Related, Ridge Racer Full Size based on an MX-5/Eunos/Miata
I'm surprised they built something this involved and went with a belt drive wheel. Direct drive options are very affordable these days and the difference is night and day.
Generally, this is a really cool project but an extremely poor racing simulator. I think the focus was clearly much more on "let's build something cool" rather than the sim-racing aspect, and they succeeded at that (I love the choice of donor car - it's very charming shrunken down).
The display setup, choice of wheel/pedals, and general ergonomics of the final product are all kind of questionable, and regardless, I'm sure it's still a ton of fun.
I'm sure a v.2 could make a lot of improvements.
Yea this was made for a younger kid, so in a few years he’ll grow out of it and probably want real nice gear on a regular metal rig. No need to overdo it! DD is nice but it’s still way more expensive than an entry level offering.
Yeah, this was my thinking in sharing it. The most interesting parts to me were how they carved up and refinished the junkyard parts for this purpose, not the hardcore sim stuff (of which there aren't any). They could upgrade to hardcore sim components if they wanted to at some point, it just wasn't a priority.
If it helps those whose eyes are twitching, imagine that they'd titled this "making a casual arcade racing sim cab out of junked Corvettes".
The placement of the monitor is also odd, doubly so because it is curved. Most sims will let you render offset from the driver seat (iRacing has keyboard shortcuts to make all these adjustments easily) but the image is being rendered from a "first person" projection a foot to your side. The monitor being tilted isn't ideal either.
If using an actual chassis the best way to go would be with a projector mounted as low as it can be to clear the top of the car, ideally onto a screen that is curved out from the driver's perspective.
Cool, but I'm disappointed they didn't use the parts that would be actually most interesting to reuse from real car, like steering wheel, pedals, gear shift knob, gauge cluster, etc.