Does anyone here have a Simpit Icarus Avenger?

PANTHER STARFORCE

PANTHER STARFORCE
Apologies if this is the wrong sub-forum. I thought briefly about putting this in the VR sub-section... but it didn't really seem appropriate as a Simpit build is more... well... RR (Real Reality?) I guess? :)

I've been eyeballing this system for about a year. I've probably watched every youtube there is and I think I've worked up enough courage (and money) to pull the trigger and go for it. I think the last thing I'd like is to find fellow players who have built one and chat about feelings on build quality and how happy they are with their purchase.

Simpit in New Zealand makes a range of products but I'm specifically interested in the Icarus Avenger 180. Any thoughts from anyone who has one built would be very appreciated!

Again, if this post should be in the VR forum a moderator should feel free to move the post.

For those who may be confused about what I'm referring to:

http://www.simpit.co.nz/

https://youtu.be/TfAc-BKzmPs




Cheers!

-EJIRO
 

Scarmax

S
Pffft... heck, I have 3 or 4 of those babies. I even keep an extra in my backpack in case I wanna do some Robigo runs while waiting for the bus. :) (Cuz I can't afford a car.)
 

Exigeous

Exigeous
Reviving an old thread as I'm curious if anyone has gotten one of these in the time since the thread was started. Yes yes yes, I know all about VR so there's no need to bring that into this conversation, this isn't a VR vs. Avenger post - it's a "I want to hear from Avenger owners" post. I have over 700 hours of play time in Elite, all in VR. While I love the immersion VR adds in many ways a setup like this can add more. Little things like being able to see my real hand vs. my avatar's hand go a long way for immersion.

So did anyone jump on one? From the pricing I've seen without a PC you can build one of these for about $5k and while expensive that's certainly not bank breaking...

~X
 

Noogillim

Noogillim
Just took delivery of my screen assembly today.

Need a bit of rework to my rooms desk layout.

Will add projectors when money allows

Can let you know how things progress.

In UK the official distributer is at www.h2ohpc.com
 
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AgamemnonWhen

AgamemnonWhen
I've got one of these on the wishlist... the "wish I was that wealthy, that single and that unemployed" list!

Good luck to you. I'm jealous. But, on the other hand, if I did have one of those I'd probably end up like some emaciated cyber-victim in a William Gibson novel... :D
 

PANTHER STARFORCE

PANTHER STARFORCE
Hi everyone!
Honestly it's nice to see this thread come back to life as I know there are others out there who are interested in this setup.

Ultimately in the time that has past since I posted this I decided to go a different route. Partly due to budget, partly due to parts availability / upgrade-ability, and finally due to a few things I learned about the Icarus that I wasn't too keen on, such as heat-warp over time and constant projector-jig re-calibrations / screen re-calibrations.

Though I admit every time I see the Simpit company post a new vid to their youtube channel I start to salivate a bit :)

In the end I built a more traditional 3-screen setup with Track-IR, and I LOVE it.
I opted not to go VR for a lot of reasons. Especially after trying it on the Vive first hand. I actually became un-sold after a hands on (I realize that sounds crazy... but I have my reasons :) )

This was the setup that I finally built in the end:
32067148392_207500d7da_o.jpg


-EJIRO
 

Exigeous

Exigeous
EJIRO said:
...heat-warp over time and constant projector-jig re-calibrations / screen re-calibrations.
Click to expand...

I hadn't considered that but can see how it would happen over time. Any thoughts on how often you'd have to do this?

EJIRO said:
...3-screen setup with Track-IR, and I LOVE it.
Click to expand...

Not sure why but it seems I'm in the minority who absolutely hated TrackIR. I had one for a short while, at the time I was pretty much only playing racing sims and for that to me it was useless. It felt like a badly put together toy and in general just junk. In fairness in racing you don't need to look around nearly as much so a triple display is usually just perfect, in fact I still prefer my triples to VR for racing. When I started playing Elite I had already ditched TrackIR and had a Rift, once I tried it I was instantly in love.

EJIRO said:
I opted not to go VR for a lot of reasons.... ....became un-sold after a hands on
Click to expand...

Very curious to hear what you didn't like and what games/apps you got to try. The first night I got mine I *hated* it. I was super disappointed, I'd never tried any VR yet and between the screen door, god rays and horrible field of view I couldn't believe how bad it was. The next morning I posted it on Craiglist and a day later had a buyer. I decided that I'd pull my Warthog out and dust it off so I could try that Elite's Danger game I'd heard about. 5 minutes into the game as I was exiting my first station I felt the addiction come on and from then on you'd have to pry my rift from my cold dead hands! I emailed the buyer to apologize and explain I was keeping it and the rest is history.

EJIRO said:
...This was the setup that I finally built in the end:
https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/449/32067148392_207500d7da_o.jpg

-EJIRO
Click to expand...

Very nice looking setup, I've not seen a Volair in person but have read very good things about them. May I ask what you paid for it? Did you consider any other systems? If so why the Volair? I have the Obutto Ozone and for the cost and ease of setup it is fantastic. Very similar look/construction to yours. Do you have or plan a racing setup as well? I first built mine for racing and when I got addicted to Elite I ordered the mounts for the Warthog. It is fun to drive the SRV with a wheel and driving pedals! If your curious there's a link to a long post I wrote about immersion in my signature, it has a number of pictures of my setup.

Oh and one bit of feedback/criticism - get some black zip ties or velcro tape and get all those wires cleaned up!! I've spent quite a few hours with mine doing everything I can to hide every single cable or wire. I'm just a freak when it comes to that....

