Mark Megahan
Just about any gamer should be able to afford one of these full motion simulator chairs. The problem is they aren’t for sale anywhere. The good news is that plans are freely available so you can build one yourself. If you don’t have the technical skills, one of the high school kids on the local block should be able to wire it up for you.
Full motion simulation
Whether you’re a fan of flight simulators or pilot your own hobby drones, feeling motion to match the experience on the screen adds a thrilling new dimension.
Ever since first-person view technology sparked a revolution in “the hobbies of RC airplane and drone piloting” users wanted more.
Looking out from inside the simulated aircraft is great but still only visual. “You can see from the drone’s point of view, but you aren’t fully experiencing the flight.”
Climbing into a mock F-16 is much more fun when you have it hooked up to Michael Rechtin’s full motion “real life” flight simulator rig. It’s the next best thing to being there.
Rechtin worked all the bugs out for his own system and now he’s “releasing the files you need to build your own.” He also made a video about the project.
“This rig is every hobbyist’s dream. It is, essentially, a motorized chair that can tilt to match the roll and pitch of the target aircraft.” It generates motion in all directions but not all the way around the circles.
Hooks up to anything
When Rechtin first started working on the project he intended it to enhance his experience with drones. He kept improving and expanding it until “now it works with virtual aircraft in flight simulators, too.”
For graphics, “either a TV mounted in front of the chair or FPV goggles give the user a first-person perspective while they feel the motion of the aircraft through the chair.”
The brain of the simulation chair is nothing more complicated than a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B single-board computer. “Under its direction, a Teensy 4.0 development board controls the motors that move the chair.”
Big motors for smooth motion. “Those are beefy steppers paired with gearboxes and controlled through closed-loop drivers.”
All of the pilot controls are standard off-the-shelf USB devices. All you have to do is equip your drone, RC plane, or anything else with an MPU6050 gyroscope/accelerometer. The orientation and movement data gets crunched by the “Raspberry Pi through a conventional transmitter/receiver, so it can move the chair to match.”
It’s all set to hook up to Microsoft Flight Simulator and several other sims. “Just connect the USB cables from the controls and the Teensy to your PC” for the full motion experience.
