Hi everyone. I'm slowly acquiring the gaming devices on my wish list for a generic jet sim pit. On my initial wish list I had the Butt Kicker Gamer, but now I'm having second thoughts. I've dusted off Jane's F/A-18 and started replaying it after several years away from it. Carrier ops is my favourite area of simming so I expect to play that most often in the finished pit. I also have unopened boxes of F4AF and LOMAC which I'm sure I'll try as well. With JF-18, the level of noise in the cockpit is so low, I'm thinking the only feedback I'll ever feel from the Butt Kicker is when I drill holes in the ground. So for right now that's quite a bit, but in the future I hope to do that less often. Does anyone have thoughts or experience with Butt Kicker and flight sims?

Thanks, Werner

Hello Werner

I am using a Buttkicker for years already and I never want to flight without it.
Its like using FFB sticks for a couple of years, you wont go back.

What sim do you fly Boandlgramer? What kind of "feel" do you get from the ButtKicker? Is it kind of a constant vibration all the time you're flying or does it give you some feedback when there is some kind of event in the game that causes more than normal background noise?

Well I have a BK and use the following sims to great effect:

IL2
Rise of Flight
DCS A10C/KA-50
Armed Assault

In those sims I can tweak my system to give a gentle vib. for general flying, and still get big jolts for AAA fire or taking fire. Remember with a BK system you may have to spend some time not only tweaking the unit settings but your system sound settings as well. I have a Logitech Z5500 5.1 system, so my BK feeds off the sub/center output. Not sure if that configuration gives me an advantage.

As for the BK in general I agree with him above once its part of your gear you never want to fly without it. My first BK amp stopped working and I felt like I was missing a big part of my simpit without it. When I replaced the first system I kept the BK shaker unit and mounted it on my sofa with the new one in my simpit. Using it for movies is something else, granted its used with a proper 5.1 surround sound system and 5.1 soundtracks.

Hi Werner

Flying IL2 and FSX .
I am with Hitch.H.F , what he wrote.

kind regards

Boandl

Well thanks for the input. Now I want two BK's. On for my simpit and another for watching moves. lol.

Luckily for me my simpit and home theater are in the same room! But yeah you can imagine the effect you get from watching say Saving Private Ryan or a similar war movie! It adds so much for dramatic effect, the scene in Moria in the Lord of the Rings where the Balrog is chasing them is pretty neat with a BK!

There's some good stuff on this site about transducers, including some diagrams on how to build your own:

http://www.simprojects.nl/transducers.htm

I have been toying with this idea:

2 Buttkicker LFE units bolted onto left and right side of a platform. The platform is essentially a wooden baord that is big enough to hold the gaming seat, and is vibration isolated from the floor using dampeners.
The design goal is to feel the "thump" of weapon release, among other effects. Even better if the vibration effect is "stereo", such that I can feel if the weapon is coming off from the left wing or right wing.

Of course, the "stereo" vibration effects should work well with movies too. Of course, the pair of transducers will have to be driven by a stereo amp. I got most of these ideas from the avsforums.

Any thoughts?

I like the idea but the problem is that the BK uses the the bass/center chanel and not the stereo side channels as input.
I don't know if a simple stereo output will give different bass output.
If we can have a 5.2 instead of 5.1 stereosystem, that would be awesome.

In general I think it's hard to tell from from where a low frequency sound is comming from, especially when it's going through an airframe.
One system that might produce this effect is d-box, but that's another league when it comes to money.
I uses a special code imbedded in the game/movie that can rock your chair and give vibrations just like the buttkicker.
And as it uses 3 points for the feedback so it should be able to reproduce it on only one side, but it's depending on the coding.