SimBox NG

The new VPC sticks are great! No doubt about that! But simple mechanics state that their centering force can never be as powerful as the BRD-N.
Baur, who built the BRD-N now devotes all his energy into making new controllers for VPC, which is evident in the ingenious scissor cam design of their WarBRD (see what they did there?) stick. The BRD-N has the same excellent cam design…on steroids!
It is also quite a lot bigger than the new VPC sticks, which is why I left it out of my SimBox.
But I have always wondered if I should give the BRD-N a chance in the SimBox…
I mean, if it is too big, I can always go back, right?

Let’s see…

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It’s going to be tight… Stepping in and out will be trickier, that’s for sure!

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Had to do some changes to the BRD-N to make it smaller and less intrusive…

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I see the screws on the side…is the height adjustable? I assume that the SimBox NG is primarily meant as a Viggen pit but that you could fly other mods with it.

For myself, I like to fly several mods. This poses an issue with control stick height vs the depicted control stick in the sim. For example, the MiG-19 stick stands way up; the FA-18 much lower. In VR I tend to reach for where I can see the control stick in the sim vs where it actually is. I can adjust some wit seat height (real and virtual) and I guess that is going to have to do…but adjustable would be nice.

It can be adjusted about 6cm. But I set it at a comfy height and leave it there.

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There!

SimBox NG 2020 Summer Update completed!

Waiting for the testpilot to sign off on the new control system.

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I thought that was a Viggen pit…as I am sure you are well aware, the Landing Gear handle in a Viggen cockpit is behind the seat ton the left hand side. Not very accurate is your ask me…(says the guy who is flying the Viper with the control stick between his knees). :wink:

It looks stunning!

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In its heart it is a Viggen pit.

Which is a great place for a gear handle! But I want a collective there…one day. :wink:

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How often did you try to get out on the wrong side that you had to put in a reminder in the pit? :slight_smile:

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:smiley:
The sign actually says:
”The hatch is opened on the other side”
I thought it would be funny to place it where it can’t be seen, when you want to open it…
It’s one of a bunch of stickers I have, that I got when I was in the Airforce. The stickers have a due date and we could take those that would be discarded. Here we are, almost 30 years later and the glue on the stickers still is really good! But perhaps not MACH 2 good…? :wink:

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Very Good Man, I love that. Im looking for a mount for the keyboard. Still waiting for my Virpil mount…sigh :roll_eyes:

So after reading @jross excellent article about flightsim feedback, I felt the urge to venture into this particular field of tinkering…
I have a JetSeat, but haven’t used in in several years. The JetSeat is more or less a pad that you put onto your existing chair. It has 8 vibration motors.
The effects it provided was a mixed bag. Some effects were very convincing, while others were not. The motors also made a high freq. electrical whining noise, that I could hear through my headphones. I tucked away the JetSeat, but the idea of haptic feedback lingered in my small brain.
When I made my own seat for the SimBox, I thought about putting the JetSeat motors in it, but discarded the idea.

Then jross wrote his inspiring article and produced a video of his feedback system…

Now I have a set of four bass shaker and an amp, making its way to my address.

The Amp has two channels and there are two shakers per channel…
But where should I put them?

Should I strap all four of them to the rubber sheet under my seat cushion?

Maybe two under the butt and two under the thighs? The thigh shakers would have to be buried into the padding, whereas the butt shakers would be strapped to the underside of the rubber sheet.

I could put two shakers on the backside of the seat. But that would mean there would be no damping of the vibrations and I’m afraid there will be audible resonanse.
Maybe if I cut holes in the alu sheet, so the bass shakers wouldn’t touch the structure…? :thinking:

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I’m surprised you didn’t like the Jet Seat. I placed mine inside a custom cushion, sandwiched in between two layers of 1" of high density foam. You can still clearly feel all the vibrations without having the motors uncomfortably pressing in to your body.

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Based on what I see here, and off the top of my head, knowing what I do now - and if I had a custom fabricated seat as you do here…

First, I would mount them directly to the metal seat tray (not with the rubber sandwiched between the puck and seat); the only noise I hear is from the heavier puck when I have the gain cranked to max - the puck moving inside its ‘chamber’. That’s not going away but of course you can turn it all down when noise may be a factor (room-dogs, spouse, neighbors that just don’t understand).

