Showroom Budget 2DOF VR Flight Simulator rig - MSFS, SMC3, FlyPT Mover, Transducers

What SMC3 settings are responsible for smoothing out the response?

I'm getting there. The rig is mostly working, there is enough torque, but I'm having a bit "grainy" or glanular movement. Let's say I should be having a smooth movement, of 10 degrees. It moves, but I can feel 100 tiny "steps" when moving. That's when testing with FlyPT Mover and MSFS. I know when I was testing before I had a filly smooth movements, so my motors are capable of that.

I dialed Kp to 300 and PWMmax to 130 and tried Kd 10 and 50, but that didn't seem to help.

OK, it looks like I'm almost there. Operation is smooth (CTC still at 60mm), although motors whine when on full rolled back position. At that position most of me are back of COG. They are able to maintain the position and smoothly go back, despite the whining, so I guess it's OK.

I mixed in a few things in FlyPT Mover for MSFS:

• Roll Position and Pitch Position (with high-pass filter) are taking about 70% of the range to get the gravity feel right with seat inclined the correct way.
• Roll Speed and Pith Speed (+HPF washout, +Crop) are added to that, to get the motion cues.
• Sway and Surge are mixed in with Roll and Pitch, to get the cues for take-off roll acceleration and breaking.

I adjusted it with MSFS running on 43" 4K monitor first, to get thinged dialed in. After a couple of hours of that I got totally car-sick. Really queasy...

When I got reasobly close to what I wanted, and got some rest, I got in VR.
OH MY GOD!!!
This is what I wanted, the project is so worth a few days' work invested in it and more. I can never go back from VR+motion for flight simulation now, that's official. It's just 2DOF, but this is another level of immersion. And I haven't even connected my DYI transducers to thenew rig yet. This is amazing, I was grinning and laughing during my first test flight. In the end i had to stop (guests coming), so I did a quick engine-off emergency landing in a field. It was a success, but the land is uneven of course and I was thrown around HARD, but it felt so real and so fun, that when I stopped, I just started laughing for a minute like an idiot, and couldn't stop.

Photos and videos will follow. Here are my first observations for now:

• Despite relatively small angles available, I had to limit the roll because it felt like I was going to fall out of the chair, even without VR. Pitch has less angular travel, so it feels OK in its full range. Before I limited roll, I had to use my yoke to hang on to the rig, affection my controls.
• In VR, motion is greatly magnified. Small movements feel much larger. I was concerned about limited travel of my rig, but having tested in VR I wouldn't want it to move any more than it does.
• Landings are much more pronounced now, I can feel the pitch changes on on touchdown. It's really useful and feels very realistic.
• It really affected the way I fly - much more like in real airplane I avoided sudden control movements, steep turns and hard landings (other than for testing) and tried to fly smooth, so I won't be jerked around. It got my flying much closer to realistic instantly. The difference is between knowning you should't make sudden movements but not feeling anything when you do, and actually feeling everything you do with your controls.
• I have a strong "VR legs" and I own a sailboat, so I'm not very prone to being car-sick or sea-sick - or I was, but got "trained" myself to be more tolerant. But motion rig got me car-sick veyr fast. And later in a VR session, I got car-sick again, although possibly less - because my movements were closer to what my eyes were seeing (when they aren't, that's what causes car-sickness). That means it's likely for many people to encounter that in flight simulation, because movements are larger than in car sims.
• I was very concerned about motion compensation, and expected having to roll back on all axis because WMR in MSFS doesn't have any solutions for motion compensation. However in VR it felt absolutely fine, like no MC is needed at all. My head movements were small, and felt reasonably natural for the G-forces affecting my body, which instinctively tried to stay upright. The end result felt very convincing and I didn't see plane move "around me" unnaturally at all. It felt just fine.
• I planned my rig so I can expand to 3DOF by adding a "traction loss" kind of seat mover later. During first VR session I felt so much natural movement that I didn't miss the lack of a third axis at all. Maybe I will reconsider later, but even 2DOF feels so great I'm not sure I want to add tracktion loss. Maybe for cars, if I get into racing. I'm 100% flight simmer up to now.
• I need to lessen the slack of the motor arms. I use M4-ish screws through the axle holes to attach the arms. There is a small play there, resulting in a larger play of the arms. I will get larger screws, carfully drill out axle holes to be snug for the new screws, and if done right that should eliminate the slack. There is some inherent flex/play because of wooden construction but it's fairly tight and feels OK. Motor arms are too much though and I can feel a bit of extra movement when the roll goes right to left. Not a big problem but I definitely need to tighten those arms.
• Surge feels great! Full throttle, then releasing brakes gets a proper kick in the back, and breaking hard feels like breaking hard, then backlash. Very real. I may dial it differently for ground vs air movement. Feels very much like it should, not like the pitch rotational movements that they are.
• I will tweak things for ground vs air profiles, because FlyPT mover supports it. I will remove roll/pitch speed mixed and exadurate roll and pitch position to feel more of the vibration and uneven ground during taxi and takeoff, then relax it in the air to be more "floaty".

