After a few hours tweaking my original ‘zipper’ design I’m beginning to think that perhaps this shouldn’t be an optional extra after all. I can imagine plenty of reviews telling people that they need to spend ages building the sphere, which isn’t perhaps the best impression to give people right away. Adding quick release tabs to each edge at the factory means everyone could be up and running in half an hour or so. The mirrored design means only one part needs to be created and tooled, and the metal retaining pins should be fairly cheap to mass produce.

A notch in the side gives the pins something to grip so they can’t fall out.

I think I’ll do a orbit render too, my youtube channel is a little quiet

Each design will also be over weighted and tested to destruction. Expect interesting videos!

Spheres are inherently a strong structure under compression, the record holder dropped an unprotected egg 213 meters without it smashing. And although it’s not quite the same structure, check out this picture of the strength of a geodesic dome. See how the triangles form pentagons, hexagons and half hexagons? Just like the Feel Three.

Feel Three is still in the running for HAXLR8R…

Our pitch went well but the competition is fierce

Two of the founders spent an hour yesterday morning pitching to one of the HAXLR8R partners via Skype. It went well, but they have a hard job picking just 15 entries from nearly 400 applicants. At lot of the initial batch have already been rejected, so we cleared the first hurdle. We also asked you guys for your support on Twitter in the last update last week, and quite a few of you stepped up magnificently, but we’ve found out a lot of our mails ended up in spam boxes due to the unsubscribe link being broken. So we’ve moved over to MailChimp in the hope that Gmail, Hotmail and the rest won’t be so harsh. We’re now legal in every country and the unsubscribe button works perfectly.

So we’re asking again for your support, let the guys at HAXLR8R know that the FeelThree is on your shopping list for Kickstarter next year and we’ll show them that we have not only an amazing project but the backers to make their investment worthwhile. Once again, we’ll put your name into the raffle hat 50 more times if you help out before the end of November. Retweets also count so your followers also get to play!

So please spend 5 seconds letting twitter know about the project and pushing HAXLR8R to keep us in mind while they’re still interviewing and picking projects for the second round. This really makes a difference guys!

Link : #RT if you want to see the amazing #FeelThree VR motion sim get a second interview @HAXLR8R and get made in China ’15 j.mp/_FT

Remember that if we get in we’ll be blogging all about the experience, our progress and answering any questions, so this is a great resource if you’re thinking of applying to the program yourself in the future.

So if HAXLR8R doesn’t pick us is that the end of the project? Of course not, it would be a really great shortcut to the kickstarter and production but we’ve got plenty of other options to explore that we’re not able to share… yet.

We’re at 1800 followers on Twitter, email sign ups are still pouring in and the website get more traffic everyday. Something tells us that this is something you guys want.

As you’ve probably noticed we redesigned the base. It looks big but it’s actually the same width as the sphere, so it doesn’t take up any more space. It not only looks far cooler but means the part count is reduced since the four sides are essentially the same. It will probably be split too so it’s smaller to ship.

Thanks for your support guys and please spread the word!

Mark & the Team

@feelThree

Edit: Here’s a 30 second video of the feelThree in action

I’m not making a model just yet but here’s the general idea :

Two counter rotating gyroscopes don’t act like a gyroscope when put together so they can move as normal being unencumbered by gyroscopic forces. The spinning wheels also store a huge amount of energy. Normally we feed this into the gyroscope using a fast motor but there is another way we can get the energy out. Motors that have their polarity reversed or ground will now be driven by whatever they were driving, just as an engine will brake a car when going down a hill if you take your foot off the gas.

So imagine two sets of gyroscopes, that’s four in all, each with a motor. On the left side of the inside of the sphere we have two and the right has the other two. They’re aligned along the center of the horizontal axis and orientated so they spinning the same as your wheels would in a car. Now, when you start a racing sim they all begin to rotate, two clockwise and two anticlockwise, one on either side.

Now, the normal idea for racing sims is to rotate you backwards to generate acceleration, but the sphere has a disadvantage over sims with linear motors in that it can’t react quite as quickly to fast changes in rotation. So when you change gear the ‘jerk’ you would feel from the deceleration as the clutch disengages and re-engages would be too quick to be felt. This is where the gyroscopes come in. When you change gear up the motors that are essentially driving in reverse are engine braked followed by the forward turning gyros braking as well. These are only for a fraction of a second, but the momentum of these gyroscopes are passed to the motors and then the frame creating a rapid deceleration and acceleration to the whole platform. There are motors on both sides to maintain balance. You could put one set in the center but the user is in the way…

The gyroscopes would have to be reasonable substantial to impart a good amount of energy back into the platform but not so massive that they slow the platform down, perhaps a couple of kg on either side. Of course, there is also the possibility that these gyros could be placed on all three axis and actually drive the rotation of the whole platform. The motors and gyros would need to be much larger to turn the whole platform but the base unit would lose the omni chain and be substantially simpler.

Perhaps for the Feel Three v2?

