from both those external speakers as well as the Rift S headband and struck gold. You still get the localization ques of the Rift sound but you also get this environmental sound in the room that really sounds like its coming from all around you especially with the vibration motors as well. Back to the second hand market i found someone selling an old dvd home theatre setup a few streets over for $20. Using VoiceMeeter Banana on the PC and an extra usb sound card audio now plays through the Rift S, the vibration motors and also over RCA cables to the inputs on the dvd home theatre. I wired the back speakers in series with the front speakers to get sound to play through all 4 speakers, skipped the center speaker but do play audio through the sub as well. This all works really well for now but as an audio nut i just have to eventually replace the HT setup with some purpose build speakers of my own much later on in the project.

 

 

I had to get some appropriate art work going on to make the room a little more interesting and themed. Lucky for me my wife is a talented graphic artist and she whipped these up from some screenshots i took from the DCS model viewer. $10 to print out high quality A3 size and a couple of cheap frames later im pretty happy with the result. This is just a start with bigger plans for artwork to come down the road.

 

 

 

 

Ok so thats all caught up to where im currently at but progress should be pretty decent so hopefully more to come soon. Thanks for reading

[Gruman]

That's pretty sweet.

Looks like a confotable chair. Maybe a bit hot after couple hours? Or is it breathable?

 

The pictures are a nice touch :)

 

I might have to borrow some ideas as inspiration... ;-)

Edited December 30, 2019 by Gruman

[VpR81]

...I like to do things on the cheap, most things will be sourced second hand, previously broken or repurposed. My Thrustmaster HOTAS is second hand, my Fanatec and Heusinkveld race gear is second hand, my PC, my Obutto Rev, pretty much 90% of my stuff i own.

 

Absolutely nothing wrong with that, i sometimes buy second hand as well. But i bet your 2nd hand Heusinkveld pedals were still several hundred bucks. Would love to have some too, but new they´re absolutely out of my budget and i could´t find a decent ebay offer for used ones yet... Can´t identify it on the pics, but are yours SPRINT or even ULTIMATE pedals?

 

 

Nice pit project by the way. Looking good next to your sim racing gear!

[ignition22]

Absolutely nothing wrong with that, i sometimes buy second hand as well. But i bet your 2nd hand Heusinkveld pedals were still several hundred bucks. Would love to have some too, but new they´re absolutely out of my budget and i could´t find a decent ebay offer for used ones yet... Can´t identify it on the pics, but are yours SPRINT or even ULTIMATE pedals?

 

 

Nice pit project by the way. Looking good next to your sim racing gear!

 

 

Mine are the Pro which I think have been recently replaced by the Sprint series. Still a little over a thousand 2nd hand in my local currency, I guess about $750 usd so not super cheap but should last a life time. I was on the lookout for some Fanatecs but when these turned up I couldn't say no.

 

Interesting story on those actually.. one of the very few used items I bought and was sort of scammed. The throttle pedal was totally dead. I contacted Heusinkveld and said I had bought them used and the throttle wasn't working and could I buy just a throttle pedal from them. Well they shipped me a brand new free pedal with free shipping that somehow went from the Netherlands to New Zealand on the other side of the planet over a weekend as if they personally escorted it here themselves. Typing this now I still kinda cant believe it.. just an absolutely ridiculous level of support.

[ignition22]

Looks like a confotable chair. Maybe a bit hot after couple hours? Or is it breathable?

 

Its been fine so far.. guess since its meant to be an office chair its designed to be used for long periods of time. Also this is the one room in the house that doesn't have sun side facing windows so is the coolest in the house.

 

 

That reminds me actually, something I was going to mention in my initial post. These cheap office chairs are appalling made.. its not until you pull them apart you realise they are not remotely straight or symmetrical. Bolt holes etc are off by inches, drilled in on angles and generally look like they have been done by hand in a hurry. I couldn't just make one side of the chair and then copy it to do the other, I had to make both sides separately while still trying to get them to join up.

 

I think the end result works well though and should be much more ergonomic then if I just built a wooden frame and made my own cushions for it.. atleast this should be shaped and designed for long term comfort.

[ignition22]

Picked up a used Onkyo 7.1 channel HT amp for $140. These sorts of amps are great watts/channels per $ value with 7 rca channel in and 7 amplified channels out with plenty of power you can run all sorts from them. This is replacing a bunch of two channel amps I was using before.

 

For now I'm running 6 shakers from 4 of the amp channels with plenty of headroom to add another 4 shakers on those same channels later on. Likely use the remaining 3 channels for room/environment speakers much further down the road.

 

I use voice meter banana to mix audio and effects channels and direct different audio to Rift S headset, room/environment speakers and bass shakers. It seems that ED just recently added the ability to send headset and other audio streams to a different sources which is perfect.

 

 

 

Over the last few days I started the right side pod to match the left side one. Got a trackball to try instead of a mouse, hoping will be more practical with less physical movement and it being fixed in place. Also trying out angled front parts on the side pods to see what feels right before committing.