Daniel Chote's Project Blog

Gaming Rig - Multi Camera test

Gaming Rig - Pedal location tweak

The location of the pedals was never quite right, with the steering wheel in a comfortable location, lots of clutch use would leave you with a sore ankle. 

Gaming Rig - Speaker Upgrade (part 3)

Follow up from my prior posts: http://projectable.me/post/137684124761/gaming-rig-speaker-upgrade-part-2-followup and http://projectable.me/post/136896495676/gaming-rig-speaker-upgrade-part-1-so-as-i

Finally found a matching center channel on eBay and got it installed!  It is a Paradigm Cinema CC v.3, got it for $75 (not a steal, but not terrible).  It came in fair condition, with a bit of cleaning it is totally fine. 

Audibly these things are amazing, and the Z906 is doing a very good driving them, no ratable distortion or peaking.  I spent some time in windows tweaking the EQ for the soundcard to get the full range out of these things, it was a little flat compared to what it could be.

Gaming Rig - Speaker Upgrade (part 2)

Followup from my post here: http://projectable.me/post/136896495676/gaming-rig-speaker-upgrade-part-1-so-as-i

I managed to get a pair of Paradigm Cinema 90 v.3s for $55 on eBay, an even better deal than I got for the pair of Cinema 70 v.3s I got for the rear, slightly more beat up, but still sound fantastic!

I gotta say, these things leave the Logitech satellites sounding like a pair of $5 headphones you would get for your children (the ones with a crappy pot to limit volume inline). I ran the updated right side with the logitech on the left side, the difference was quite pronounced, heavier bass, crisper everything, and well defined high end. I fully recommend everyone that wants to get a bit more out of their Z906, to go ahead and buy some 8ohm replacement satellites with separate tweeter, either look for Paradigm Cinema v.3 like I did, or go with something from Klipsch or Polk.

Gaming Rig - Speaker Upgrade (part 1)

So, as I mentioned in my last post, Im not all that impressed by the bundled satellite speakers with the Logitech Z906.  I mean, they’re fine, especially for the price point of this 5.1 solution, but they lack range, they have no highs and no lows.

There were pieces of info scattered in various forums about people swapping out the satellites, so I decided to give it a shot. I am a huge Paradigm fan, I have an amazing 9.1 set of Paradigm Studio Series speakers for my movie room, so I found a nice pair of Paradigm Cinema 70′s on eBay for cheap ($35ea).

With a slight modification to the speaker mounts to accommodate the extra weight of these, I think they look pretty nice, and with the extra screw, the stands are a little more rigid than before.

Gaming Rig - The Deets

I have been getting a few questions about my rig, mainly about the projector and screen, so here are some details!

The projector is a BenQ W1080ST (short throw), it is mounted 14″ down from the ceiling and about 90″ away from the screen. The screen is just the wall, patched and smoothed, primed and then painted with Sherwin Williams paint (article here).  The screen size measures 120″ x 67″, which is about 138″ diagonal.

For audio, I am currently running a Logitech Z906 setup, with 6 channel analog to my onboard sound. I am really not happy with the Z906 satellite speakers, they cant reproduce the turbo whine of cars very well, and I will be looking to replace them soon.

The motion platform is the DIY kit from SimXperience and a whole lot of 8020 extrusion and aluminum that I fabricated in to parts myself. SimVibe is using 2 asus pcie soundcards that feed the 2 Crown amplifiers, which in turn feed Buttkicker LFE Mini’s.  I have chassis mode for the front left+right transducers, and extensions mode for shifter and seat (hence 2 sound cards).

The controller setup is mainly Fanatec, with the CSW v2, CS Pedals v2, CS Shifter SQ v1.5 and CS Handbrake. I also have a custom “button box” powered by DSD.

The PC is pretty straight forward, i7 clocked at 4.2ghz, SLI 970s. The only interesting part is that its positive pressure (meaning all fans blow in), with the top vent being the only ‘air out’, which is then ducted directly in to my house HVAC system.  It makes a HUGE difference in room teperature.

