Home racing simulator to be designed by Aston Martin | Hacker News Reader

Home racing simulator to be designed by Aston Martin

curvrs.com

26 pointswslh52 comments

57k seems a bit steep for an Aston Martin product that doesn't actually drive you anywhere. Fancy looking as it may be, I don't see how any enthusiast can't make a similar or better version of this.

Unless there is something I'm missing, this product doesn't add any real value over any other sims besides the brand's "cool" value and a sleek snowmobile looking design.

Aston Martin is the car maker that rebadged a Toyota iQ as the "Cygnet", so that their sports car customers could have an fuel efficient vehicle for city driving. I gather the theory was some European cities restrict what cars can enter based on emissions. They maybe were imagining it sort of like a yacht tender.

Anyway, it was basically a cubic Toyota, for three times the usual price. They didn't sell many.

I swear that, at one point, the Cygnet was included "free" with the purchase of another Aston, maybe the V12 Vanquish or DBS, in an effort to improve the company's emissions average. I remember this being in the news back when the Cygnet was released, but I can't find any references to this anywhere.

Basically entirely bought and rebadged just to "allow Aston Martin to comply with the European Union’s fleet average emissions standards to take place in 2012." [1]

[1]: https://3automotive.wordpress.com/2011/01/26/1183/

Sounds like something "influencers" and racing drivers will get for promotional reason and a handful of FU money holders will buy. But I wouldn't be surprised if the units produced stayed in the double to low triple digits.

If you can network it, the obvious next step is to make a spec racing series and now you've got great marketing for Aston Martin and COVID-friendly entertainment that can be streamed or aired on cable channels.

For that price, you can buy a mid-spec hydraulic racing simulator from VRX. They even offer custom wraps, so you can get an Aston Martin themed model in British Racing Green.

I'm struggling to think who would buy this.

Home simracers would buy their own wheel, pedals, shifter and VR headset, and pull a real seat from a junk car, for a total cost of a couple thousand (including PC).

Professionals would probably build custom rigs.

There's a (very) limited market already for contracted sim racing builds, much like there's a (very) limited market already for contracted real-life racing setups. Think Ferrari/Porsche Cup type teams which straddle the middle ground between amateur motorsport (i.e. I built a track Miata) and professionals who are sponsored or pay for a full team seat (who would be getting bespoke rigs). The target audience is probably the same too: wealthy individuals looking to dabble without the commitment of a full-motion room or actually needing to build something on one's own.

Wealthy car enthusiasts with a barn for their cars.

Saudi oil barons, movie stars, football players... people who have more money than they know what to do with and think it would be cool.

at the price they're asking, they probably only need to sell a couple of units to make it worthwhile. i'm guessing this operation is just one guy building them, and the materials and shipping cost is 3-4 grand. depending on the aston martin licensing fee, two units a year could be a decent business.

Maybe they move you up the waiting list for one of the higher end cars if you buy this?

Not sure how popular VR is with simracers. Earlier this summer there where a rallycross series where some of the top racers did race against simracers and almost none did use VR. Also when you see from professional real life racers practice using games they use rigs with several screens and a seat that moves, not VR.

For immersion people love VR, for lap time it's basically personally preference.

Some people can't race in VR for long periods of time, but I do league races in my vive and I find it helps with situational awareness quite a lot.

Imagine a suburban dad who wants a cool thing for his man cave and doesn’t want to get too fiddly with anything, and makes $2m a year as a Director at Google or investment banker in Greenwich. They’ve thought about buying one of these online but don’t know what’s good quality and what isn’t - the Aston Martin brand gives them some confidence in purchasing it.

Looks cool, but keep in mind that it's an extremely expensive luxury toy.

Getting started in simracing is as easy as buying a $200-400 wheel and pedals setup like the Logitech G29.

Even a top end system with VR headset, direct drive wheel, and cockpit can be had for about 10% the cost of this Aston Martin branded setup.

Seems like the kind of item where if you're even concerned about what it costs then you're likely not the target audience. I can't imagine they're going to make that many of them.

But it's also the type of item, where, for the cost, you can get something 10x better. A VRX costs about the same, and can be wrapped in Aston Martin livery, but has hydraulics, multiple screens, and is really just a next-level experience.

The product is aimed at people where time has way more value than money, though.

This will be delivered, perfectly constructed in a home where the cost of the product is nothing for the owner compared to their wealth.

It's not for people whose actual hobby is racing sims, it's for a rich guy that likes to play every now and again.

Honda and Aston Martin both make automobiles and despite the price gap for a comparable Transportation machine, they both have customers

You too can now spend 50k to play AC:C and get smoked by a 12-year-old with a G27.

Many years ago, a car racing sim friend and I built a very DIY no frills rocking chair that I hooked up to a sim. The racing sim was open enough that you could output the lateral acceleration via serial port (I may have written that serial glue code too)

The sim spoke to an Arduino that controlled a car window motor that rocked the chair's seat (with a pot to encode the position and some limit switches at either "end" of the motor's run). According to my racing sim friend, the lateral Gs are one of the most crucial things to feel to get a physical hold on what's going on with a car (if you're taking a curve too fast, etc.)

