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360 Degree Flight Simulator Home build

Discussion in 'DIY Motion Simulator Projects' started by FattySteve, Jun 19, 2015.

  1. ferslash

    ferslash Active Member

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    yes video please :D
  2. SeatTime

    SeatTime Well-Known Member

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    My Motion Simulator:
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    This is turning out to be a very professionally built Sim :thumbs - wish we all had access to a 'Shifu' :). Will you drive directly off the motors gearbox or via a chain as I have seen on similar builds? I have never been a fan of chain drives due to all the flex they introduce into a sim (although with this type of sim a bit of flex may be a good thing to save your neck), although if you are building on a budget and cannot get the gearbox that you need then sometimes you don't have a choice.
  3. Chriss

    Chriss IntMech

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    hello friend, is a great project, I am also working on one, but what most difficulty I have is energy, and plugins must be a calculation of 360, I wish you could share your progress, and I think that the cost is low compared to sales prices in china are minimum $ us. 10000, here in my country it could cost me around $ us. 1500 - 2000, go ahead, talves we could help each other to realize this project.
  4. ftnet305

    ftnet305 New Member

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    Hello, how are your results by now? I am (was) thinking about setting up a small VR-Arcade (once higher resolution VR headsets are available) with 2 x 720 degree simulators as a friend of mine owns a busy cafe with enough space to integrate it. There is also a huge parking lot, 2 fast food restaurants and a shopping center right next to with around 12.000 visitors every day. So location would be good. Also there would be no costs for personnel and rent as he would get a split of the profits in addition to attract more clients to come to his cafe. We made a 4 weeks survey asking his clients if they are interested and how much they would be willing to spend for a ride (result: 15 to 20 € per hour gaming / or per 360 degree video session of 30 to 45 min). These results are promising especially with good marketing support and online booking. Yet I asked for a quote at a professional maschine build shop (15 employees) owned by a guy I know from university time. It took him a rough week to come up with the estimate: 45.000 € for a 720 degree simulator including hive functionality. This is parts only price without profit for the shop, necessary CAD construction, stress analysis, shop labor and VAT rising the price to a rough but yet friend´s price of 85.000 € . The shop´s guarentee to get commercial approval from the authority for public entertainment including licensing fees and technical inspection would add approximately 5.000 €. Adding another very low calculated 10.000 € for VR headset, computer hardware, marketing material, website and basic software setup ends up at a 100.000 € (or somewhere around 200k for 2 simulators!). The final hit was the licensing policies of the game developers. For a one year commercial license they want you to pay somewhere from 1.500 € up to 3.000 € (Project Cars, F1 2017). Flight simulation is not such a problem as these are one time payments but you run into problems with the add ons which are often not available for commercial use. Il 2 Sturmovik does not allow commercial use, neither does Arma. P3D is not allowed for entertainment use and so on.... Finally I found the Steam VR commercial site for VR-Arcades etc. Pretty much all content is low quality and high price (like games from the 90s) and if clients want to play state of the art games they need to buy the game themself but thereafter can use it in the arcade. Could work but cuts severely on possible client base. I thought these insights of a business simulator project might be nice to know, so I shared it here. At the moment I do not have the money to get this started and with these initial costs the price for consumers I would need to ask for a ride (average 30 € per hour, 50% utilization, 12 hours open per day) would probably be to high to attract enough continous utilization in order to make the business a success...
    • Agree Agree x 1
  5. alexmouj

    alexmouj New Member

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    Hi! What kind of motor do you finally used? Is it asynchronous one with encoder? How you contorol it? Whats power? How fast is reaction? Please tell more about result
  6. alexmouj

    alexmouj New Member

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    As for safety, I suppose, it must be a solution in this way

    Otherwise it must be a safe guard on out site and in site.
    Also it's doesn't need any gear, because small drive weel and big sphere make together good gear ratios.
    That means, motors must be not so powerfull
    images.jpg
    • Like Like x 2
  7. RandomCoder

    RandomCoder Active Member Gold Contributor

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    I don't have a simulator (yet), still researching, but I think that maybe you missed a zero off the end of this sum? It's looks more likely to cost in the region of $15,000 rather than $1,500 to me.
    I'm also surprised that no body has mentioned routing of the cables for power and positional feedback. Too many turns in the same direction and you'll quickly damage cables, therefore you may need to look into using slip ring connections, and these don't come cheap!
    http://www.slipring.co.uk/types/

    The alternative is to limit the number of turns in one direction and then try to return to the reference position. But this might not be possible without ruining the game experience?

