Vertikart - our PC Racing Sim rig
So maybe you've heard of Verticade-- but have you seen Vertikart, our new PC racing sim rig?
Vertikart is based on a Playseat racing rig, which is available inexpensively from Target.
I added an old Logitech MOMO Force steering wheel I had from home. It's somewhat unique among PC wheels because it has a real leather wrapped wheel and metal parts including the pedal base and the shift paddles.
The wheel is attached through a giant patch of velcro currently. I removed the two large clamps below the wheel, using these helpful MOMO Disassembly instructions. The mating of wheel to plate is fairly solid with the velcro, but I want to drill a hole and re-mount it via the metal screw mount on the bottom of the wheel at some point.
The Vertikart's "engine", if you will, is my old PC lan party rig:
Lots of bling bling! And decent gaming specs for the latest racing sims like rFactor, GTR, Richard Burns Rally, FlatOut, and GT Legends:
- Pentium 4 3.2 Ghz
- 1 gb Ram
- 200 gb hard drive
- ATI Radeon X800GTO 256mb
(I did upgrade the video card slightly so we could use 1024x768 with 4x anti-aliasing. That's optimal for the projector.)
There's no display or speakers because Vertikart is designed to sit in our big conference room with the huge projector screen and 5.1 dolby surround. That's quite immersive, but what's even more immersive is the two Aura Bass Shakers we modded to the back of the playseat:
The 50 watt bass shakers are powered through a 100 watt dedicated subwoofer amplifier, which is secured to the bottom of the seat via strategically placed bungee cords. I followed the wiring instructions on this helpful racing cockpit page. The amp's crossover is set at about 100Hz and the power to MAX.
We use an audio splitter to distribute the PC's sound to the sub amp and the receiver, which means the seat now rumbles in sync with the car's engine as you drive. It's a simple but incredibly effective mod-- it brings a whole new meaning to the term "rumble strip!"