After countless efforts over the past few days in the workshop to get the software for our simulator force feedback calculator to work, our fruits are starting to pay off – we managed to get readings all the direct X .dll output from the games we tested today, namely Need for Speed Most Wanted and EA sports Formula 1 2006 Season.

Our setup consisted of a dedicated gaming PC sending all raw force feedback values to a networked PC which will handle all the decoding, event situations and translate out actuator outputs via a USB interface board. The simulator will also feature a single or dual monitor screen setup for the operator.

These, together with Collin McRae Rally and Microsoft Flight Simulator are the games we will be focusing on the trade exhibition for our visitors and the general public when they come and test out of system. Highlight-able games will be Formula 1, chosen as it would be an interest to many now in Singapore, and the Rally game will be the best game to showcase the off-road effects and vibrations we can get from the game. MS Flight simulator will showcase the cross-platform ability of our gaming system able to transition from racing to flight sims with great ease, which is one of our key features. Ahhh it feels all good to get things accomplished and task ticked off the planner.

Dissecting Microsoft Direct X API for games, it’s kinda unreal you can get so much data at your finger tips when you are playing your Direct X-compatible game – too much to a certain extent. Different games will output different Direct X event values at different game events in the game itself, e.g. collision force feedback forces in Need for speed most wanted will output positive and negative values for frontal and rear collisions respectively. While the EA Formula 1 game seems to have force feedback on one axis from frontal feedback.

The lists goes on for skid, braking lateral-Gs when turning, nitrous boosts, gear shifts, vibrations from uneven/offroad surfaces – it just simply adds a whole lot of capability to our system and how we want it to be returned to the user as feedback. I guess we can all heave a sigh of relief with this software big block cleared.

Lastly, we finalized our design intent with our Supervisor Mr Choong today, we gave the go ahead for our design. Bringing the project back on timeline target. The plan is to have our Simulator running on electric actuators running off a serial or USB output from our force calculation PC (Gaming PC is separate from the force feedback PC). So we need to do alot of research and look for vendors in Singapore selling such systems to cater to our needs. Our actuators are Rod type Actuator with at least 50cm of travel and able to deliver 3 horsepower peak so if anyone out there who have contacts from the actuators and controller do feel free to reach me through the site’s contact form of leave a comment in this blog entry.

It turns out some projects will require constant design revisions to be perfect. Got news from my teammate that our supervisor wants another design change to the design of the simulator, namely making it more “unique” however, this means having to go a full 360 degrees into a total revamp, reason being our design is common for most simulators. If this is so, it will be our 4th major change to the design, which is seriously dampening team morale. I hope my supervisor will limit his requests for changes.

Well, saying is so much easier than done this means back to the drawing board and design processes again, not to mention the tedious CAD work thereafter. If only my team supervisor is more firm to stick to his decisions.

Going into our history of designs, our very 1st design months back goes about having twin looping rings like a gyroscope. Allowing a user seated in the center to rotate about 2 axis continuously, almost like the old disfunct SEGA R360 arcade machine, only better and more versatile. Our supervisor highlighted (ok reasonable at that time) space concerns for the twin loops and would like to cut the height by half. So I came up with a linear actuator type simulator with only 360 degrees rotation for the “roll” axis. Later do the team realize that our supervisor was against the 360 rotation idea from the start and suggested going for a more basic design, using actuators, which gave birth to the final design we came up till now.

Looks like we have to junk this new set of engineering drawings, dimensions for fabrication and orders for now.

Popped by school today to meet up with my FYP teamamtes Khowming who was already there with other coursemates. Danson could not make it today due to some last minute issue on his part. Part of today’s plan was to get our 2nd signage board up (which will be used for illustrative purposes at our display booth), together with doing some housekeeping to spruce up and PC and set it up in a more conducive manner.

High on the agenda was to meet up with our supervisor on finally finalising our design plans so we can actually get about ordering our parts, but that was put back as my supervisor was not in office today. But our project room TSO was around and has always been a very helpful person making setting our booth up, the team simply adores our TSO. As he always said “We treat each other like family”. So things done all around in the design center are based on trust and responsibility. Would be looking forward to working with him for the weeks to come.

Our display booth looks totally awesome now and we are ready to start work. It is the most funky around the design center at the moment. Man will it be impressive on the 1st day of school when everyones comes back to school. Not to mention a morale booster for my team as well!