rec.autos.simulators

Trev

Trevor,

When was the last time you saw a decent car for a grand?

Thats ironic you should mention the wife factor here, I don't usually ask my
wife if I can buy something I want.  When I ordered my ECCI in Nov. I was
ordering the the 725.00 unit and she noticed that they had a more expensive
unit and wondered why I was not getting it.
My response was I wasn't sure I wanted to spend that much 1600.00.  Her
response you know you want it so why not get it?  I think that those of you who
are married and need to justify your wants to your significant other have just
married the wrong person.:-(  If you have the bucks and want to play go for
it.:-)  Everyone has their limitations and should know them.  Besides if you
have to ask you can't afford it.  Unfortunately ECCI had sold out their top of
the line units and I had to settle for the mid priced unit anyway. So far there
is no question in my mind that the ECCI I bought is the worth every dollar I
spent. And I have had not a single problem with it.  Now if ECCI or someone
else would build a quality motorcycle control setup life would be good.<g>

DRK

Hey Rick,

This one is.  And now we see who wears the pants in your house.<g> Besides
I've got bigger wrenches than she's got frying pans, so let the war begin.<g>

DRK

(snip)
(snip)

   Yep, Andy Cers commented that there are expensive pots, but he didn't
tell  you that ECCI doesn't use em.:) They charge $45.00 for replacement
pots. Subtract the markup and you have a mid range pot. Clarostat
sells an excellent linear taper for 60.00 wholesale.. and that's
mil-spec'd. If ECCI were in fact receiving "specially modified" pots
and then sold them for 45.00 then just imagine how much the unmodified
versions must have gone for.LOL. Since the mods done on these do not
even translate into the wholesale price of the best quality pot I
can find ( 60.00 Clarostat) then the quality, imo is not exactly top
of the line.:)
   I'd certainly like to know the T.O. Number, page , index and figure
for any F-16 pot. I can guarantee that those pots do not get a fraction
of the use that a sim steering wheel does. I've seen $450.00 pots in
Radars, they're huge, just like Cers inferences.<G>
   Having said all this is not an indication that ECCi doesn't make
a good wheel, just that the pot section was, well um, kind of
misleading.  Their strength, imo lies in the precision of their
resistance and pot lockdown hardware.
   As for me, I'll probably buy a TSW for the exact reasons Trevor
states.The ECCI product is, imo really not anything special, nor new
technology. Bearings that will never wear out is not impressive
considering that a ten-speed bicycle wheel's bearings would last
virtually forever in a sim wheel application.
 That's not to say that ECCI will not continue to
create great wheels, just that 1500 dollars is too much for me to pay
for this generation of them. True F/F and programmable options may
change the way I think about that.

   As always, this is my opinion, and not in any way a flame. The
prices and hardware presented were gathered through Military/Vendor
supply catalogs and crosschecked with  folks who use the stuff in
applications far more demanding than sim racing. In fact, most of the
guys think ECCI is laughing all the way to the bank. But then again,
they all think I'm nuts for sim racing in the first place.!!:)

  Best wishes,
Greg Avella
gavel

But I was mainly going to comment on the pots in my T2. I'm guessing
their not exactly high price components, since they look cheap, but
I clean them once every couple of months, and they have served me
well. I just got a PDPI L4 digital gamecard last week and started
doing some linearity tests and initially thought the card was not
linear... until i realised my pots aren't linear, which happened
when i cleaned the steering pot... if you want to test linearness
of a pot, clean it first:)
Looking at the carbon ring in the pot it's quite worn, but the
wear is progressively more closer to the centre position. As the
carbon rings wears in a section the resistance at that section goes
up, so the net result is that my steering is no longer linear in
a over-reactive way, where specific small movement around centre
gives a larger relative movement in the computer.

This was causing me a lot of difficulty in the GPL demo on full
linear setting until I realised that the fairly bell shaped nature
of the wear levels on the pot is the same sort of non-linear
distribution that most game's "non-linear" settings give, but being
over-reactive instead of under-reactive (where a specific turn
around centre gives a smaller relative movement in the computer).
So, with a bit of testing I was able to verify that using the right
amount of non-linear setting in a sim can pretty much cancel out
the worn pot effect to give proper linear response. Thus, I can
extend the usability of my T2 even more without having to spend
a cent on it:)

But this is still a comprimise and isn't as good as having a
genuine high quality perfectly linear pot. especially with games
that have no non-linear settings (like SODA).

Trevor, or anyone else out there who is knowledgable i nthis
area, is there such a thing as a genuinely perfectly linear pot?
most pots seem to have slightly nonlinear response.

thanks for managing to read my pointless ramble to the end:)
Grant.

---Jim