Making a LIFE SIZE GAMING SIMULATOR

Hey Siri, enter game mode. A few months ago, I made this virtual window to anywhere using three huge TVs. The concept was great, but it was pretty limited in what it could do. in my tv window layout it was all running on three separate usb sticks and the tvs weren't even talking to each other but thanks to the magic of the internet i got thousands of comments telling me how to fix this so i went on Facebook Marketplace and I bought this

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computer a couple of years old for about $1,500 Canadian. I connected each of the displays to the computer graphics card using some HDMI port adapters for display and turned on the TVs so right now the computer. it's recognizing each tv as it's own monitor so after tweaking the settings to have everything in portrait mode i can proceed with the setup so everything interacts as one screen instead of three separate monitors as that's weird right now for the three.

These screens together are this Nvidia graphics card. I never really knew this was a thing because I've never been a PC gamer but this is a big thing in PC

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as most people use multiple monitors so using this graphics card I can combine all three my tv screens to interact like there's just one big screen so i'm going to use a feature called surround in nvidia control panel here i can tweak all my settings to have my screens in the right order and the resolution i want , as well as setting the bezel to account for the gap I have between the displays after enabling surround sound, the computer now thinks I only have a 6760 by 3840 resolution display. with those 140 pixel dead areas on the two the spaces between the screens for the main purpose of the first video, which was to have a window to anywhere, this is a million times more convenient because now I can just go to YouTube or find one of my own video files, hit the full screen and automatically spans across all three foreign screens now its time to make the setup look a bit nicer so using my oscillating tool I notched some of the drywall under the trim to being able to run the HDMI cables to the computer without having them visible ER weird in a completely separate room where you wouldn't even see it but it looks so pretty I decided to leave it on display so I had to pull out a couple of TV's as well and then cut a bit of the back of this cabinet so I can get in the back and access all the external cables so I fed the three HDMI cables plus an optical audio cable and an ethernet cable then I 3d printed this little grommet grommet so I could cut a hole through the wall and then have the wires run back through the trim and then out through the wall instead of having to cut them through the trim.

I'm an idiot. I should point out that these are all low voltage data cables. 120 volt electrical wires through the wall like this with that clean. I'm going to install this 4K outdoor security camera to have a live view outside or basically just a live view on my tv window so I used a three quarter one. 1 inch masonry bit to drill through the brick and wood behind it and then ran through the 75 foot outdoor ethernet cable then ran that ethernet cable through the roof through almost the entire house to our router from the internet and then plugged the cable into this power over ethernet switch which i connected to our main router, this poe switch provides power to the camera using just the ethernet cable, so i don't have to use a separate dc cable, then i connected the camera and then initialized, just scanned the qr code on the back to add it to my rio link account which took around 30 seconds.

I chose this camera because it's 4K and also because you can move the actual gimbal on the camera so it can give me a different view in the TV window so everything is set up and connected to my phone and we'll connect it to the computer once I have everything back together so I don't want the computer sitting on the floor so I'm going to build a pretty simple but pretty shelf to house it in the first video. I made this workbench and said maybe one day I'll make a video that goes into a little more detail and I guess that day is today.

I'm not doing a workbench on this, but the concept of what I'm doing here is exactly the same, just change the dimensions, so I started with some regular 2x6 framing lumber and just shrunk both sides about an eighth of inch. or you could definitely do this without a planer, you just have to spend a little more time sanding, but hey, I have a planer so I might as well use that, and the plans for everything I build in this video will be on my website free form. once the video is posted, with my first board cut to

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, i just took about a quarter inch off one side so i have a nice straight edge to start with the foreign track saw jig i use all over time.

I cut a couple boards to about two and a quarter inches a table saw would also save you quite a bit of time here if you like that because we're going to have to cut at least seven or eight in this width but I don't really mind using the table saw incision for most cuts, then I cut five pieces to 11 inches and then, with all the material for half of the shelf cut, I went ahead and started drilling some pocket holes with this pocket hole jig from Kreg, two odd holes on both ends of all five of the 11 inch pieces and then I used a half inch Forstner bit to countersink another couple of holes which will be used for some screws later, then I gave each board a nice sanding finish with 120 grit and then marked the shelf spacing on both of the upright boards and screwed each cross member with outer 2 1/4 inch pocket screws all the steps for the second side of the shelf to the actual shelves.