The motion rig has a cable bundle that runs from power/pc/speakers, this keeps everything nice and clean. The power on the rig is fed via a USB controlled power strip, when the computer is turned off, the entire rig is too, computer on, everything turns on!

Since the full release (non Early Access) of Dirt Rally, I have been playing with slightly “off” POV, today I spent the time to go in and adjust the eyefinity_cameras_adjustments.xml file to finally get things right. You can read the original post here: http://tmblr.co/ZI30Hu1rcN8_C

My new settings are as follows:

<CameraAdjustment class="Head">    <Fov angle="180" />    <Tilt percent="-60.0" />    <Position x="0.0" y="2.0" z="45.0" />  </CameraAdjustment>

Gaming Rig - Dirt Rally FOV tweaks pt. 2!

It has been a while since I last fired up my rig, and there were some tweaks in 0.71 that extended the cockpit FOV setting. Unfortunately, the FOV alone does not a perfect match make, so I once again had to go back to editing the eyefinity_cameras_adjustments.xml file.  You can read my last post here: http://tmblr.co/ZI30Hu1rcN8_C

My new settings are as follows:

 <CameraAdjustment class="Head">    <Fov angle="185" />    <Tilt percent="0" />    <Position x="0.0" y="1.0" z="10.0" />  </CameraAdjustment>

Gaming Rig - Dirt Rally FOV tweaks... After dialing in FOV and seat position within Assetto Corsa and Project Cars (which have in game mechanisms to do so), I decided to attempt to dial in Dirt Rally.  

Easier said than done...

Firstly, there has been one addition in the game preferences to “kinda” adjust FOV, and for simple setups, this makes complete sense, for mine, not so much, and now that value is set to 0 for me.

Thanks to a tweet from Jason Palmer, I was introduced to MrPix’s FOV guides. Unfortunately, his FOV calculator doesn’t support my screen size (134″) or seating position (between 60-70″ depending on motion).  So, I was left with some basic knowledge to guide me in my attempts of testing random values in the config file.

First thing to note, to allow you to adjust the config file (cars/generics/eyefinity_cameras_adjustments.xml) with FOV/position settings, you must enable eyefinity, which REQUIRES setting an eyefinity force definition in your hardware_settings_config.xml file.  Now the big problem I have with this is that it pretty much breaks menus and HUD when you’re running a single screen, as everything gets squished in the middle 3rd of the view, and in my case, the selection labels, continue, etc, falls right behind my steering wheel (out of my line of sight).  The other thing I really dislike, is that eyefinity_cameras_adjustments.xml lives within the game deployment structure, meaning that Steam owns it... It could be overwritten by a game update, or by validating game integrity. 

Quirks aside, having FOV dialed in correctly does make a huge difference to gameplay, here are the settings that worked for me (note: my rig is not like most others, im not going for SuperFOV, and the screen size is very large).

UPDATE: After trying a few other cars I made some more tweaks to position and FOV angle.

hardware_settings_config.xml

<eyefinity force="3x1" osd="" />

eyefinity_cameras_adjustments.xml

 <CameraAdjustment class="Head">    <Fov angle="135" />    <Tilt percent="0" />    <Position x="0.0" y="2.0" z="-40.0" />  </CameraAdjustment>

Gaming Rig - I havent had a post in a while, so I may as well add some content to this barren blog. Kids eat a lot of time, so aside from the treehouse project I started, my personal projects are fairly dormant (with the exception of this one).

I have my gaming pc mildly overclocked, its enough to push out a LOT of heat, too much for my small office space. Within 30 minutes of gaming, my office was a sauna, so I had the brilliant idea of ducting directly from the top of my case (positive pressure) straight in to the warm air return of my HVAC!  I am yet to try it out, I did the duct work over my lunch break.

SimXperience DIY Motion rig - Some updated photos!

I have upgraded my gaming PC to something better suited for the new generation racing games such as Dirt Rally and Project Cars. I have also moved from a single transducer on the pedals to front left+right transducers to use Chassis Mode in SimVibe.