This DIY Wind Simulator Improves the Immersion of Racing Games
To enhance his racing sim immersion, particularly when driving open-air cars, Patrick Williams built this fantastic wind simulator.
Simulation video games, like flight sims and racing sims, are all about recreating their respective experiences as accurately as possible. On the software side, that means faithfully reproducing real world physics and giving players control over all the same adjustments that they would have in a real car or plane. That can be rewarding even when playing with a regular keyboard or gamepad, but the immersion can be dramatically improved with replica input devices, such as steering wheels, and haptic feedback output. Patrick Williams already had a great input setup for racing sims and recently built this wind simulator to enhance the feeling of open-air racing.
This wind simulator is, essentially, just a pair of big fans that blow towards the player. But the speed of those fans is actually linked to the car’s speed within the racing sim. Williams plays those sims while wearing an HTC Vive virtual reality headset, which provides complete visual immersion. For the input “controller,” he is using a Next Level Racing F-GT cockpit with a seat, a steering wheel, pedals, and a shifter. His setup doesn’t have any motion feedback at this time (that’s a very expensive proposition), but the wind simulator is the next best thing. When racing open-air cars, the fans make Williams feel like he’s actually zipping around a road course with the wind in his face. If he’s racing a vehicle with an enclosed cockpit, the fans are there to at least help keep him cool.
Two massive 140mm fans were used for this project. Each of those runs at 12V and is capable of reaching 5200RPM and pushing up to 308CFM of air. Those are housed within large 3D-printed enclosures that direct the air right at William’s face. The two fan enclosures are mounted onto the frame of his cockpit’s dashboard. The fans are controlled by an Arduino Uno board through a Monster Moto Board motor driver. That board is supported by SimHub, which is software designed specifically for projects like this. With the software, which supports a number of racings sims, Williams was able to use the built-in tools to sync the fan motor speed to the speed of the virtual car. He reports that the fans are quite powerful and that the wind simulation does a remarkably good job of increasing his immersion while racing.