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sE-NYWIl37M Photos: https://imgur.com/a/1k1mNac

Whenever I see typically expensive racing sim hardware setups, I wonder if there could have been some potential in developing this idea further (I'm comfortable enough with the electronics software side, but torque/motor PID/etc. are well outside of anything I've worked on)

Anyone interested in collaborating? :-)

The steering wheel looks awesome but for this price I’d expect the seat to move to simulate G-forces. And VR would be more realistic.

You could build (or get built for you) an full motion rig with all the bells and whistles for probably at most half this amount.

Worth mentioning that they can't simulate G-forces as per se they just mimic the motion of the car

You can simulate G-forces in an enclosed simulator (it doesn't work if you can see outside) - you're just limited to 1G.

I've flown a 737 simulator which tilted back to simulate takeoff thrust. It felt eerily realistic

I thought about the same thing.

I see the point if there is a market but the brand is strong and there will be people who will buy that (not me).

Insert joke about the reliability of Aston Martin electronics.

Boy oh boy as a car enthusiast this stuff makes me nervous for Aston's future. There's absolutely nothing wrong with brands having these separate businesses by attaching their names to things(ahem Ferrari aftershave), but Aston has gone off the deep end in the past few years involving itself power-boats, luxury high-rise buildings and all sorts of marketing schemes while its core products have stagnated. These side-shows are an effortless way for companies to fool themselves into thinking they are doing real work but, to me at least, it looks like they have ignored their core products. The new DBX is promising, but the Vantage is comically overpriced for its segment I don’t think their DB11s are exactly walking out the showrooms

From some angles it reminds me of the Sinclair C5, which probably isn’t what the designers were going for!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_C5

For about the price of a 2012 DB9 or Vantage.

True, but the maintenance costs are a bit less. Hopefully. The fact that you can buy a 2012 DB9 does not mean you can afford it.

Very true. It’s not tco for sure.

The thing is that as a parent of small children I’d never feel comfortable driving a real car 200mph as I can’t really risk my life like that, and am not a thrill seeker. So doing it in game is actually preferable.

But an Aston at 30 mph is still a lovely thing.

You could buy this racing sim or this 2014 Aston Martin Rapide S.

https://www.livermorehonda.com/used/Aston+Martin/2014-Aston+...

Luxury: I'm out.

I don't need luxury, I just need a reliable and precise steering wheel, shifter, and pedal controllers. Everything else is just dressing. I can supply the PC and monitors.

This doesn't even look like it has motion on the seat. For luxury I expect to move a bit.

Non VR, no seat power feedback, weaksauce.

This is what people are running at homes right now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXGKdk6apRo

Starting from £57,500, relatively closer to buying an actual car? https://www.caranddriver.com/aston-martin

If you don't mind buying used - but 10,000 miles is barely worn in - the car works out cheaper:

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202006079887116

Not if you're interested in Formula 1 racing. The average price of an F1 car engine alone is $10.5 million. [0]https://www.essentiallysports.com/formula-one-car-cost/

You can buy a raceable F1 car for less than that but the kicker is that you have to be able to run it. They're designed to be raced, so they are able to be run off of checklists but you need a team of qualified mechanics and engineers just to get it to turn over properly.

Racing is always expensive, but it's not all F1.

There's a well known racing series where nobody is allowed to spend more than $500 on their car (excluding safety equipment), and someone actually entered an Aston Martin once (sort of):

https://24hoursoflemons.com/blog/aston-martin-db7-the-half-a...

General background:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24_Hours_of_LeMons

The Lemons rule is more in spirit than enforced. Someone on the team finds a great deal on the $250 timing belt kit they need for the car, it was only $1. The seller just happens to be another team mate.

Or, you know, they find a DB7 shell in a storage facility, spend the maximum amount allowed on it while also getting a bunch of "extras" they can sell at a profit, then bolt it up to the frame of an existing racecar.

Well, originally your car could be claimed for $500, so I guess the trick is to build something nobody wants to buy for that much.

However, the stuff underneath obviously looks like it's worth way more than $500 and I'm not sure what's going on there.

Maybe it isn't what it used to be. Maybe if you don't drive aggressively, they look the other way.

Many of the fancy simulator setups cost upwards of $50k USD. When I visited Japan earlier this year I visited a performance shop run by Max Orido (famous Japanese driver) and at his shop he has two race sims for training new racers. Both of his setups are prohibitively expensive unless you don't mind spending that kind of money on purely equipment.

Can't help but feel this would be a lot more immersive with a VR headset instead of the screen.

It’s. Shame they didn’t go VR with hydraulic chairs.

Does something like that exist? At a reasonable price point? (<10K)?

They built a nice setup on Linus Tech Tips a little while ago. Pricing is mentioned in the vid. I think the motion thing was about $3k USD.

The video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJkPtX4rXug

The motion thing for the seat https://www.nextlevelracing.com/products/next-level-racing-m...

I expect the entire build, with PC and monitor, wheel, etc, was around $10k

I made something for my masters project for under $2k - using pneumatic artificial muscles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJCORZuLOJk

Still needed a lot of tweaking when the video was made...

I should note - the valves/compressor can be located quite a bit further away... making most of the noise go away.

Entry level setup https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXGKdk6apRo

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