I will continue to tweak to get it to the sweet spot, and will post photos and videos here too.

Here’s a couple of photos - it’s a work in progress, needs some work yet, finishing the surfaces, tydiing up all wires, and aesthetic touches etc. - but it’s getting there.

Good looking sim, enjoy.

Thanks. it's going to look good when I'm done with all surfaces etc., considering it's a wooden construction, and uses some parts and object I had lying around - my old office chair (that’s actually closer to most GA/commercial aircraft chairs that all those gaming chairs that model racing cars), server 750W PSU, some wood etc. Wood construction is not ideal, but it works. Metal is expensive and I don’t have welding equipment and skills. I need to take out some slack in metal motor arms attachment, but otherwise it works pretty well already.

Nothing wrong with wood, most of my 6DoF is made of maple/oak. And my chair is one of those gaming/racing office chairs

All right! I have completed my project (for now, at least) and it works great so far!
Here is a detailed video - demo flight, hardware and software walkthrough etc.



Here are some build photos:

Well done!

Thanks for your feedback and tips! In the end I based the motion on acceleration mostly, but it didn't feel entirely right, so I mixed in a bit of roll and pitch position too, maybe up to 20% or 30% of the movement. Now it feels great - I feel all accelerations, and remain very slightly inclined in a turn, for example, just a bit to help the feeling of a turn. Will compare to real aircraft soon, and adjust as needed.

Hi Ronan ,
As my motion rig is starting to take form.
https://www.xsimulator.net/community/threads/2-dof-flight-race-build.16924/
I took some insperation from your build

I'm considering using FlyPT as software for MS flightsimulator.
Is it a lot harder to make it work than Sim tools?
How does it compare to sim tools game engine?


Can you give me some insights on how you got it all to work
and what problems you encountered?

Sorry ,a lot of questions

I have no experience with Simtools, so can't compare. But FlyPT is quite logical and once you learn how it works, it's not very difficult to work with. The only problems I encountered is the learning curve, but the FlyPT documentation and the topic on this forum were helpful. Generally, everything just works when you understand how it's supposed to work. Once working, it's very reliable. I had no problems with disconnection or sync or anything.

Thx for your reaction , I will give flypt a shot.

I got the same problems with my motors as you ( also my IBT-2 is running a bit warm.)
quote: Operation is smooth (CTC still at 60mm), although motors whine when on full rolled back position.
Did you solve this problem ?
Or does it still exist and is it not a problem in the long run.

Hi ,

Hope you can help me out with flypt.
I got the source and pose module working but not much more.
How did you make your rig module for your 2dof rig.
I can't figure out what the input is for middle , range L1 to L6 ?
could you show my your configuration .
Also any info on your output settings , might help me get in de right direction

Sorry, I didn't see your post. Came here to update and saw it now. If you still struggling, here it is:

I updated the top post with the new detailed video of the latest version of my rig, complete with a custom-built hall-sensor pendular yoke convertible to a joystick, encoder box, switch/gear lever box, HOTAS throttle convertible to heli collective control and its switch box.

Thank you again everyone that helped me to figure out how to build it!

Hi, I have successfully built motion rig very similar to yours and all is now working fine. One issue I have is with your Ground Noise settings. They are way to violent on my rig and need calming down/smoothing out, problem is I`m not having any luck in achieving this. Could you point me in the right direction to fix this???

Also do you use the same settings when flying Helicopters?

My noise is barely perceptible on my rig, which is the idea, it should not be felt like an actual movement, just some low-frequency "vibration". Adjust (or add) the GAIN function and dial it down as low as you want.
I'm using the same settings for helicopters, the only problem is that it can be very nauseating - just like the real thing I guess, especially if the pilot is crap, like I am with helicopters - lots of wobbly motion, but so much fun! Only after half an hour of helicopter take-off, taxi and landing I want to barf... Feels very real though.

After watching your latest Youtube flying the new helicopter in MS2020. I decided to give it a go, disabled the Ground Noise as you advised, and my God I was very impressed!! I thought VR made helicopters easier to fly but with the motion it was incredible, problem I had was I had the assist settings switched off and now I was at 500 feet sat in my rig having to try a perfect landing so I didnt shake the rig to bits!!! focuses the mind some what!!!
This motion rig just gets better and better. it actually works better than my old DOF reality one I had 3 years ago and has only cost me best part of £300 max. Many Many thanks for all your help much appreciated.
One last question (honest ) in your video you show your OVRMC window, question is what are your settings for Roll and Pitch?? its hard to tell from the video.. and how did you come to this setting??