Widescreen Gaming Forum

I'm starting to brainstorm ideas for my senior project as an industrial design major. I'm thinking about building a force feedback simulation chair for racing games, flight sims, and even mech sims. It will be probably be a cross-department collaboration with a mechanical and an electrical engineer, and it will mostly be an academic experiment. There is a campus competition called the Innovation Challenge, where students can submit engineering projects with attached business plans for the chance to win a 10,000$ prize that will serve as seed money. I would like to be able to design and build something that might qualify for that, so I'm thinking about designing a force feedback chair system DIY-Kit that will retail for significantly less than available chairs on the market, while providing mostly the same main functions. Something similar to this:



http://vrx.ca/products_viper.php

That chair retails for 3000$ I believe. But my goal is to have it compatible with joysticks as well as wheels, and possibly even be easily switched out for KB/M so you can do office work. It won't be as refined, but the goal is to provide good force feedback for at least the 3 main axis of rotations, as well as vibrational feedback:



It will mainly be a chair kit and the necessary components and/or software to connect to your PC and get going. It may have to be assembled, but the goal is to have it simple enough for someone to assemble within a day at most. You will need to provide your own LCDs, PC, and probably even speakers. But the goal is to have a kit for gaming enthusiasts to "add" on to their existing hardware, not outright replace it.

My question is: how much would you pay for such a thing? Lets say hypothetically that this was offered by a company that "promises" some kind of support, not a bunch of college students selling it on Etsy or ebay.

500$? 1000$?

My next question is: Would you ever buy a kit from a bunch of college students on Etsy or ebay? If so, how much would you be comfortable spending?

Thanks for your time, and I hope to hear some feedback.

when i got my wheel i had some thoughts about a Force Feedback Chair! But i dind't do much research, actually the chair is atm the missing link for gaming Driving games. Just a Wheel is cool, with Force Feedback its more fun, but without no moving chair its just not fun enough!

I think the main problem will be the software development! You need to add every new game, create some drivers to get it working perfectly.. whole lot of work!

So about the price! for 300-500$ i'd buy it right away! If there are really good reviews in the web maybe around 500-800$. Maybe even up to 1000$ If he seems good quality! But i'm rather sure i wont pay more than 1200$!

About that college students part... People won't trust you! if you buy something on ebay, your buying a selfmade chair by some students! But if there is an enterprise behind you know that if you buy your chair there you can ask them for waranty, or you know they will provide you with updates! (even though they might go bankrupt 2 years later ;) )


P.S i have little knowledge in mechanical engineering myself, so if you have some genius ideas or informations you want to share, i'm verry interested.

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We gonna send it to outa space!

5 bucks.

Thanks. I didn't really expect to be able to sell kits on Etsy, but figured I might as well ask. After asking around my engineering friends from various departments, it does seem like this would be a very long shot. Individually, none of the things are crazy, but to combine so many disciplines together as undergrads is pretty unlikely. For software integration, rather than mapping it to every game individually, I thought what if there was a desktop background software that maps the chair directly to the input from the wheel or joystick. It wouldnt offer as much "nuance" as individual profiles for every game, but it might allow the chair to work for games that arn't even suited for it. I am surprised that these kinds of chairs havnt trended as much here. I figured if there was one community that was willing to go all out for an immersive experience, it would be this one.

Depends largely on how much disposable cash I have at the time. ;)

$500 wouldn't make me worry too much, provided I had said cash... $1000 and I'd have to have a serious think. It really depends how much I'd use it.

You need to get hold of immersion studio that will give you compatibility with every forcefeedback game on the market
http://www2.immersion.com/developers/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=109&Itemid=505

or TouchSense Force Feedback System
http://www.immersion.com/products/touchsense-force-feedback/index.html

Thanks for the link!

That's a nice senior project but i think you need to create a more useful project since you're an industrial design major. Something that is useful and affordable.