That's serious business! I used buttkicker wireless hard mounted to a very solid home made Sim racing cockpit. If is basically a subwoofer! I was ultimately unimpressed with it particularly in flight sim. but that's just me! :lol:

Up to now BK has never been synchronised or driven by turbulent motions, just engine noise, just as you like BK for immersion going over bumps on the road we hope to bring the same extra immersion when flying through the bumpy air. In real life these turbulent bumps are felt through the seat of the pants and not through the controls. So I think its well worth attempting to add this extra realism for those who wish to experience a bit of physical stimulus in their flight simming.

 

Stephen :-)

We have received our wired BK and just had a play with different frequency and amplitude modulations and we are very impressed. I think its going to be a great addition to the sim. Using the DHM wave data and modulating the frequency and amplitude we've been able to achieve some great sensations of taxiing, landing effects, general low frequency vibrations, and some excellent turbulent bumps. The in flight low frequency turbulence should also be pretty good using some form of amplitude modulation. So it looks very promising indeed.

 

I do agree, just letting the thing respond to engine noise is pretty lame, but we are not doing that, we are feeding specific modulated wave data to the unit to get it to rumble, bump and jolt as we want it to. In this limited trial we have fed sound direct into the unit from a dedicated audio output, I can't say for now whether the response is going to change much using the shared audio output of FSX, to get best results it may be necessary to install a dedicated audio device, even a low cost USB plug in device. All our base frequencies are most likely to be in the 20Hz to 100Hz range.

 

Stephen :-)

Hi all,

This is my ButtKicker! https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/42837564/My%20Flightsim%20Stuff/2013-01-17%2015.28.48.jpg

look carefully at the false floor, it is inside there! And I tell you this is the bees knees, everything vibrates correctly depending on what type of aircraft I'm flying!

This is it with the cover removed... https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/42837564/My%20Flightsim%20Stuff/ButtKicker%20Floor/ButtKicker%20Floor%20007.jpg

I love it too much, just adds that third dimension.

 

I'd love to participate in the beta if required?

 

Cheers

Clive

OEAB

I use the Throne Thumper, a special version of the Buttkicker meant to be for drummers.

 

Much better response and output than the Buttkicker (apparently).

 

I have edited various wav files to increase low end freq's and had superb results.

 

I have USB audio routed internally via an app called Virtual Audio Cable - see here http://software.muzychenko.net/eng/vac.htm

 

... to the Throne Thumper amp and then onto the transducer fixed to my flight chair.

 

Low end freq increases do not adversely affect audio but if the amp is set correctly to interpret the low ends then boom, instant gratification.

 

One MAJOR downside to all this.....

 

IF the units receive fairly constant low ends and therefore are shakin' rumblin' and ratlin' most of the time, then you'll get about 10 mins of flight before the units overheat and a safety cut off kicks in.

 

If the unit does not kick in as it should you could have a nasty burnin' smell and a possible real cockpit fire.

 

For the moment, I'm happy to alter my own wav files to get the best from this.

Hi Clive

 

That looks fantastic. As soon as we are ready we will commence a beta development cycle, releasing betas for each stage and phase of the development and let users test and offer feedback, should be fun. The development will probably follow similar phases in keeping with the various DHM modes. Taxiing, in flight vibration, turbulent bumps, low frequency turbulence, and landing with roll out back into taxiing phase. I will keep everyone informed of our progress and work toward releasing the first beta in the cycle ASAP.

 

Stephen :-)

Point taken bg2518. We are not planning on having constant low frequency sound, we will most likely alter the volume control to start a few rumbles or various bumps for short periods. It will all be sorted out during the development phases.

 

What USB audio device have you used, I think we were looking at the Sound Blaster, not quite sure if the lowest cost units have sufficient base response.

 

Stephen

 

It might be an idea to allow users to specify their own wav files as well, to allow maximum flexibility and user control.

 

Stephen

Further thought....

 

I really do NOT think that these devices were designed or intended to replicate full movement from games like FSX because of the inherent heating issue and that you should seriously consider this whilst taking advice from the manufacturer:

 

Mike U’Dell

Network Music Ltd

UK Distributors of ButtKicker Brand products

www.networkmusic.biz

Tel: +44 (0)845 459 1058

 

I'm fairly sure end users of the product(s) must be made aware of any risks they take in their use of both and you will have a duty of care to warn where your s/ware increases that risk.

Stephen,

 

I use a Bose Companion USB 2.1 sound system.

We're not intending to use the BK as a motion platform device, only to do what it was designed to do. Hence, instead of basing its operation on raw engine or game noise we will be using prepared wave sounds that are more appropriate. That's why I mentioned that a separate audio device may be needed to control the BK in isolation to the simulator noise and background sounds.

 

We have already determined that the unit can rumble and bump the seat sufficiently well within its normal operation, even without resorting to extremely violent motions. All we will be doing is controlling these effects to coordinate the BK device more in line with what is actually happening within the sim.

 

We will of course take into account the operational limits of the device, especially with regard to overheating, the periodic or pulsed operation should not result in overheating the unit. Let's put it another way, the demand on the unit will certainly be much less than when its used in any motor racing game.

 

Stephen

The key here is synchronizing virtual cockpit shaking motion with BK. This is a new immersion. Previously my VC maybe static but BK rattling due to engine sound. Ideally engine shd just create  a low rumbling in BK. But a VC shaking should be more prominent in creating stronger effect in BK.

thanks Stephen, really looking forward to this!

I'm hoping you will either be able to filer out the engine noise or assign a dedicated audio device for the BK so engine and sim noises have no effect.

 

We have completed all the sound preperation and most of the wave output control software. We are now experimenting with various frequency and amplitude modulations. The aim is to coordinate these modulations with the DHM head movements and try and get the best effects for each phase of flight; that is for the taxiing, landing, roll out, in flight low frequency turbulence and of course the sudden turbulent bumps.

 

Stephen

I'm hoping you will either be able to filer out the engine noise or assign a dedicated audio device for the BK so engine and sim noises have no effect.

 

 

Hi Stephen

 

Does your module that output the low freq feed to BK include a volume control ? If you have, for people with only 1 audio device we could adjust the window vol to be lower to make the engine sound softer(this is what BK will hear), whereas the speaker vol can be high so that we could hear the engine sound. With your own vol control from opus we could make opus vol higher so that the prominent input of the shaking will be from opus. Does this make sense?

 

PS : we do need abit of the engine noise to create a low rumbling effect to the BK.

We are adjusting the volume of our audio output, this is the main way we can alter the strength of the BK response. So everything should be OK, it will be up to the user to adjust the cut offs and master volume for the higher frequency FSX sound. Our low frequency sound is almost inaudible so it shouldn't matter what output option people chose. We will also check out using a low cost dedicated USB audio device for the BK. So people will be able to decide how they want to feed the audio to the BK. The beta dev cycle will answer all these questions, I will also be trying to read and factor in the master volume into the control software so the BK control will be independent of the master volume control within Windows.

 

Stephen

Cool! Will wait for the beta test. Cheers.