Low cost 2DOF/3DOF/6DOF motion simulator - DOF REALITY

I don't now why you should want this, it fits fine for other games or anything. Just slide your seat back and remove the rim.
Removing and placing the wheel and pedals again and again sounds annoying, especially for all the cables.

The wheel plate is connected underneath the wheelbase, so that's not a quick option. The Fanatec adapter (to the base) is connected with 4 bolts.
The pedals are connected with 4 bolts to the pedal plate. You can also choose to remove the whole plate (also 4 bolts).

Is this to switch between driving sims and flight sims?

Depending on how complex your rig is and how many peripherals are attached, it can take quite a few hours at most. Depends if you have to re-balance the rig.

I have had my P3 rig set up for driving for over a year and recently decided to try flight sims. Its taken me days to get it set up to work properly but I was re-drilling wheel plates and pedal plates, creating mounts for HOTAS and flight stick and then finally configuring sim tools to work. I had to move the main pivot point position because I had a very heavy ffb wheel and pedals.

I guess the hard work is done now however and I think yeah, about two hours to put it back to a racing sim, but that's assuming I can remember how it all goes back (and to be honest, I think I have forgotten already).'

It certainly isn't a five minute task.

Andy

DofReality Flight Simmers, I need your help.

Trying to fly using DCS and Aerofly FS2 with the DofReality P3 righ (pitch, roll and now yaw) and the motion is just all wrong. I'm using what I think are the most up to date plugins for DCS, Aerofly and War Thunder.

Pitch is working but the motion is very small and I think the pitch up may be pitch down and vice versa. Roll doesn't seem to work at all, and as for yaw, its just all wrong. As I start to roll out to take off, the yaw rolls hard over to the right. Not sure if that's as a result of the prop rotation but the rig just feels all wrong.

All the axes seem to be correct in setup and testing but just seem awful when I'm flying.

As you guys probably know, I've been with the P3 rig for over a year now and know how to set up the rig but I'm very new to flight sims so don't know how the rig is supposed to react in flight sims.

If I bank right should the right hand motor axis pitch down and the left hand motor axis pitch up?

If I use the right rudder does the yaw motor drive the rotating frame out to the left hand side of the rig?

If I pitch up should the rig rotate both axis to lift the front of the rig?

Should heave and surge all act the same as pitch?

What should happen with sway, because I just don't really know?

Help me please guys because at the moment it's not worth the effort and I can't believe that the way my rig is operating is the way is should be working.

Happy to discuss further via discord or something or just please explain what I should be expecting here.

Thanks in advance

Andy

Have you checked out the Aerofly fs2 thread? I'm sure @Zed and i put some screenshots on there. Its about a year since i was looking closely at this though.

Phil

Because i have 2 kids home (5 and 2 years old) that would go nuts to jump on the car sit and use the pedals and the wheel , while my wife would repeadetly complain that I bought something that attract them into video games already, when they are too young for that

@Andy Booth - flying is different from driving in that the motions shouldn’t happen so much in coordinated flight. If you are flying and bank properly left or right, the sim should stay flat with maybe the nose pitching up a little as you pull to maintain altitude. It’s only in uncoordinated turns or just slamming the yoke/stick for more of an axial roll that you should get a rolling motion in a sim.

What I'd try is turning all sim axes to zero and then starting with a single motion like surge, yaw, or roll. Try it out in sim and make sure it fells like you want, make a note of the settings, set it back to zero, and then go to the next motion. Once you get them all sorted, just put them all back to active and see what you think. Be mindful of having too much of any one motion where they can all add together and drive your rig to the limits.

One other thing is flight sims seem to really need washout. They aren’t like cars that tend to be more forgiving of the sim not coming back to center on its own. My rig felt really wrong until I added a fair bit of washout on every motion.

Cheers!

Thanks Spit40 and Zed, Ive just been reading the posts in the Aerofly FS2 Plugin thread and have a little bit more of an idea whats expected.

I think I understand what you are saying about the motion in that, if you are flying the aircraft smoothly with a reasonably constant 1g then you wouldn't really feel and movement in the rig. Is that what you are suggesting? Makes sense but I'm trying to fly the Trainer Mustang in DCS World and I'm sure putting the aircraft into a tight bank or pitch up hard then surely the motion rig should move quite considerably.
I seem to have the pitch force direction wrong (rig rolls forward when pitching up) and that's fairly easy to resolve but nothing seemed to happen in roll. If the rig is simulating gforce then a hard bank to the right would, due to centripetal force, make the rig drop on the left to simulate being pushed out in your seat. But then again, if you are banked in a tight turn then the centripetal forces would actually push you into your seat (negative heave I guess). But my rolling motion (without banking) should be felt quite strongly I suspect and I'm not really feeling anything.

I'd dabbled with washout earlier and need to look at it in more detail with the flight sim and the settings you discuss in other threads are going to be my starting points.

But it's the initial basic motion I need at the moment, so:

1. What sensation should I feel and what should the rig do if I simply pull up on the stick?
2. What sensation should I feel and what should the rig do if I simply pull the stick to the right?
3. What sensation should I feel and what should the rig do if I simply apply right rudder?

I'm using Pitch, Roll and Yaw only but I read in some of the posts that you guys were using Extra 3 (I think). Which of the axes should I be changing?


As you said Zed, this setup of the rig for flight simulation is nothing like that for driving simulation. I thought it was going to be fairly straight forward but obviously I'm very wrong.

Please feel free to call me an idiot because I have the whole concept in my head wrong.