Again its going to enter into the realm of ‘that can’t work’ and ‘why didn’t I think of that?’ for most people. Again, have a little patience. I’m concerned with possible stresses on the columns, but I think this is very doable. Just because it’s never been done doesn’t make something impossible.

I blame mssrs Stewart and Gough, they invent the ‘perfect’ system 70 years ago and everyone gives up trying. The space sim fans are a tough crowd too, the Feel Three was mentioned on /r/elitedangerous but quickly dismissed because it couldn’t properly simulate the forces of a zero-g spaceship. When asked which motion simulator could simulate it the answer was ‘none of them can’. You would think the Elite fans would be easier to please. I’m guessing 99.9% of formula one sim racers have never driven a F1 car and 98% of 747 sim pilots have never flown a 747 but unless Buzz Aldrin is a gamer 100% of space simers haven’t been in space :p

It’s only a plank of wood attached to the half sphere, use a controller underneath if you’re lazy or build a simple bar control… Add a big fan at the front and you’re flying!

What do you guys think? Leave me a comment.

What can go wrong? :p

Therefore there are a few gaps in the information and probably the most important thing, a quick video explaining in 1 minute how it works, is missing.

However, if you pick through the information you’ll find that theoretically the Feel Three should work, and I’m optimistic for a price that most people can afford

If you think you can come up with a reason why not, well I’d love to hear from you before I waste any more time :p

If you think the idea is silly and you want a ‘proper’ motion simulator please head over to bluetiger, they would love to take your nine THOUSAND dollars for only ±20° of pitch and roll… come back for a Feel Three when your bad neck won’t let you use it any more

Please add your email to the box on the left if you want to find out when the Kickstarter launches, or if you don’t trust me with your email address (and why should you) subscribe to my youtube channel to keep up to date.

Please comment if you feel like sharing your ideas and start clearing a space in your house for when the Feel Three arrives!

First blog post is here

If you then want to add some more panels later, go for it! Panels will come individually or in packs so if you want to chill out like Vader in his chamber, you can!

After adding three tabs to the hexagons it looks like we would only need 20 connectors to join them up! This also slashes the number of bolts and washers too which is good. If the half hexagons have tabs on three sides they should also fit easily at the top.
Now the Feel Three should be modular so I would have to check this idea works for the other configurations but it seems to me that the idea is a winner!

Lets hope I have another as good next time I try to sleep

I added a couple of half hexes to give more leg room at the front, obviously the edges pointing up are a problem :p

Pictures like this really make me think I might be onto something really cool.

I wonder why there was no progress on their design. Maybe the skin was too thin and they didn’t want to spend a fortune on aluminum. Maybe the gyroscopes were expensive and tricky 5 years ago, nowadays you can get rotation information to your computer with a $5 arduino and a $5 mpu-6050 gyroscope. The sphere itself could hold a very large display, but with cheap HMDs on the horizon, it doesn’t matter.

Maybe I’ll email him and ask what happened when the Feel Three is further ahead.

Seems they came up with the idea in 2009 but doesn’t look like they followed it though. Their use of air to lift the platform, like playing air hockey, is quite nice since it means the skin can be relatively weak as the load is spread over a large area. However the airpump is quite noisy and the system would need to stay airtight for it to work. Using strong rotational wheels is a cheaper, simpler solution.

At 1.2m wide I would be able to fit in the sphere with my legs curled up but it wouldn’t be comfortable. This wasn’t an issue with my calves sticking out but it might be for some.  At this size the area would be about 4.5m2, so 2.25m2 when halved.

I couldn’t be sure but from an objective point of view, if I saw this I would immediately think “That’s nice, but I can’t fit inside it”. Now if this made me, and other people, dismiss it then that was a problem. I did some more measuring and found if I bumped the size up to 1.4m across I would be able to have my legs at an angle completely inside, or cross them if I wasn’t using pedals. The area of material was now 6.16m2 or about 3m2, a significant increase but nothing major.

I also suspect that people would want to make a full sphere so they could roll 360 degrees in all directions which might not be advisable or comfortable but you wouldn’t want to put people off for the sake of 50cm2 of aluminium.

Listen to Norm from Tested grunting at 2:12… he doesn’t sound like he’s having fun at all :p

Windcreen wiper motors are cheap and quite powerful but perhaps not fast enough, however if angled correctly then they should be easy to double up, which would be good for heavier users. Servo motors are another possibility and they have excellent holding torque for the edge of a roll.

If the interior of the sphere was padded with hex/pent cushions it could double as a stylish armchair if held by a pin to the base. The cockpit frame could also be removable too, so a couple of kids could fit inside for a virtual teacup ride.

The software would need to count full rotations to ensure the cables, which would need to be suspended above the Feel Three, didn’t become tangled. With sufficient slack this shouldn’t be a huge issue, but something to be aware of.

The mecanum wheels would need to be rubberised to ensure good grip on the sphere and subject to some wear which could become an issue.

The spheres weight could be supported by a set of rotating, heavy duty castor wheels.

These are a standard item and quite cheap, but they would need to turn smoothly on the base axis to work well. We’d need 3 or more, depending on how thick the sphere was since we need to distribute the weight.