And since there's no news on Talon, might as well pull the seat out and plop in down in the rig too! With all the work you're putting into the build, might as well

Sadly, that is where my Sparco is destined if / when race seat expiry dates come into effect.

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1997 Talon TSi AWD
2008 EVO X MR

There's probably going to be a lot of seats available for virtual racing setups next year.

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2005 Forester XT (Daily/B2Tuned), 2000 Subaru Impreza 2.5RS P4WD Class Rally Car, 2006 WRX RallyCross Car (Sponsors: Rally-Tech, Great North Performance, ISI Automotive)
Check out: Rally East, The Ledwidge Lookoff Rally

Scott, now that you got the four shakers running do you like it better? Bang for buck worth the expense?

BTW (not that I looked all that hard) I've never noticed people with full motion rigs also having butt kickers ...does the actuator in the motion "kick" like the shakers negating the need?

Thanks
Stacy

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The fricton circle for my 911 Porsche resembles more of an oblong... I'm either trailbraking or accelerating while trying to get it to turn!

To be honest, I'm not noticing a whole lot of difference between the two shaker 1-channel versus four shakers 4-channels. I suspect that's because of the insulative properties of MDF, plus the fact that I've not really taken the time to play around with all the setting options available. I basically just loaded up my former "extensions" profile in "chassis" mode, just to get it running. There's a whole thread on iRacing of people sharing their profiles. At some point I plan to give some of them a try.

However, initial impression is that just running one or two shakers in mono will get you 75% there.

Regarding full motion rigs and shakers... The company which created SimVibe (SimExperience) has a full motion rig product, and they developed SimVibe as an addon to their rigs. So to answer your question, yes there is value in adding shakers to a full motion rig. The shakers can provide much faster and more refined feedback, whereas the motion is more to simulate g-forces.

If you're thinking about going the butt kicker / bass shaker / SimVibe route, feel free to drop by and try mine out before you make the investment. You can try a few laps with it turned on / off to feel the difference the vibratory feedback makes.

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1997 Talon TSi AWD
2008 EVO X MR

Good to know ...because I just bought one of these


SimXperience Stage 1 and Rear Traction Loss linear actuator (that I will need to build a turntable/slider for)


I mean doesn't somebody have to take over from Kevin to buy the newejst/latest/greatest stuff to pass on to fellow ARMS members when they are done with it

Besides somebody had to be the first to buy a motion rig ...it wasn't very long ago that everybody looked at triple monitors as an un-obtainable luxury, now a quite few in our group runs them.

I'll be honest that I don't think that this will make me any faster, but my main goal in running iRacing has always been to improve my craft at the real thing of which this should add to the realism ...and to justify this purchase it didn't cost me much more than running a weekend at AMP.

Oh, and the software runs both the motion and butt kickers if I add them in the future ...and of course the offer will also be open for anybody to come try it out (and maybe show me some macro tricks I'm missing)

Stacy

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The fricton circle for my 911 Porsche resembles more of an oblong... I'm either trailbraking or accelerating while trying to get it to turn!

Way to go Stacy!
Keep us apprised.


As for racing, this is my version of a rumble seat.
http://www.canadiantire.ca/AST/browse/4 ... ?locale=en (Don't worry I got it on sale for $30. Bought it for Jen's office chair but she decided not to use it.)

Actually it's pretty nice for endurance races.

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"The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed."-William Gibson
1989 Van Diemen - Formula 2000 Continental

Wow! You're all in now. Haha!

Might as well talk to Berney about adding four ButtKicker mini LFE SE's to that rig. SimVibe is integrated into Sim Commander, so I imagine you'll already have the software anyway. In light of getting a Stage 2, you need to devise some way to integrate the pedals & wheel with that seat chassis, so that the vibratory feedback can be felt throughout.

Nice setup!

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1997 Talon TSi AWD
2008 EVO X MR

Yeah kinda looks that way

Maybe I'll start putting my belts and helmet on like this guy below


Scott, I noticed in the butt kicker video review link you had where the rear kickers seemed to be mounted on something that looked like a leaf spring. Don't they all just mount to the surface or is there some that go between rig and base for more effect?

BTW I did confirm that I can add butt kickers in the future with the same software, but first I want to see that my computer can run all this. The last couple of updates in iRacing now mean that I need to turn off some scenery to keep the video from getting chunky.

Stacy

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The fricton circle for my 911 Porsche resembles more of an oblong... I'm either trailbraking or accelerating while trying to get it to turn!

The buttkicker you saw in the InsideSimRacing review was the ButtKicker Gamer2. It's designed for attaching to an office chair, and is priced at $150 ea. including it's own amp.

Berney (SimExperience) recommends the ButtKicker mini LFE SE (SimVibe Edition). It's designed to be bolted to a solid surface, and is priced at $95 ea. w/o an amp.

For an audio amplifier, Berney recommends the eMotiva UPA-500 5-channel amp to power them all, which is priced at $400.

As you can see, it adds up pretty quick! $780 just to feel the vibes.

Or you could take a more cost effective approach and get four Aura Pro Bass Shakers @ $40 ea, plus build your own DIY 4-channel audio amplifier for $100... for $260 total.

The only difference between the two setups (besides $520) is that the Aura shakers have a smaller usable frequency range (20-80 Hz versus 10-350 Hz).


If you have a quad-core computer with 8GB RAM, it should have no problem keeping up. You may find that it's your video card that is your bottleneck with respect to in-game graphics.

If you have a duo-core computer, then you'll be hurting and should consider upgrading to a quad. Alternatively, you cold use a second computer to run all your add-ons. It is possible to send the games telemetry data to a second computer to run things like Sim Commander, iSpeed, iHub, iRaceDash, etc. That way the sim can have full use of all your computer's resources.

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1997 Talon TSi AWD
2008 EVO X MR

iRacing Setup Sync

Here is a relatively new tool that I find quite helpful. iRacing Setup Sync (iRSS) is a Windows application that automates storing and managing your setups. It operates on a large database of setups, which is synced to most of the popular Setup Shops on the iRacing forum and therefore always contains the latest setups, even those shared on the forums. It allows you to browse setups by car, track or team and automates downloading the setups into the correct folder, and it can even automatically download setups for the car / track you are driving right now.

Here are some of key features:

• Automatically download recent setups for your current car / track, as soon as you start iRacing. Similar to Trading Paints - except for setups!
• Search setups by car, track or team and download the ones you don't have yet.
• Compares your local setups with the online database setups to determine which setups you already own - there is no point in downloading duplicates!
• Subscribe to cars, tracks and teams and quickly search setups that match any of your subscribed items.
• Completely customizable directory and setup naming convention with macros like the setup author, car, track, season and many more.
• Operates on a vast database of over 1,000 setups which is continuously updated by setups added to the various Setup Shops around the forums, and by user uploads.
• (Soon) Upload the setups you used in a recent session (if you want to share them) with the click of a button.

For example, last night I joined in the Regulars league race and ran the BMW for the first time. I didn't have a setup for Watkins Glen, so I just went to my 'iRacing/setups/bmwz4gt3/SetupSync/..." folder and there were a half dozen setups for Watkins already downloaded for me to try.

Here's a link for more info: http://iracingsetupsync.nickthissen.nl/

And yes, it's FREE.

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1997 Talon TSi AWD
2008 EVO X MR