I'm using three quarter inch maple plywood and cut four shelves to 28 inches by 11 inches overseas, then after a quick sand around the edges I'm going to apply some edge banding. million times better its basically a thin strip of wood with some hot glue on the back and all you do is line it up with the edge of your board and use a standard iron to heat the start and then i just use a block to make sure it really sticks well and then work along the rest of the band with the iron. I do a few pieces a foot or two at a time and then rub it with the block to make sure it all sticks together nicely once I get to a corner I just snip it off with scissors that sticks out a bit then butt up to that edge with the next strip i cut the ends flush with a new razor blade then use this edge trimming tool to trim the overhang then i give everything a final sanding with a little 120 grit and these shelves are ready to go the exterior finish, so I've stained the shelves a bit and I'm going to paint the frame with some satin black interior paint and a couple coats with foam. the roller should make it weird but if you take your time and apply two or three very thin coats you get a very nice professional look in the end to finish off these shelves.

I am going to use a product that I use a lot called Monolayer Blonde. so basically you just strip a little bit on the shelf and then work it in with a white applicator pad and then after letting it sit for a couple of minutes I come up with a clean terry towel and wipe as much as I can this gives pretty much a finish perfect every time and looks a million times better than polyurethane finish its also pretty foolproof in my opinion and you can touch it as soon as its finished no need to worry about dry times or anything to assemble i just have to put four screws into each shelf through the countersunk holes we drilled earlier overseas and that's a pretty attractive shelf for about a hundred bucks of actual materials used and about a day's worth of work now with the computer ready to go and fashion Typical Gamer I'm going to play with a lot of LED lighting before I close this TV wall again, so this video is not sponsored by Govi.

I've never talked to them, but after a lot of research I found that they were the most customizable and had the most options for customizing and communicating between products, which is what I'm going to need for what I'm going to do, so I really wanted something that it could read the colors of the three TVs and then spit at the lights around the room where everything would be talking to each other, but apparently Govi ​​doesn't make a specific product for people who connect three TVs together that are the

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of a wall, can you believe these years, but do this T2? the backlight system usually puts these LED strips around the back of your tv and then you set up this camera that reads the colors that run along the edges of the tv and this little box on the back spits that data out to the led lights and then more or less spreads the color from the tv to the wall behind it's really cool so i just need to figure out how to turn this into something that works with my tv wall luckily govi has a feature called Dream View and that's where you use one of these cameras and instead of just sending the data to the LED strips on the TV it sends it to whatever Govi ​​device you want that you have connected to the Dream View system so my plan is to use two of these 16 footer strips to span both sides and the bottom of the TV wall so I used two different strips due to the number of zones you can program on each product on the Dream View system you can only set 8 different color control zones no matter the product so if I do one 32 foot strip around everything I would only have eight individual color control zones but if I do two 16 foot strips I would have 16 color control zones color that will make the colors align much better with the edges of the televisions.

I'm going to be installing this camera into one of the ceiling tiles so I used a hacksaw to roughly cut out the shape of the camera and then I 3d printed this little washer flange that goes to cover up the bad looking cut out and make it looks much more professional i just put a nice sized dc power adapter behind the tvs and this will power the camera and both sets of led strips after reinstalling the tvs i have to calibrate that camera on the ceiling then i set up the color zones for the strips and then i turn on dream view looks good right now but i really hate strong leds so im going to work on something to diffuse that light by the way i finally got a table saw for christmas , but I must say they still scare me so I ripped off some half inch MDF strips and glue them on these little L brackets so I was hoping these would take away the direct glare from the light and just be left with Ambiance but no i took reflection off the wall into account so i have these translucent led diffusion strips that come with a led channel i bought and that seems to work perfectly on diffusing this light onto something that looks great and that's all that matters so I hot glued these diffusers to the side of the MDF and then installed them flush against the outside wall like this neon look.

They got going, but now I have to do something about it. the bottom because it looks terrible so I just hot glued two of these diffuser strips together and made an l and then with a couple of hot glue tacks I just hot glued that right onto the cabinet and now it looks pretty similar to the side, so let's go all back together weird for a little more light in the room I have this Govi ​​floor lamp that I can also use to connect to the dream visualization system as I said before this video is not sponsored and all you see on it i bought it with my own money but there are affiliate links in the description below so if you see something you like like these cool led backlight systems use the links below and i'll get a small percentage back to me it will help make better and better content for you I need the lights in the room to be dimmed to pick up the colors more accurately, but once I figured it all out I couldn't believe how accurate the colors and zones themselves were.