~X
 

mojododo

M
I used to play with a triple screen setup, but just got annoying with the massive side screen warp. I ran a long time in iracing with perfect side screen rendering so it is VERY noticeable in elite. If we could get the correct aspect rendering on the side monitors id go back to triples in a heartbeat!
 

evilchaosmonkey

evilchaosmonkey
shadragon said:
I keep trying to order one, but... OW!

My wife keeps hitting me in the back of the... Hey! Quit it!
Click to expand...

Exactly what I was thinking. OP is definitely a bachelor with no kids.

A wife and kids, the meaning of life they said. A joy to behold they said. A love you will cherish they said.

A money pit of pain and stress related baldness I said.

I could have had one of those set ups, before I made the most stupid decision of my life - conned into marriage and kids by all the other blokes - just because they want to watch you suffer like them too.
 
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Achilles7

Banned
Achilles7
evilchaosmonkey said:
Exactly what I was thinking. OP is definitely a bachelor with no kids.

A wife and kids, the meaning of life they said. A joy to behold they said. A love you will cherish they said.

A money pit of pain and stress related baldness I said.

I could have had one of those set ups, before I made the most stupid decision of my life - conned into marriage and kids by all the other blokes - just because they want to watch you suffer like them too.
Click to expand...

Oh dear! You see OP, no good ever comes from these 'look what I've got' - dressed up as a query posts..'looks like this guy will have to cancel his appearance on 'Mr & Mrs' now!
 

Deleted member 110222

D
evilchaosmonkey said:
Exactly what I was thinking. OP is definitely a bachelor with no kids.

A wife and kids, the meaning of life they said. A joy to behold they said. A love you will cherish they said.

A money pit of pain and stress related baldness I said.

I could have had one of those set ups, before I made the most stupid decision of my life - conned into marriage and kids by all the other blokes - just because they want to watch you suffer like them too.
Click to expand...

I'm smart. I ditched the girls in favour of my PC. Why would I want to spend what little cash I have on women when I can invest in awesome PC equipment?

Computers are much easier to live with... Cheaper too.

#SingletonMasterRace
 

Noogillim

Noogillim
mojododo said:
I used to play with a triple screen setup, but just got annoying with the massive side screen warp. I ran a long time in iracing with perfect side screen rendering so it is VERY noticeable in elite. If we could get the correct aspect rendering on the side monitors id go back to triples in a heartbeat!
Click to expand...

They had to keep the VR crowd happyish!

I had triple screen set up and it was like peering through a slit in a pill box to me, not enough vertical height and like you say bizarre edge scaling, I don't only play elite. I also play rise of flight.

I am a sim engineer by profession two screens geometry and blending should be a fair bit easier than the 16 channels we have at work.

Before anyone asks and still married, my kids moved out a while back.

Not doing this all in one hit, just getting my desk and screen physical layout sorted for now.

I must admit though can't wait to watch some movies on this.

As for scalability I am intending on HD projectors for now and at a later date when they become more affordable several years down the road probably replace them with UHD as long as they come in short throw.

Missus thinks I'm bonkers! She knows me to well :)
 

DNA-Decay

DNA-Decay
Re Icarus SimPit avenger.

WANT!

But I am very interested in how readable the text is in these projector setups.
I sit pretty close to sixty inches of plasma.
But when I open out the field of view the text becomes unreadable.
My rig;
2582x1866.jpg
 

Bryan K

Bryan K
I suppose this could be an alternative for people who can't play VR because of nausea. Much cooler than the conventional triple-monitor setup.
 

PANTHER STARFORCE

PANTHER STARFORCE
:D Hehe, this has turned in to a pretty entertaining thread.

for the record, I'm married with two kids under the age of 5. It's not easy having crazy hobbies like sim pits and such... but not impossible.

As far as the reasons I went with the 3-screen setup instead of VR. The first one and for me the biggest was the exclusionary nature of VR. I often play with my 4 year old son sitting on my lap and he's turned in to quite the co-pilot! He knows how to use the gal-map, sys-map and initiate high and low wake jumps :) Starfighter in training, lol. The VR goggles are just way too exclusionary and singular. Also sometimes my wife hangs out with me up in my man cave and keeps me company. I play Elite and she plays 3DS. (The family that plays together stays together, right)

The second set of reasons are more technical. I have an HTC Vive here at work and I've used it plenty. Tried Elite with it along with about a dozen other games. And the Fresnel lens distortion (chromatic aberration) along with the screen-door effect is awful. The display is worse than a first generation LCD computer monitor. The dot pitch is abysmal. At home on my rig I run Elite at ultra settings and then I have a burly ReShade pipeline that I run on top of that. Even with my 980ti GTX factory overclocked EVGA video card wouldn't be able to run all my graphics injectors at the 2x subsampling required for a decent image quality and framerate on a VR headset. I think the technology is immature and not at a viable level of development for me to consider it for a flight sim. Maybe 2018 will bring it up to a competitive level.

The final reason I opted for a non-VR build is because I love physical control surfaces. I want to add more switches and controls over time and build my rig in to a custom starfighter cockpit because... childhood starfighter fantasies :)

Over time I plan on keeping up with display technology and upgrading my screen system whenever something comes along that I think represents an immersive step up. I might yet go to a curved projector system in the future. But for now... I needed plug-and-play simplicity due to raising young kids. If I make any significant changes I'll post it to my build thread:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/309560-EJIRO-s-Sim-build?p=4810979#post4810979

Cheers!

-EJIRO
 
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