SimXperience GS-4 G-Seat

Just wondering if anyone has had experience of this seat.
http://simxperience.com/en-us/products/motionsimulatorkits/simxperiencegs-4g-seat.aspx

How good is it, and as a starter to building a complete simulator how good do you think the effect would be without a motion platform? As I said it's just an idea to get things started and over a period of time I would build everything else around it but meanwhile still get some effect from just having the seat.

@Avenga76 has one , maybe he can enlighten us

It is a different type of feeling that you get on a motion platform.

I used my GS-4 by itself for about 8 months. I have finished building my DIY 2 DOF seat mover now and the 2 of them work really well together and they compliment each other really well.

The GS-4 Simulates the pressure that the G-Forces create on your body. I would say that it is more subtle than my 2 DOF but you do get more of a feeling of what the car is doing from the GS-4.

It is really good for feeling the level of grip and when that grip is going to break loose. Because it is pressure and not movement you sort of get a more accurate feel of what is going on, like in cornering G-Force you can feel the lateral G-force load up and you can feel that pressure building up on your back and legs. You get to know how hard you can push the car before it will break loose by how much pressure you feel. It does trick your brain in to thinking that you are experiencing the effects of G Forces and you do start to drive by feel like you would in a real car. It tricks the mind so completely that I can't race at all without it anymore. When I was building my 2 DOF a few months ago I went back to a normal seat and I couldn't race to save myself. I had no idea what the car was doing and I got so used to the GS-4 that I couldn't train myself to go back to a static seat.

My 2 DOF is much better for bumps and violent movements.

With both of them then you get the best of both worlds. It is like the GS-4 is the bass guitar and the 2 DOF is the lead guitar. You notice the 2 DOF way more but the GS-4 gives it a nice fullness. They both sort of full in the weaknesses of the other. The GS-4 is good and sustained G-forces and subtle changes in G's and the 2 DOF is good for the overall movement of the car, bumps and initial turn in but it lacks the fine detail while you are mid-corner because it is easier to pick up the subtle changes from pressure than it is from movement.

I did find that I had to turn my GS-4 up to feel it over the 2 DOF because the full motion was overpowering it but once you have turned it up a bit then it feels great with both running.

The only thing is that if you are planning to build a DIY motion platform as well as run the GS-4 them you will need to run Simtools and Sim Commander at the same time.

I have tested both of the programs with most of the major games and they work fine together except for with Codemaster games. This is because Simtools uses Extradata=0 and Sim Commander/Fanaleds/Symprojects/Sim instruments all use Extradata=1 (or 2 for more modern Codemasters games). This means I have the choice of either running just my 2 DOF or my GS-4, Sim Vibe, gauges and dashboards.

Other than that, iRacing, Assetto Corsa, rF1 & 2, GSC, RRRE and other Simbin games all work fine with both Simtools and Sim Commander.

So in summary. Yes, it works great on it's own and even better when used with a full motion platform.

@Avenga76 : I would have said that Simtools could easily drive the Gseat and the 2 DOF at the same time, no ?

Did you try this? or do you have more advantages to use SimCommander and Simtools?
Thanks

It might be hard do because of how the GS-4 works. It has 16 servo motors which are grouped in to 4 groups (Back left and right, bottom left and right)

It uses 1 com port and a servo controller board. I tried adding it as an interface in Simtools but I couldn't even get the servos to turn on (they only turn on when they get in to game usually)

I don't know how you would get Simtools to be able to group and control the Servo motors.

Yeah, there are quite a few advantages of running both.

Sim Commander does a really great job of the GS-4 but it also has a lot of other features that I like i.e SimVibe, in game on screen HUD overlay, a visual lap analyzer which records and analyses your laps then lets you play them back and compare them to other laps. Great for improving your lap times.

Here is a screenshot of the lap analyzer, there is like another page of telemetry data also if you scroll down.



Here is a shot of the game overlay in action. It lets you add all sorts of gauges and graphs on screen. I use it a lot then I am tuning my motion to display G-force data.



It also has a really good graphing utility which I also use for setting my motion parameters. This is the SRF in iRacing on the skid pad, the top graph is the lateral G-Force and the bottom graph is the longitudinal G-forces but you can add pretty much any aspect of the game or telemetry to a graph.



The GS-4 is tuned by setting the max G-force and intensity. Sim Commander has a really good feature which will automatically configure your GS-4 motion profile based on the telemetry you record, either while you drive or from a recorded lap.

Sim Commander 4 has become much more than just a motion simulator control software so I wouldn't want to get rid of it. There is no reason that the 2 programs can't run well together.

As I said before, they both run fine together except with the codemasters games. And TBH that is a Simtools problem not a Sim Commander problem. Even if I did get the GS-4 going with Simtools then my gauges, dash and Fanaled's still wouldn't work with codemasters games because Simtools uses Extradata=0 and every other program uses Extradata=1 (i.e EK Sim SLI max, Dashmeter pro, Z1 Dashboard, FanaLEDs, Symproject SimDash, Sim Instruments, Sim Commander and many more)

Using Extradata=1 is the industry standard for Codemasters games and Simtools is the only program that I could find which uses Extradata=0.

The trick would be to write a new plugin for Simtools which uses the Extradata=1 UDP format so then Simtools can work fine with all the other programs which interface with codemasters games.

Oh and I also use Sim Commander to run the display on my 4th screen.

thanks man.....

Whoah I'm blown away!
Many thanks for these many pictures
http://www.xsimulator.net/community...er-gs-4-simvibe-gauges.5596/page-5#post-68076

Thank you everyone for your contributions. I'm now sourcing all the bits I need to build my own G Seat using the information and help I've received from this site.

FYI guys, the GS-4 has been discontinued.

@Avenga76

What do you mean?

SimXperience are no longer selling new GS-4's. They have removed it from their website.

They will continue to support existing GS-4 owners but no more GS-4's will be built.

Seems a strange decision to take after buying the product in. Perhaps hiking the price up wasn't a good decision !
It would be ideal now to see a sensibly priced GS-4 type seat from a new supplier.

I am pretty sure it will be so they can focus on the Accuforce. From what I see over on the iRacing forums, I think they have Pat on full time AF building duties.

The GS4 is terminated. ( this is confirmed by Berney Villers on the SimX forum)

The concept of the GS4 is NOT terminated, which basically means they are developing a new G-seat in time.

Because Pat is constantly busy with building the AccuForce, my guess is we won't see a new G-seat untill at least next year or the year after..

That is a fine looking setup,I considered one of these,as I find my rig a little noisy at times.How is the noise levels on this,I remember seeing somewhere it can speak quite loudly,but having never used,I can't confirm this.

I'm resurrecting an old thread. Anything new on this? What happened?

Why do you think it failed so soon after they started offering it? Too expensive for the benefit it offered? People didn't accept the concept? Or maybe it was just a way to get that guy Pat on board?

I would believe the concept using servos tend to be expensive as they tend to break down because of the load of current needed to make them move so fast .
I guess Simxperience were replacing those servos all the time and also good ones ain't cheap
I tried in the past a diy project and I finaly started to see results but at the expense of loosing a ost a bunch of servos. Could be me but I think they are way to senitive unless you go extremely expensive (maybe and maybe not) and in this GSeat application there is quite a bunch of them.
This is just an opinition based on my limited experience and you might call it also intuition.