Descent cockpit wrap-around cab?

RHauf

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One of my fav games of all time is Descent and Descent II. Recently I've been thinking that it's actually very well suited for an arcade link-system style setup. Has anybody ever built a wrap around cab for a flight sim type game, or a wrap around cab at all?

Since the "rebirth" descent games have come out, supporting modern hardware and high resolutions, it's even better.

I was thinking something similar to the Star wars cockpit style cab, with surround sound, a bass shaker or sub (for those explosions!) and either a 32" 144hz gaming monitor (i found a good deal on one) or a large CRT (which i'd actually prefer except for the added weight) and of course some cool lighting to give it that over the top feel.

Anybody whose played the game knows there are a TON of buttons that can be assigned for weapon select, flare, bomb, after burner, look various directions, strafe, slide, elevation, cruise, headlight, and various weapon controls. Well... a whole "dashboard" full of light-up arcade style buttons with graphics for each of their functions seems like a good start, with perhaps a 4 position mini stick for the left hand (surrounded by buttons) and a sidewinder 3d pro graphed into the cab for the right hand controls. oh, and of course foot pedals for the yaw (and maybe the headlight switch).

In terms of making all the tech work, that's easy. My only hangup is building the cabinet, I'm not so good at wood working and I need to come up with a good design. also I don't have any free time w/ work and family and all. so that could slow the build slightly.

I'd like to build at least 4 of them to link together.. I figure once the first one is built I can just duplicate it for the others.

Phase two would be to have the weapon select buttons light up when those weapons are available, and have some analog gauges/meters to display things like shield level, afterburner charge, and power level. of course I realize this would require some programming which i won't be doing. so, i'll just leave "phase two" as an even further pipe dream for now.
 
back in the late 90s I met with a guy/company in san jose who was doing exactly this.

He was building cockpits all decked out with surround sound and shakers.. all kinds of crazy shit.

he even had Descent 2 licensed from Interplay if I remember.

He tried to market them but end of day they were just too damn expensive... I have no idea what happened to his company...cant remember what he called them either.

The units themselves were pretty damn cool I have to say. If I can think of what his company was called or find any info I will post it.
 
In terms of making all the tech work, that's easy. My only hangup is building the cabinet, I'm not so good at wood working and I need to come up with a good design. also I don't have any free time w/ work and family and all. so that could slow the build slightly.

My problem would be the tech work I can basically build anything. My biggest obstacle would be the space necessary to construct such a beast. That And I would probably need a few more toys like a table saw and what not. A full sized CNC would also help lol though I could do it without one.
 
Hmm interesting, so I'm not the first to try a decked out descent cab! I did some googling to see if i could come up with anything anybody else had done, but i couldn't. Of course the game is 21 years old now so it's not exactly cutting edge. I figure the cabs will be versitile enough that they could probably run a couple other flight sim type games as well (but they're getting designed around Descent/Descent2)

I've got a couple guys on-board who think they can do the wood working, I've also got a large room at my work which is going to become an arcade (I work with other nerds at an ISP so this sort of thing is popular if I can pull them away from D&D)

Currently i have 5 arcade cabs in the "arcade" a linked pair of Atari Vapor TRX, a linked pair of Need for speed underground, and a Multicade by popular demand, along with an N64... and a juke box. there's still a ton of free space left, and a few of us are really into Descent, so I figured the next 4 (maybe more?) cabs could be the descent link-system.... and I need to get a couple pins!!

Anyone in the Camarillo california area and want to swing by for some gaming or join on the crazy descent cabs project? :)
 
http://www.hardcoregamer.com/2012/12/07/own-four-battletech-mech-pods-for-just-25000/20445/

in addition to the battle mechs you could also play a Decent like game - "Red Planet"

Already built and designed to be linked together. :)

but alas an old article.

I actually had someone try and sell me a set a year or two ago (I have a problem collecting big cabinets). Price was around $3500 - $4k if I remember correctly for a complete setup with 3 games and 4 pods. I passes as I didn't have enough space for them.

Brian
 
I'm a huge fan of Descent as well... though I decided to go with something a bit easier to fit in my house - A playseat with shaker, HOTAS, and Oculus Rift... running Overload (new Descent style game by the original Descent creators). It's great, until I feel like puking. ;)

DogP
 
Hmm interesting, so I'm not the first to try a decked out descent cab! I did some googling to see if i could come up with anything anybody else had done, but i couldn't. Of course the game is 21 years old now so it's not exactly cutting edge. I figure the cabs will be versitile enough that they could probably run a couple other flight sim type games as well (but they're getting designed around Descent/Descent2)

Thats interesting you said flight sim.

That reminded me that the guy I met who was doing this in the 90s got there by starting with a cab he made for a flight sim.

He had designed the cabs originally for flight sim software and then made the leap to Descent and other games. I remember trying out the flight sim and crashing over and over.

I still cant find any info on what he did although Im sure I have some flyers or something somewhere.
 
I'm a huge fan of Descent as well... though I decided to go with something a bit easier to fit in my house - A playseat with shaker, HOTAS, and Oculus Rift... running Overload (new Descent style game by the original Descent creators). It's great, until I feel like puking. ;)

DogP

I am a huge Descent fan and back in the day we had a large group of friends that were into lan games. We used to have weekly lan parties playing Doom, Quake, Rainbow Six, Rott, Duke Nukem 3D, Descent, Terminal Velocity, and plenty of other lan games. We used to have about 6 of us regularly playing Descent. There are a couple of us that still play games together online such as R6 Siege and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds but no flight/space game ever captured us again. I really need to check out Overload. Thanks for the heads up, I had never heard of it before.

RHauf, I would go the route DogP said and go with a playseat. There are lots of options out there these days and will take up much less room that multiple cockpits.
 
Projects move slowly for me now days.. But there has been progress, we figured out a microcontroller that has 26 leads for inputs and each one can be assigned to a keyboard key.. tested, and it works (usb interface) so that will suffice for the "dashboard" buttons.

I hadn't heard of Overload!! I just googled it and it looks awesome, when I get home tonight I'm gonna download it and try it with the Vive :)

The whole thing with the multiple descent cabs doesn't really need to be practical or anything, just cool. We have a huge office building and there's an extra room that is currently unused, so we were thinking of making it an arcade/gaming room. it's like 30' x 30'. (of course I also built some "vintage computers"... a 386, a 486, and a pentium, and loaded them with an assortment of era appropriate games and I have some consoles i'm gonna set up too)

Some of those old games were awesome.. Anybody ever played "tank wars"? It was basically the inspiration for scorched earth and is a ton of fun at parties with up to 10 players... and it plays great on a 386 (anything faster is too fast)
 
Lan parties .. Big smiles..

While controls can me mapped out and a joystick can be used, A Logitech marble man track ball is very deadly in close quarters.
Years and Years of playing against friends.

I think parts of decent 2 source code has been released..
This might allow you to export data into your meters and display.
 
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