to DIY or not to DIY

Greetings. I'm new here and would like to request a little advise...

Let me first state I have no interest in a new hobby designing motion simulators. I have enough other non-sim hobby projects that need to be done first.

But I enjoy sim racing in my down time and would love to add motion.

I see most of the commercial options getting slammed for being overpriced and under-performing. Statements like "I can build 600 mm/s 3DOF for under $1K" sound great but if that takes 100 hours of research, planning, shopping, construction, testing, debug, and tuning... well that's more like a $5K+ total opportunity cost in my book. At this point I'd spend the $5K and use the 100 hours for something else. Plus when you go to sell I'd imagine the commercial unit retains more value than a home brew... so the end cost might be only half that.

Based on my racing use I'd like 2DOF+traction loss with accurate motion. The Pagnian Next Level Racing doesn't do yaw/traction loss and it's 10deg/s movement spec seems slow. Simxperience is practically in my back yard and is still on my radar. Prosimu T1000 3 motion looks like it might accomplish the same task in a smaller cheaper package (with full chassis movement instead of seat only).

Or should I bite the bullet and make the time to build something because there's no other way to get anywhere close to decent results?

Well I guess it comes down to the DIY time... if it's 10 hours to follow a known DIY recipe then I'd do it. If 1000 hours then no way.

Anybody want to guess how many hours they have into their DIY rig?

more like 1'000 hours than 10 hours…
However it's the fun of making it more than driving it

if you decide to construct follow a making thread and spend money on good quality materials (good motors, conectors, a nice jrk card etc) in that way you wont be wrong, also ask for help to a blacksmith, in that way you would be up in no time.

maybe if you ask to someone to make you a sim there could be some one here to help you... set a price... i would like to pay $$$$ and i would like this... (also post where you are, maybe there is a nice sim builder of the comunity near to you)

fer

IMO building a sim and working through the bugs is a ton of work. It is an ongoing thing. Even with my 2dof running good there were still times i wrenched more than rode. because these are typically 1 offs a lot of the parts and pieces are custom made or sourced from all over which means you cant just grab a part and run with it. Although it is a lot of work and learning i like building stuff as much as i enjoy sims. If you like to build things this is an awesome hobby. I dont think 10 hours will get you far building one tho.

I had thought about spending more money and buying a commercially available solution rather than spending a lot of time. As others have mentioned before, building something like a motion sim is an ongoing thing and never seems to be "quite finished" even though it is actually finished. But most likely you would end up tinkering the whole time. Imo, building a motion sim, or any other project like that, is not just about having a working simulator but is also the joy of actually building.
If you don't like building things or working out software and various other things, you are probably better off getting something pre-made. Even then, you will most likely end up refining and altering things all the time.

In the end, for me personally, I like the challenge of engineering things and the satisfaction of accomplishing the set out goals as much as I like racing my sim.
I don't think there is a better of worse option, just an option that suits you better.