Info on motion software:
To actually have the motion simulator moved by the computer (more specific the simulation game), you need to interface the game with an intermediate program that retrieve games motion data and sends them to the serial port of the computer. There are various software out there, commercial and free ones that do this job. I'll present here those that you can obtain and use for free.
I have used three different free motion software so far with my motion simulator:
Keith's Daniel Portdrvr (www.etherealsounds.com)
Ian's Hopper BFF driver (http://buggies.builtforfun.co.uk/Sim/index.html)
X-sim general motion software (www.x-simulator.de)
Lets see how each one works.
Keith's Daniel Portdrvr:
This little program is actually a gauge that can be inserted in any airplanes cockpit and retrieve from there all the necessary motion data from MS Flight Simulator (any version from FS98 to FS2004) or the MS Combat Flight Simulator (CFS1 & CFS2). It is invisible on the cockpit but if is installed right, it works in the background with so little footprint that you can't even notice any drop of frame rate when using it. It is noticeable only by its output to the serial port. All the settings of it are contained in the portdrvr.cfg and you cannot interfere on its settings upon it is running.
Ian's Hopper BFF driver:
This motion software is still in beta but it looks promising. It uses Dowson's FSUIPC interface to connect to either FS2004 or FSX. It then calculates the motion data in a 3DOF scheme with filtering and various other tricks to produce as possible more believable motion in an enclosed motion cockpit. It runs in a form of a GUI externally from the flight simulator game and also has GUI setup to be able to change a lots of its motion parameter for pitch-bank-heave and save the profiles for different aircraft configurations. The latest version has support for coupled 3-point motion systems. Also a BFF driver version that supports X-Plane is ready!
X-sim general motion software:
This motion software was developed as a try to revive the old Rock'nRide pneumatic 2DOF motion chair and contain plug-ins for various games. Some of them are flight simulators and some car racing simulators. And on top of that it can also retrieve motion data virtually from any game supports DirectX Force Feedback effects. As I said the creators initially interfaced pneumatic actuators on it using simple relay activated valves but I discovered that their software could also export motion data from an Universal Serial Output (USO) plug-in that it includes. So I connected my microcontroller electronics on it thru the serial port to successfully drive DC motors with many times more precision on positioning, than pneumatics. I highly recommend this software mostly to car racing fans for games like the LiveForSpeed (excellent support on true acceleration data).
This page is still under construction! Things need to be added like connection examples, profiles, etc. So check back again later to see them. And these motion software interfaces are under constantly development and upgrading so check often on their pages to see news on them.
Thanos