how long before seat force feedback is mainstream like wheel ffb?

[Brainhulk]

I'm thinking it should be reasonably possible to engineer a sim focused ffb chair. I realize the full hydraulic g force producing chairs will never be feasible. But maybe a chair that can produce vibration in the seat to simulate rumble strips, bumps, and the feel of rear tire grip should be doable right?

hopefully under $500 so devs will program it into games?

 

[Sean Yoder]

You can replicate everything you describe accept G-Loads with a decent transducer set up. As far as replicating G-Loading is concerned, it's just not possible in anything approaching a consumer level "Cost Effective" solution. Sure you can spike a G Load up over 1G for a moment in time, but the sustained G load will always be 1 after that spike settles.

Having typed this, there are ways to replicate what we experience inside a vehicle with regard to how the vehicle is moving around in the environment it is moving through in a lower cost solution than High End Professional level driver development, engineering and flight training hardware. This hardware is expensive, but in the right cockpit or seat it becomes readily apparent that you get what you pay for in these scenarios.

Stay tuned. Cool things are happening in the realm of consumer level products to replicate surge/sway (front to back/side to side) and Yaw. While the $500 dollar price range is a goal with merit, what you will see shortly are sub $5,000 solutions designed with a modular approach for you to add motion to your existing cockpits.

We can not wait to push the envelope on this market and get everyone into proper physics based motion solutions. The world is much better and more immersive place when you add YAW!

 

[paskowitz]

Personally, I'd like a cohesive sound and vibration solution. Multichannel speakers and transducers all working together out of the box.

Personally, I think trying to reproduce g forces "on a budget" is a mistake. The whole point of tactile is to detect what the car is doing, specifically tire slip (which can be expressed through Gs, sound, vibration, etc). Getting close to reality for gravity is far less feasible than sounds/vibration.

We have sim vibe, we have surround sound, but what we don't have is a merging of both. I'd like to see 4-8 smaller transducers (1 for each tire, 1 for engine, 3 for pedals, combined with on wheel motors, etc) mixed with >7.1 audio that is aware of the outputs of the transducers. And instead of having to cobble all this together, it comes in one box with one software.

I'd pay around a grand for that (lower tiers with less units for a lower price).

 

[Sean Yoder]

Personally, I'd like a cohesive sound and vibration solution. Multichannel speakers and transducers all working together out of the box.

Personally, I think trying to reproduce g forces "on a budget" is a mistake. The whole point of tactile is to detect what the car is doing, specifically tire slip (which can be expressed through Gs, sound, vibration, etc).

We have sim vibe, we have surround sound, but what we don't have is a merging of both. I'd like to see 4-8 smaller transducers (1 for each tire, 1 for engine, 3 for pedals, combined with on wheel motors, etc) mixed with >7.1 audio that is aware of the outputs of the transducers. And instead of having to cobble all this together, it comes in one box with one software.

I'd pay around a grand for that (lower tiers with less units for a lower price).

We definitely hear you. See what I did there? Talking about sound, "Definitely "HEAR" you

You make a good point. A proper sound field goes a long long way to creating the proper feeling of immersion all of us are looking for. We have experimented with a few things over the years and have definitely looked to go down the path of coupling vibration at each corner of our motion solutions. It makes sense.

Now, do you have any extra time we can borrow? We need more time in EVERY day!