- 1,029
- Uruguay
Been meaning to get these posted for a while. This is my cockpit and my guest cockpit. Criteria was that these both had to be made on the cheap. Everything here I happened to have around the house with the exception of a few dollars worth of misc. hardware. Here are some key features:
1) Tried making a table for the wheels, but with me in a chair and the wheels attached to a table I always felt "disconnected" from the wheels. So I decided to attach the wheels to the chairs themselves. This helped a lot. First, any small movement in the chair, like me shifting my balance, results in the same movement in the wheel. Second, the vibrations and feedback from the wheels transmits somewhat back into the chairs for added realism.
2) In order to do this, I attached two wheel supports (shelves) directly to the chairs. On one chair, I made the support out of an old fake snowboard (the kind from a toy dept. for kids on the sledding hills), and on the other out of a piece of that cheap white shelving material you get at hardware stores. For access, both chairs have a pin or pins which are removable (just a couple of bolts in one of them, and a drill bit in the other one :-) Removing these pins (on the left) from the support which the wheels are attached to, allows the wheel supports to pivot around a single bolt holding the right-end down, creating a cheap hinge. Note that on both setups you must support the left side while you exit or enter the chair.
3) Pedal resistance on the DFP is lame. I increased it with some bungies. The only difficult part was getting the bungies positioned so that they don't interfere with my feet. I added more resistance to the brake than I did to the accelerator.
4) The screen (sorry for the terrible picture here), is provided by a DLP (digital light projector), giving me an approximate display width of 6 feet. No, I didn't buy this for the GT4. Honest.
5) The chairs I happened to have lying around unused. But both of them I got "free" with some other purchase. The black "leather" one I got free with a purchase of a 35" TV from some horrible super-electronics chain, and the computer chair free with a computer desk. I almost refused them since I didn't need chairs at the time, but I'm glad I didn't as they definitely came in handy for this project.
6) Audio is provided by a 4-speaker surround system with subwoofer.
These are great cockpits to drive in, supremely comfortable!
That's it. Hope you like them.
P.S. Anyone here recognize the other console game-system tucked in behind the PS2 and just to the right of it? You can see part of it in the second photo.
1) Tried making a table for the wheels, but with me in a chair and the wheels attached to a table I always felt "disconnected" from the wheels. So I decided to attach the wheels to the chairs themselves. This helped a lot. First, any small movement in the chair, like me shifting my balance, results in the same movement in the wheel. Second, the vibrations and feedback from the wheels transmits somewhat back into the chairs for added realism.
2) In order to do this, I attached two wheel supports (shelves) directly to the chairs. On one chair, I made the support out of an old fake snowboard (the kind from a toy dept. for kids on the sledding hills), and on the other out of a piece of that cheap white shelving material you get at hardware stores. For access, both chairs have a pin or pins which are removable (just a couple of bolts in one of them, and a drill bit in the other one :-) Removing these pins (on the left) from the support which the wheels are attached to, allows the wheel supports to pivot around a single bolt holding the right-end down, creating a cheap hinge. Note that on both setups you must support the left side while you exit or enter the chair.
3) Pedal resistance on the DFP is lame. I increased it with some bungies. The only difficult part was getting the bungies positioned so that they don't interfere with my feet. I added more resistance to the brake than I did to the accelerator.
4) The screen (sorry for the terrible picture here), is provided by a DLP (digital light projector), giving me an approximate display width of 6 feet. No, I didn't buy this for the GT4. Honest.
5) The chairs I happened to have lying around unused. But both of them I got "free" with some other purchase. The black "leather" one I got free with a purchase of a 35" TV from some horrible super-electronics chain, and the computer chair free with a computer desk. I almost refused them since I didn't need chairs at the time, but I'm glad I didn't as they definitely came in handy for this project.
6) Audio is provided by a 4-speaker surround system with subwoofer.
These are great cockpits to drive in, supremely comfortable!
That's it. Hope you like them.
P.S. Anyone here recognize the other console game-system tucked in behind the PS2 and just to the right of it? You can see part of it in the second photo.
