Enhancing Immersion in Helicopter Simulations with Vibrafile, Buttkicker, and SimHub

As most of you know by now, my mission is to bridge as much as possible the gap between helicopter simulation and the real thing. Although vibration is a prominent feature of helicopters, it really surprised me to find out just how much immersion is possible with a device made specifically to contribute this sensation to the simulation experience. I introduce to you the Buttkicker.

One might question the purpose of adding vibration in a helicopter simulation since helicopters are in constant vibration anyway. What does it really add? And wouldn't it get annoying to be constantly vibrating after a while. Having spent some quality time in Mr D's Starcycle, I can tell you the vibration is indeed constant BUT it varies with character over the course of operations. The variations include bumps, resonances, and contributions from various mechanical sources resulting in a variety of frequencies at different strengths at different times. ALL working together to inform what is happening with the aircraft. It's not only immersive, it's informational. The vibration can in fact inform you of what the aircraft is doing and even alert you to danger and is one of the most cost effective ways to add significant immersion to your simulation experience.

Understanding the Components

Buttkicker Transducer

The Buttkicker Transducer is the piece of hardware that creates the vibration. It is basically the active part of what might be a very large audio speaker -- the part you connect the wires to -- without the speaker cone. A very heavy slug of material driven with an electromagnetic coil of wire and it comes with its own amplifier you connect to your computer with a USB cable.

The transducer should be clamped to the seat of your sim rig so that it acts mostly to vibrate you and ideally less on the rest of the rig. Vibrating the floor or a 500lb motion rig is wasted energy and potentially annoying to the neighbors. Mounting the Buttkicker horizontal rather than vertically can help minimize vibration escaping from where they're intended to go. It may be more accurate for helicopter simulation anyway since those vibrations tend to be more horizontal than vertical.

SimHub Software

SimHub is a free third party app that runs on your computer and is essentially the interface between your sim software and the Buttkicker transducer. It "reads" telemetry signals from Microsoft Flight Simulator and sends the appropriate signals to the Buttkicker amplifier to generate vibrations that match what is going on in the simulator. There are a number of flight simulator programs and not all generate telemetry that can be used to generate vibration or motion signals. There are also a number of telemetry reading apps like SimHub with different capabilities in terms of how they handle and convert simulator telemetry into usable vibration.

SimHub in my opinion is the most flexible allowing for highly customizable effects that tease out the most nuanced and diverse vibrations that bring your simulation experience to life.

Vibrafile

The Vibrafile is a SimHub "profile" that is the specific group of settings and even programming that tell the SimHub app how to interpret simulation telemetry to generate appropriate vibrational responses. For example, when landing you might expect to feel a "bump". Microsoft Flight Simulator generates the telemetry signals that inform that you have in fact landed. The SimHub app reads this telemetry and applies the settings and programming in the profile to generate a low frequency "thud" to the Buttkicker transducer so that you feel it as you land. The whole system works seamlessly to give the sensation of feeling the things that are happening in the simulator, complementing the sights and sounds of the simulation environment.

The Vibrafile incorporates a number of telemetry readings and processes them both mathematically and algorithmically to generate realistic sensations across all aspects of flight operations from start up to shut down.

Need help with loading the vibrafile into SimHub? Check this >post<.