It really is quite an immersive experience especially when playing video games or anything that has a lot of bright changing colors but I won't stop there thanks so I cut out a 24 x 32 inch piece of maple plywood and then I'll use this template 3D printed my brain logo for routing. through the plywood and make a signfunky backlit neon and yeah you guessed it it will also be part of the dream display system so I have this quarter inch flush fit bit that has a top bearing so I'm going to use this to trace around the jig and work my way through the wood and then theory would have worked great but this part was too thin for the amount of stress I was putting on it so I'm going to use one of these more typical quarter inch parts that relate to the bottom instead of the top, this isn't so ideal because I'll have to blind cut it from the bottom, but these parts are pretty foolproof and aren't really going to go through the jig without me putting in an amount ridiculous foresight but I actually ended up routing it roughly from the top not touching the jig at all and then trimming the edges from the bottom just so I could anticipate what was coming next for the sharpest points and lightning I just use my saw jig to square up those edges now that it's almost done apart from the tabs they hold so temporarily I just hot glued a couple of popsicle sticks to the outside back and then cut out all those tabsthen I can just tear out the template and chisel off any blobs of hot glue now i have to quickly move those popsicle sticks to the top and remove the ones on the back and then i have this old sheet of wood that i have covered in tuck tape so i'm just going to put a bead of silicone around the back of the logo and press it all over the tape.

I'm sure you've already guessed that I'm going to fill this with epoxy. and the epoxy won't stick to the tape so we can release it from the mold once it's hardened so I just have some molding epoxy I got from a local company called Rusty design and mixed it up to the recommended ratio and added some white powder from Mika. I added just enough to make it look white, but not enough to make it completely opaque so light can easily penetrate. I then put the epoxy in one of these seasoning applicators and started filling in the logo.

It works better here. just take your time because you definitely don't want too many spills or drips or anything weird. I got the epoxy basically to the edge and after a few hours it sits a couple of mils and hardens there too you want to clean up remove any drips if you have any before it hardens so it's easier to sand after a few days it's fully hardened so we can free it from the weird base now i just have to remove those popsicle sticks from the front and give it a good sandblast and then i took two half inch pieces of plywood and i'm just measuring around the logo to make a cut that's about a couple inches away from each outer logo point and I'm going to use one of the Govi ​​16 Foot Strip Light Strips again and then I'm marking an area to make a cutout for the roughly designed outer controller.

I'm going to glue those pieces of plywood to the main panel and hot glue the controller and all the excess wire in place so I'm just going around the perimeter of that cutout with the LED light strip now Govi ​​says that these lights can't be cut or you lose some functionality but i figured there's no better way to find out than to try it and after cutting it all seemed to work fine so i guess they can be cut so i just covered the whole outside with some strips of three inch wide half inch plywood and I let the whole thing hang down a bit because I'm going to cut this one flush shortly anyway and I installed this back panel with four screws to be an electronics access panel at any time later.

I actually removed this panel and it gave the sign a little exterior shine which was also cool so it's done. to you now it's very important here I tape this hanging power cord and then I cut all four sides about a quarter inch the size of the original panel now you may be fine with that edge as is but I'm going to install a two inch edge banding and the exact same method I did with the shelves earlier in the overseas video, then applied the same early American stain I did on the shelves and some Monaco Blonde to seal it.

The alien is ready to hang. in its final location so this sign also connects to the dream visualization system but actually i think it looks better with a little more intense movement but you can do both now this room is starting to take shape pretty sweet but it's still missing one vital thing so I'm a racer which is the type of video game I like to play when I play so I designed this racing sim cockpit which is made entirely of plywood so let's try building this, so I cut each piece for this. by hand and yes it took forever but it's not that bad a couple days of work but if I had a CNC this is a great business opportunity waiting for someone to take it wink wink I could really cut all the pieces what do you need. a sheet of plywood and then assemble it and the plans are there for free on my website so the first thing i made was this box which is basically the main base.

I just glued and nailed most of it, but the bottom panel I screwed on. that i can access this if i need to and i will need that the next piece i am marking is these adjustable foot rails that the pedal board will mount to so i measured everything manually and then cut the shape as precisely as i could with the jigsaw, I used a half inch Forstner bit to drill all of these adjustment holes. Now I need to duplicate this three times to have four pieces total and sadly copy and paste doesn't work here so I traced the board on another blank alien then cut slightly off the line with the jigsaw and then clamped the two pieces together and used the same quarter inch flush cut bit that I used on the side to exactly duplicate the shape of the first piece for all the fitting holes that I just drilled a little larger than the bit itself and then use the same flush cut bit to drill each hole to the same size as the one below it then i repeated this two more times for pieces three and four and then glued together two pieces two layers thick i use some stocking bolts inch to make sure the alignment is exactly right between the two pieces and I clamped them together now on the next piece so this piece will be the center bar that goes up between the legs and then holds the deck for the steering wheel and it will be a thickness of three layers, so using the exact same methods as the last piece, I cut the first piece and then cut the next two to exactly match one of the pieces. the front edge about a quarter of an inch this will be the middle layer and i made a notch for it so i can run the wires through this notch but it's not really that necessary, next i made the platform that the steering wheel will mount on and I'm just going to time lapse through this part because it's all the same as the last few pieces I cut foreign and lastly I made a platform for the pedals and finally that's all the pieces created so now it's It's time to assemble but first I'm sanding down all the laminate pieces and then I'm gluing those two legs to the base.

