Project Cockpit (lol) - GT5

Part 1: The Beginning


With all this wonderful tax money coming in, (economic stimulus check and more than twice that for my regular tax return) I figured it would be a good idea to start on a project that I have always wanted to do since the early Gran Turismo days when the force feedback wheel was new hot shit - a racing SIM cockpit. Considering how W went through all this trouble making sure we 'stimulate the economy', who am I to let him down?

I figured it would be kind of cool to sort of document the process here in this blog, keeping an updated 'project cockpit' type deal. And seeing as how I no longer work on the content side of things for Source Interlink - formerly Primedia - (where this would have been a sweet project for the sites) my personal blog will do.

Game:
First things first, I needed the game - GT5 Prologue. Luckily, I had $75 in best buy gift cards waiting in the pipe. So far - total money spent: $0 with 30 left in credit.

Wheel:
Since I only had gift cards to Best Buy, and they never have any decent stock in store, I would have to shop around online for the G25 wheel from Logitech. They had the regular force feedback wheel for PS3 in stock, but it's time to go big.

If you aren't familiar with the G25 from Logitech, you should be. It's got a gated 6-speed shifter with push-down reverse, 3 - count 'em - 3 pedals (yes a clutch), and a force feedback wheel with 900 degrees of rotation and paddle shifters in case you want to mix things up.

Pure awesomeness doesn't come cheap. They list for $300, but can be found around $250. Like the PS3 itself, there isn't really a way around the cost. I'm not willing to go used or refurbished just because I don't like to gamble with a purchase this big (even if its minor).

I have been finding that Amazon really does have the best prices. For me, shopping around these days means just going straight there. Sure enough, they had it for $240. Free ground shipping, or free 2 day shipping with their free "Prime" trial membership which I opted for... not bad.

Cockpit:
Rather than just buying one of these:
http://gtcockpit.com/
http://www.racergamer.com/
I decided to build my own since I am trying to keep costs as low as possible (duh - the whole point of this project)
The Playseat deal is nice, but it's another 300 bucks and it doesn't really store too well, no thanks. The Sparco one is just a dream...

So, the hunt for materials began. I started looking for the seat first and found that even the most ghetto racing seats from APC were still 180-250 bucks. I found a bunch of ghetto racing seats on Ebay, but they were only sold in pairs. 160 for 2 seats. I might have found someone who wants to go in on it, but that would have been too much of a hassle. So I just decided to keep a lookout and ask around until the perfect opportunity presented itself, and it did.

Saturday, I went to see Iron Man with my bro and his wife at the Irvine Spectrum. Sharper Image was going out of business and had all these crazy sales. The store looked like it had been looted. They had these gaming seats on super-duper clearnace for 70 bucks. Regular price was around 200. The seat is pretty cool, it has a pair of speakers right behind your ears and a sub-woofer in its base. Considering most balling ass racing SIM cockpits have a woofer custom mounted, score one bonus point! The best part is, it folds up for easy storage.

So here's what I have so far...

Total spent:
Game - $0
Logitech G25 - $240
Seat - $70
(Rest of the materials to come)

I will keep this updated as the project comes along. Sorry about the long post, but it was the kick-off blog for 'Project Cockpit lol.' I promise the updates will be better.

And if you want to see some crazy examples, check out this site - Race SIM Central to see where some of the inspiration came from. (yes there are forums for everything!)