And if I had your seat tray here’s what I would try first:

This all assumes 1 amp and one sound card:

Having the larger puck forward should allow you to feel the stall in your thighs; I have a BK2 puck (left over from the original kit - the amp as I wrote about only lasted about 1-2 months). My small puck is right below my arse. My office chair has very limited mounting options. None in fact, that’s why I had to fabricate an aluminium plate as show in the article.

It seems that the smaller pucks don’t have enough mass to really feel much Stall/G but they are plenty for everything else. The larger one is the one I notice when the stall, for instance, is deep.

Having only one ‘path’ (sound card and amp) it seems you have to ‘tune’ your rig based on the transducer and/or gain level on each channel (left and right). My amp is mono so ‘puck tuning’ was the only way to go.

The WAV files can be played with a little too (I use Audacity - if not familiar let me know and I’ll show you how to create effect sounds with it)

This is my setup right now:

the BK2 puck and the smaller ones below the arse can’t be felt individually (I can’t tell where the ‘sensation’ is coming from) for higher freq fx. But the BK2 puck can be felt under my thighs in a stall, increasing as the stall increases. You wouldn’t think I’d feel it under the thighs as the BK2 is actually ‘connected’ on the post, in line with the plate/smaller pucks. But somehow it is. That’s why I’d think with your seat mounting one with a bit more mass under the thighs might prove better for stall/G. Just a WAG.

Some options for the larger mass pucks:

BK Mini LFE
I have this one and it is a tad ‘finicky’ - it shuts down if it gets too hot/overworked. Have to adjust the gain from the amp to keep this from happening. And it is the one you hear ‘clacking’ in the YT video I uploaded when things are really ‘rockin’.

This one (as linked to in the article) is interesting to me:
MQB-1 Earthquake transducer and mount
I can’t find the spec sheet on it at the moment…it’s either 0.6 pounds or 1 pound; it’s freq. response is lower: 15 - 50hz . AND they make one that’s even larger, with a freq. response from 5 - 40hz (Q10Q)

These of course cost more: MQB-1 is about $130 on Amazon (odd that is is listed significantly cheaper on Amazon than on the Earthquake site), the Q10B is $550!!!

My DaytonAudio pucks don’t pick up anything below about 10-15hz, I think. So, you can see that, when limited to one sound card & amp, you can ‘tune’ the rig via the pucks: a lower freq. response one for some fx and higher freq. response pucks for ‘transient’ fx.

Now, you’d have to change the G/Stall WAV files (assuming those are the ones we want to isolate) to be in a range below your general purpose pucks. Audacity lets you do this…dang, I’m getting curious-er and curious-er by the minute :slight_smile:

A stereo amp with an equalizer on each channel might allow you to segregate things more, if they make such a thing (I don’t know). I used Voice Meter Banana to try and tweak things (one sound card system and mono); it kinda helped but ultimately not well enough to justify running VMB every time.

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Okay…just for funzie’s (the above got me thinking…uh oh) I went and edited the Stall (Long) WAV file.

First I looked up the specs on the transducers (had to dig a bit) to find the important bits like freq. response. Seems the BK2 puck is rated for 5-200 hz, the Dayton Audio puck is 10-80hz.

So…I created a WAV file for the Stall fx at 7hz (in Audacity) using a ‘sawtooth’ pattern (just as an experiment, you have sine, sawtooth, square, etc). Amplitude set to 1.0 (max).

In SSM I turned OFF limiting compressor. The idea is, by creating a WAV sample below the DaytonAudio puck it shouldn’t ‘fire’ at the 7hz Stall output, but the BK2 one will continue to ‘kick’.

And it does. You can test the sounds in Audacity if you set the sound card output to your haptic ‘path’ one.

Definitely more ‘range’ here in the (for this example) Stall feedback. It’s for sure not binary.

And it really feels good in the Tomcat too. Hornet and Viper also but the SSA dev has some added fx for the Tomcat that Heat Blur set up for him.

This is another long-winded way of explaining “puck tuning” I guess, when you only have 1 sound card to start with.

The “G” feel is still an outlier. I’ve reduced it to 50% 35% with the stock WAV fx. I want something there but I don’t (my preference) want it to overpower the Stall fx. The inflatable horse-collar/pad idea would be the ultimate.