I screwed it in with a four inch long screw just to hold it in place and then I popped the bottom open and screwed it in from various spots with a bunch of two and a half inch screws then used a good size hole saw to drill out a hole through the base to allow the wires to run from the wheel and pedals to the base, then I attached the center rail using three two and a half inch leg bolts on both sides and put this little two and a quarter inch strip in between the two leg pieces then i can install the adjustable steering wheel bracket with two half inch bolts and the same with the pedal bracket each piece of this deck can be adjusted in both angle and position and should fit just about anyone As for a racing seat.

I wasn't sure what to do because the cheapest racing seat I could find was like at least a seven or eight. hundred bucks and i really wanted to build all the sim rig electronics and everything for that price to keep it at least somewhat realistic for just about anyone to build so i went to a local clearance store and found this gaming chair for 135 bucks, so i took from the base of the office chair and the armrests and then i'm building this box system out of two part plywood one piece that attaches to the bottom of the chair via the same tools Bowl with the i just removed the first base and another piece that connects to the base of the sim deck and the seat then connects to the deck with two 12 inch carriage bolts and has four angles to choose from one last touch before adding the electronics I just put these caster wheels mounted to the back of the base that way when you lift the nose it will drop onto the casters and make it easy to move with one person without a slot through the base so I can put my jigsaw on jig there and cut out an electronics access panel that's going to be underneath I glued a grip piece to both sides then drilled a finger hole through the main panel for the electronics I'm using the Logitech G29 racing wheel and the Pedals I chose this one because it's a good mid-level option and it has force feedback which was the main thing I was looking for meaning when you're driving in the sim you'll feel the wheel pull like you're driving a real foreign car .

The last step I go. to add some foot shakers to this rig to give it a real road feel so I have a large foot shaker and two of these mini Puck shakers all made by Dayton Audio and I'm mounting the foot shaker on the back of the seat and one of the discs under the steering wheel and the other under the pedals, so I can connect them to a speaker wire and use it to connect to this sound knob USB Audio Amplifier This is a two channel USB amplifier that I can connect to connect it my computer and then the computer will be able to send signals to these transducers to make the whole equipment vibrate according to what is happening in the foreign game, then I just had to quickly set the channels for vibration in Sim Hub, it's very simple set them up.

I'm not going to go into too much detail, but there's a video in the top corner right now that explains everything you need to know and now it's time to get to the races. Hey Siri, enter game mode. it's hard to show via video how much better the base shakers really make the experience but look how much this guy jumps this is all shakers movement and let's try some other foreign games so I think it's safe to say I'm a PC Gamer now ok the game is amazing on this the graphics card isn't that great so I had to drop the resolution to the next step lower but honestly it's still pretty light but the graphics card will still run anything you are not games on all three full screens at 4K resolution, the virtual window feature I made the whole first video on is now a million times better by being able to search for videos on YouTube and instantly show them full screen on all three screens, plus, got another step forward thanks to all the immersive lights i can also finally get my live window up and running so after i installed the real link desktop app i literally had to open it and my camera was already there because its on my local network, I removed some of the branding and the text in the video goes full screen and it's done.

I can also move it to change my view by about 180 degrees. This is probably the feature I use the most on a daily basis because every time I'm here I have this on so I can see what's going on outside because my other windows are under the shelf and it gets pretty depressing not having a view hence the first video. I'm also a sofa away from my own home theater. people ask all the time if the bars in the middle get in the way and honestly with a moving jar you don't really see them at all, they are more annoying when you're on desktop and cover some of the text but not a problem in my opinion problem so there you have it now you can do pretty much everything a normal computer can do with just a 130 inch screen like i said in the first video the first build cost about 2500 on tvs and a thousand dollars on others materials and all the materials for this video are around three thousand dollars the first video took a lot of heat for the price and I agree it's definitely not for everyone to be honest people spend that kind of money on stock vehicles four wheels or home theaters or cars that don't needall the time and wanted a window tv if you already have a good gaming computer it would also save you fifteen hundred dollars or more off that price if you wanted try building something out of this the plans for everything i built in this video are available from for free on my website and the links for all the products i use are in the description thank you so much for watching my video i put a month of effort into each just one so hit that subscribe button because you will want to see what i have next , thank you