    Very nice looking simulator and congratulations on such a well built machine.
  8. Chriss

    Chriss IntMech

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    My Motion Simulator:
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    Good to solve the connections, you can use the microphone plugs, or also use the plugs of rca, or those used in hair dryers, here are some pics:
    [​IMG] [​IMG]
  9. SeatTime

    SeatTime Well-Known Member

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    My Motion Simulator:
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    o_O...I hope that these plugs are not meant to replace the use of Power/data slip-rings.
    • Agree Agree x 3
  10. Josafat07

    Josafat07 New Member

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    Are you still working on this project?
  11. Thanos

    Thanos Building the Future one AC Servo at a time... or 6

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    Just a quick question, have you ever had piloted a real airplane? I never felt those negative G's in a real aircraft ever in normal flight. These will only occur if you do sustained inverted flight which almost never happens as its bad for the aircraft flight dynamics.
    • Agree Agree x 1
    • Disagree Disagree x 1
  12. Thanos

    Thanos Building the Future one AC Servo at a time... or 6

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    My Motion Simulator:
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    I actually did take some flight lessons back in the day...

  13. SeatTime

    SeatTime Well-Known Member

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    First off huge respect for building something like this:thumbs. Depends on what your aim was, a fun carnival type ride, or something that more simulates the real world, as aircraft in motion do not just spin around a stationary axis. Looks like allot of fun though and could be improved simulation wise by fitting some G-systems/ VR. But running VR or any type of belt tightening system on this rig would be problematic. I would look at other G-Systems Eg. Seat paddles or air bladders.
  14. Thanos

    Thanos Building the Future one AC Servo at a time... or 6

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    Missed my point. I just took some pilot lessons, not doing acrobatics for fun. Just wanted to let you know that I DO KNOW how it should feel piloting a real plane. That was actually my first time ever on airplane! I haven't been before on airplane, not even as passenger on airliner. I learned to fly in computer simulator years before actually. So the technical details were all there except I wanted to see how it actually feels to pilot a real plane. It strongly reminded me of my first time driving a car, but there were vertical and pitch and roll forces as well into play. I compared that with a 6DOF stewart platform motion cues a few years later and I found it very close to the real thing. The point is not to apply the 1G accelerations, you can achieve the same immersion with 1/10th accelerations and a good washout filter. So just to remind you unless you are doing acrobatics or reckless flying, the 2axis 360 degrees rotation axis you have won't simulate much of the real flight feeling, or at least the accelerations and rotations that do really matter in order to get a immersive flight simulation. Its just a gimmick, or as many will agree a puke machine. No offence, that some great engineering there, I just not agree on its realism level or purpose of use for flight. Some other uses like for arcade use or for spacial disorientation training are more interesting:

    • Disagree Disagree x 1
  15. Thanos

    Thanos Building the Future one AC Servo at a time... or 6

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    I agree, just to add, when you turn a airplane coordinated, you should never feel lateral accelerations only vertical, on real airplane if you feel lateral accelerations you applied too much rudders...
    • Disagree Disagree x 1
  16. Thanos

    Thanos Building the Future one AC Servo at a time... or 6

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    • Like Like x 1
    Last edited: Aug 26, 2019
  17. apointner

    apointner Siddhartha

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    Holy! Did you build a sim out of these monsters?
  18. Thanos

    Thanos Building the Future one AC Servo at a time... or 6

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    Not me, but now you know where these large level D sims, buy the platforms from ;)
  19. Thanos

    Thanos Building the Future one AC Servo at a time... or 6

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    My Motion Simulator:
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    Now show me a video that has same effects on pilot and passengers in real flight situation...

    Man, this is acrobatics, not flight. You might as well just tie yourself to a rocket and have same effects.
    • Disagree Disagree x 1
  20. Thanos

    Thanos Building the Future one AC Servo at a time... or 6

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    Yeah, really normal..

    rocket-man.jpg