Andy

Andy:

I use P3DV4.3 for my flight sim. Flight Sim is the only thing I use the H3 for. My settings work well for helicopter flight. I have flown some airplanes and the setting work well there also.

The settings are:

Extra 1 and 2 for pitch and roll. Both set at 75% with 75% smoothing and heave of 50% with 50% smoothing.
Extra 3 for yaw, set at 80% with 35% smoothing and sway set at 30% with 25% smoothing.

Using the Extra axes allow the aircraft to simulate full 360 rolls without snapping back to level during the roll.

I hope this information is helpful.

Regards,

Danny

I also use extra 1,2,3 but with washout. Stick back, pitch up, the rig tilts up then gently settles to level. I'm in vr so all you really sense is the first motion cue. You can't tell your angle after that. The tilt up also gives a sense of heave. I've come to believe that heave is a crucial force for flight sim, which is why i built a gseat to go with my H3.

Bank is done like pitch. No counter intuitive stuff.

As for yaw personally i find yaw a bit unsatisfactory on the H3. Too snatchy. Perhaps its ok for driving and sudden traction loss.

Thanks guys.

I played around setting up 25% smoothing, 20% gain and 50% washout on all three axis with movement ranges up to 80 and started to get the feel I was expecting. I was however using the pitch, roll and yaw axes as opposed to the Extra 1, 2 and 3.

So DCS outputs to Extra 1, 2 and 3 then? I read that those axes provide a better feel. Is that correct?

I have to get the balance of my P3 better because my motion is quite jerky although I guess aircraft flight isn't always smooth and I could be feeling a bit of the simulation. But I do see a little jerkiness when I view the motion through SMC3. Better balance will improve that.

What I did notice with the motion rig was I could feel the aircraft depart much better than without motion. The motion cues help the simulator feel a lot. I guess if you fly smooth, you wont feel much rig motion.

I was getting a bit bored with the sim racing and didnt use the motion rig because it actually made me slower however I think the motion is really going to help the immersion and being able to fly better.
Really just started flying sims and it's very challenging. Managed my first landing in the TF-51 Mustang in DCS. It wasnt pretty, but you know what they say, any landing you walk away from is a good landing.

Andy

How much washout are you using on the three axes?

Danny

The below is what I currently have setup.

1. Front of the rig will go upwards so you feel like you are leaning backwards. Both motor arms will raise up.
2. You will feel like you are leaning to the right. Left motor arm will raise, right motor arm will lower
3. You will feel like you are pointing to the right. Back of the rig will slide to the left.

My rig is pretty jerky in the roll axis at the moment so I’m trying to sort that out. Ref the axis you can use, from the sim tools manual you go into one of the game manager menus and the available axis have an orange square next to them.

Hope that helps a little.

One thing I recommend is tuning. The way I approach tuning is to follow the usual routine of doing a test flight and capturing the max/min range of values/forces, then note these down for yourself and manually tweak them. Yesterday I made a flight in the Cessna in AFS2 but instead of the usual settings which I've had for a while since I set them for a faster plane I manually reduced the Extra 1/2/3 all to about 0.5/-0.5 and the forces were much more satisfying.

I have about 20% smoothing, 20% washout gain, 50% washout return. I'll play with these more and the force mapping % values but getting tuning right gives more benefit as its important to map the extremes of your rig's movement to the typical limits the game generates for most of the time you're flying. Then you can fine tune the gain and easing of those limits. IMHO.

Thanks everybody, Im slowly getting closer to the correct feel (in my eyes).

This evening Im going to try the Extra 1 2 and 3 settings and see how that feels.

Andy

Hello All. Just pulled the trigger on the P3 w/the optional P6 upgrade in the future. For the past 6 months I've been exploring the HTC Vive Pro VR system. Now it's time for me to kick it up a notch. Looking forward to getting things set up and learning form the "experts" on here...

I would like to ask a question about cable management and how much or little slack is required for the controllers once sim in full motion?

No big deal - You need to manage it a bit, but once you're set up you'll find out what's best. Movements aren't huge. A little for the wheel/pedals etc and a bit more for your VR headset. I have some of those clips that the cable can slide through and for my headset I loop the cable over the top of some thin bungee cord that goes across the room.

OK last night was a complete failure.

After Monday nights initial set up of the motion in DCS using the flight settings (smoothing 25, Washout Gain 20, Washout Return 50) and each axis set at around 30 all seemed OK.

However last night without making any changes my pitch motion is the wrong way round (up for down and down for up), and no roll or yaw motion. All axes work fine in both SMC3 and movement testing, but doesn't work in game.

Tried Extra 1, 2 and 3 and that did nothing.

Add to that, the motion I had was so extreme. The slightest movement of the flight stick caused extreme movement of the rig, so much so, the rig was actually jumping off the ground.

I just couldn't get the rig to move more gently. Smoothing at each extreme made no difference. Reducing the axis movement limits made no difference. I'm doing something wrong.

This is happening in DCS World at the moment, I have not tried Aerofly. I presumed I would have similar problems so thought I would just stick with one simulator at a time.

If anybody has any ideas?

Andy

My advice is to start with aerofly and a Cessna perhaps and then work up to other aircraft with stronger forces. I first started trying to tune for Warthunder and DCS and found it very difficult and disheartening. The FS2 plugin was broken for months and I pretty much gave up with the platform until it was fixed. Start with a nice stable aircraft like C172 and get that working, then maybe tweak for the Buckner and build confidence then go for more dynamic DCS planes is my advice. And yes start with just pitch say (as Fs2 roll is still broken I think) then go for the Extras.