U
User 9551
Wird ja immer besser, hab sowas schon gesehen, aber nicht so integriert wie hier.
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Thought I would share my latest project with everyone. For lack of a better name I call it SimWind. This is something that I’ve wanted to do for a long long time but never had a decent rig to do it with until this year. I’ve always thought, wouldn’t it be great to bring just a little more realism to sim racing by having wind hitting you while you drive. And not just a constant wind but one that changes with speed and turning. Over the past 6 months I’ve been researching this and I’ve only found a few tidbits of information here and there as to people actually trying this, I’ve found a few articles where this was done with 1 fan as more of a test than anything else. So I figured what the hey, I can make this work on a larger scale.
I’ve only included 4 photos here to keep the post to a reasonable size. The first 2 are front and back shots of my rig taken a few months ago, the other 2 are after adding SimWind. Sorry for the crappy photos. iPhones take horrible pictures if the lighting is not perfect and these are in my basement.
Before SimWind added on
After adding SimWind
There is more I would like to do with this project but this was a first run at it to see if it was worth persuing any further. All I can say is this: When you are going down a straightaway and you can feel the wind getting stronger and stronger the whole way down it is very cool. (No pun intended).
With today’s technology this is very simple and inexpensive to do. I am surprised that more sim racers or even companies that sell sim rigs are not doing something similar already. (note to all you sim rig retailers, if you add this I’ll take a small percentage for the idea, your welcome.)
There is a few ways to accomplish this but for those of you interested here is how I did it so far.
Hardware:
1 - Arduino Uno
8 – 12v PWM PC fans
1 – 12v or greater toggle switch
1 – small project box to house the arduino and switch.
Some ducting to route the air. I used 6” and 4” flexible round duct.
Oh and Lots of Flat Black Paint. When the lights are out at night and it's go time you only want to be able to see the screens and nothing else. No reflections anywhere whatsoever.
I’m not going to go into allot of detail here but this is the basics of how it works.
1) I created a .NET app (SimWind) that runs on the PC (this can be your main iRacing PC or a second PC) and takes telemetry data about Speed and Turning then converts this to usable values that are sent to the Arduino, which in turn controls the speed of the PWM fans.
2) In SimWind I have an algorithm that outputs 4 values to the Arduino. I have the fans tied together in 4 sets of 2. 2 on the far left, top and bottom, 2 on the immediate left, top and bottom. And the same for the right side.I calculate out how much the vehicle is turning along with the speed and send the correct percentages to the fans. (i.e. if you are turning hard to the left the fans on the left will be blowing harder than the fans on the right). This is more of a test and may or may not be a realistic representation. Still messing with this.
3) The toggle switch allows me to temporarily cut the power to the fans without having to close any software.
Things I would like to change/add now that I have it up and running:
1) Higher velocity fans but they need to be very quiet like the current ones being used.
2) Air turbulence – the air is to clean and steady at the moment. Have a few ideas for this.
3) Reduce air when drafting another vehicle. Tough one to figure out from the data available.
Well that pretty much sums it up for now. If anyone has any questions I’ll try and answer them the best I can.
Zu sehen im IR Forum: Log in | iRacing.com™ Motorsport Simulations
Thought I would share my latest project with everyone. For lack of a better name I call it SimWind. This is something that I’ve wanted to do for a long long time but never had a decent rig to do it with until this year. I’ve always thought, wouldn’t it be great to bring just a little more realism to sim racing by having wind hitting you while you drive. And not just a constant wind but one that changes with speed and turning. Over the past 6 months I’ve been researching this and I’ve only found a few tidbits of information here and there as to people actually trying this, I’ve found a few articles where this was done with 1 fan as more of a test than anything else. So I figured what the hey, I can make this work on a larger scale.
I’ve only included 4 photos here to keep the post to a reasonable size. The first 2 are front and back shots of my rig taken a few months ago, the other 2 are after adding SimWind. Sorry for the crappy photos. iPhones take horrible pictures if the lighting is not perfect and these are in my basement.
Before SimWind added on
After adding SimWind
There is more I would like to do with this project but this was a first run at it to see if it was worth persuing any further. All I can say is this: When you are going down a straightaway and you can feel the wind getting stronger and stronger the whole way down it is very cool. (No pun intended).
With today’s technology this is very simple and inexpensive to do. I am surprised that more sim racers or even companies that sell sim rigs are not doing something similar already. (note to all you sim rig retailers, if you add this I’ll take a small percentage for the idea, your welcome.)
There is a few ways to accomplish this but for those of you interested here is how I did it so far.
Hardware:
1 - Arduino Uno
8 – 12v PWM PC fans
1 – 12v or greater toggle switch
1 – small project box to house the arduino and switch.
Some ducting to route the air. I used 6” and 4” flexible round duct.
Oh and Lots of Flat Black Paint. When the lights are out at night and it's go time you only want to be able to see the screens and nothing else. No reflections anywhere whatsoever.
I’m not going to go into allot of detail here but this is the basics of how it works.
1) I created a .NET app (SimWind) that runs on the PC (this can be your main iRacing PC or a second PC) and takes telemetry data about Speed and Turning then converts this to usable values that are sent to the Arduino, which in turn controls the speed of the PWM fans.
2) In SimWind I have an algorithm that outputs 4 values to the Arduino. I have the fans tied together in 4 sets of 2. 2 on the far left, top and bottom, 2 on the immediate left, top and bottom. And the same for the right side.I calculate out how much the vehicle is turning along with the speed and send the correct percentages to the fans. (i.e. if you are turning hard to the left the fans on the left will be blowing harder than the fans on the right). This is more of a test and may or may not be a realistic representation. Still messing with this.
3) The toggle switch allows me to temporarily cut the power to the fans without having to close any software.
Things I would like to change/add now that I have it up and running:
1) Higher velocity fans but they need to be very quiet like the current ones being used.
2) Air turbulence – the air is to clean and steady at the moment. Have a few ideas for this.
3) Reduce air when drafting another vehicle. Tough one to figure out from the data available.
Well that pretty much sums it up for now. If anyone has any questions I’ll try and answer them the best I can.
![:]](/styles/default/xenforo/smilies/vr_smilies/pleased.gif "Freude :]")
