ok so after many months of wondering and wanting to build an H shifter, i think itll prolly be easiest and pretty cool if i go build a shfiter from a joystick and use the FFshifter program or virutal H shifter but i have a few questions if anyone can help.
1st. what is the difference between the FFshifter
http://forum.rscnet.org/showthread.php?t=214673
and the virtual H shifter
http://forum.rscnet.org/showthread.php?t=232514
is it just that the FFshifter program supports the FF so it can stay in one place and the virtual H shifter just assigns buttons to a specific point onthe axis (hope this makes sense)

2nd. does anyone have any cheaper joysticks they recommend to buy? i dont want to spend alot on somehting im going to take apart and build a shifter from. also with the joystick, is all the modding im doing to it jsut replacing the actual stick itself with something that would fit the H gated shift plate?

3rd. i was planning to buy a real shift knob and attach that to the joystick shifter, but i wasnt sure what i would need to buy so the shift knob would fit. can anyone help me on that? i dont kno the diameter or whatever that a real shift knob requries to fit onto a stick.
thanks! hope i made sense

Quote from immense :

is it just that the FFshifter program supports the FF so it can stay in one place and the virtual H shifter just assigns buttons to a specific point onthe axis (hope this makes sense)

I've never used that H shifter program but "FFShifter" is for FF joysticks and that "H shifter" is for non-FF joys. So basicly yes.

i think that the ffshifter simply comands the FFb of the stick to push in one direction. if u can manage to block an nonffjoystick into place on the gear botton's spot (so that its pushing the botton continuasly) it will work. i've just got myself a momo and started to make an h-shifter, so i documented myself a bitt

Quote from immense :

2nd. does anyone have any cheaper joysticks they recommend to buy? i dont want to spend alot on somehting im going to take apart and build a shifter from. also with the joystick, is all the modding im doing to it jsut replacing the actual stick itself with something that would fit the H gated shift plate?

3rd. i was planning to buy a real shift knob and attach that to the joystick shifter, but i wasnt sure what i would need to buy so the shift knob would fit. can anyone help me on that? i dont kno the diameter or whatever that a real shift knob requries to fit onto a stick.
thanks! hope i made sense

I bought a Logitech Force 3D for about $35, removed the entire handle, attached a hollow aluminium rod to the small plastic stick that remained, and finally a shifter knob on the alu rod. No idea about measurements, i used what i could find and the knob came with alot of different thingies for attachment, one of them happened to be almost perfect. Made the shift plate from an old pc power supply housing. Very happy with how it turned out, and the performance/feel of the ffb coupled with ffshifter, less happy with my performance racing with clutch and the shifter

Only annoyance is that i have to re-fit the additional buttons from the handle (fire etc.) to calibrate it, as the driver doesn't want to finish if i haven't pushed all buttons.

I also have the Logitech Force 3D and it's definitely great.

Though there seems to be a problem with the attachment of the y-axis potenziometer. I read in the rsc-forums that in some cases the y-axis-informations becomes "shaky" in all left positions due to a bad construction. I noticed that myself. It practically means that you push the shifter in top left position, but because of an electrical error the joystick measures that you are in top center position and the FFB-shifter software puts you into third gear.
I still have to think about a solution for this. Propably a good shifter-plate would solve this because I wouldn't need to use the absolute top left anymore.

Vain