Have not yet found a source for the BK2 transducer only, though it might be on BK’s site, (I only have it as the last surviving piece of the original package) but the Mini LFE has the same specs and is 4 ohms, not 2 ohm’s, and $120.

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I think I missed this initially but, do I understand it that the ‘seat’ portion of your seat is not solid - you’re ‘riding’ on a piece of flexible material? If so then some of what I said above won’t apply, unless you add a mounting bracket/plate down there, say on that front cross-member of the seat.

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I cut out all the vibrators and opened them up for lubrication. I had an idea that friction made them stick, causing the whining noise. That didn’t help and I made my own pad around the vibrators.
The thing that annoyed me, besides the whine, was the short WAV files that was used for prolonged feedback like stall buffet. I don’t remember G feedback being an option back then…
Anyway, the short sound files worked just fine for bump feedback, but when looping the WAV files for prolonged feedback, there was a very unnatural BRRT-BRRT-BRRT vibration.

Since I have built the SimBox to be easily disassembled, I don’t have much space under the seat. I don’t think I have the space needed for larger hardware.

Yes. It’s a heavy duty rubber mat, stretched across the seat frame. The cushion rests upon this mat, which is pulled taught by my bodyweight :slight_smile:
I looked at your ideas above. The seat back is a metal frame, covered by 1mm aluminium skin. If I attack the pucks to the skin, I’m afraid all I will get is resonance.
I guess I’ll just have to wait for the hardware to arrive and test it out a little, before mounting it.

The WAV file editing sounds :rofl: interesting.
When I tinkered with the WAV files for the JetSeat I tried using longer files, to avoid the annoying short loops. But the problem with that was that the file played until the end, regardless of the action stopping. Like stall buffet. If I triggered the WAV file, momentarily, it still played to the end. And if I held the buffet going, using the shorter WAV files, the loop would cause pause in between the vibrations.
How does it work, nowadays, with prolonged feedback from G force, for instance?
When you pull G, the vibration starts. Does it also increase with more G? And does it stop when you unload?

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That’s how I feel it, yes. This is with the SimShaker for Aviators app set up for: Sound (Buttkicker and similar devices).

However I’m starting to get the impression that the ‘range’ of sensation depends on your overall system, and why, perhaps, the J-Seat may seem more ‘binary’.

If you look at my [cheezy] attempt at a graph (either in this thread or the article comments) you’ll see that my sensation is more like the first graph - it is linear but the range isn’t as much as I’d like (we’re never happy are we? and this is subjective). The goal is to move more towards the second graph, to spread out what you actually feel, smoothly, across the widest range possible.

Seems dependent on the physical properties of the transducer. My intuition (which may be wrong) is: the widest range would come from larger (more mass) transducers - securely attached to the platform (zero ‘flex’ that would mute the vibration) - with an amp that is optimal for that power requirement.

Then there’s how the software is formulating the output signal. I assume it is just scaling a WAV directly based on the current value of, say, the G-Feel WAV sample. Example:

Gsource = WAV, where amplitude = 0.0 - 1.0
Gin = Input G value from sim
Gout = clamp( Gsource * (Gin / maxG), maxG)
Where maxG might be 9 (G).

Don’t know what the SSA dev did.

I spent some time last night tweaking the WAV file for Stall (as mentioned above) and have it tuned pretty well now. In VR it was one of the most enjoyable flight sim experiences - of flying something - I’ve ever had in, literally, decades!

I’ve ended up reducing the “G - feel” to, on my system, 35. Stall is now 100 with the new WAV file. This all depends on your hardware (amp and transducer(s)).

Note that there are “Stall” [short], and a “Stall Long” WAV files. This suggests that the “Long” version is not being used for the J-seat? But only for the Bass/seat/butt-kicker style hardware?

Why that might be so, if true, I can only speculate on.

I don’t notice any of that, thankfully. If I did, like you, I’d have shelved this whole thing too. Perhaps the software has changed since you last tried the J-Seat, or the algorithm used differs between the J-seat and seat/bass-shakers?

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Looking forward to test it out!
Yes, the software has probably changed. I gave a lot of feedback and André seemed to listen and care about it. But I didn’t stick around long enough to see any changes as the whining vibrators was too annoying, both to me and the rest of the family.