NLR V3 Motion Platform

Works well with one car but as soon as I have more than 1 car on the track it seems to interfere with the signal causing random vicious shaking in the platform. Not sure whether this is BeamNG problem or NLR problem. It seems the Motion Platform is being sent all the data from ALL the active cars at the same time. A real shame as it means I have to turn the Motion platform off to take part in any chase or race.

 

You could try contacting Jeff Favignano and asking him. He seems to have gotten it working fine:

 

Thanks for the reply. I have already raised a support request to the manufacturer Next Level Racing and they re investigating this for me. BTW let me say how much I am enjoying the "great physics and driving reality of BeamNG. I have all the usual sim racing "games" but since I bought BeamNG I haven't been using them
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I have already mentioned it to Jeff and he is having the same problem as me. In that video he mentions that the motion platform is killing him

 

I just setup my V3 Motion Platform today and I'm having the same issue. Have you found any workaround?

 

No sorry NLR replied as follows-

"I've checked with our engineer on this and it looks that there isn't anything in game API that lets us check if the data comes from the player vehicle or from another vehicle. This appears to be a Beam NG issue currently"

 

One has to download the software "Next Level Platform Manager" and in that software it gives you a list of profiles for different games. You have to select the one for BeamNG then it comes up with some dialogue box saying it's modified a Lua file within BeamNG (from what I remember). So it seems like it does modify some of the game's files. I'm also getting the data out through UDP going to a different computer for a different purpose and that has no problem differentiating between the player vehicle and other vehicles spawned onto the map.

I've emailed the manufacturer as well hoping for a solution. It's pretty important as I'm using the platform and the game for a specific purpose and I need multiple vehicles spawned in at once.
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Also your offices are in Bremen right? It's a bit of a journey but we have our motion platform set up in our office in Berlin if you ever want to test it out.

 

Here's a wetransfer link to the motionsim lua:
https://we.tl/t-dwX2UqehrL

Unfortunately I can't link you to the software as it's behind a paywall on their website, they require you to enter your product's serial number in order to download it. If you think it would help I could email you the installation files I downloaded from their site so you could take a look at the software yourself.

 

If there is a less "destructive" way/software to hook the motion platform up to BeamNG that wouldn't modify BeamNG files I'd be interested in that as well.

 

this is interesting. always wondered how a motion platform would run with multiple vehicles. gonna keep an eye on this thread.

 

Short Update.

I got an email response from Next Level Racing after making them aware of the issue.

This was their answer "Our team has worked on a fix for this recently which can be seen as resolved inside our latest platform manager version that will be released very soon."

They also sent me a download link for the latest version. This completely fixed the issue. I still believe that the MotionSim lua is being modified but now I can run the motion platform while several vehicles are spawned in a map without any issues.

 

Wow, good to hear! that was some quick progress!

 

I am now on the December 2021 Update of BeamNG and cannot get the NLR Platform to work at all. What do I set the address to in the Options in BeamNG. 127.0.0.1 and then what for the sub address. Any help appreciated

 

Hi I'm considering purchase same NLR V3 platform as yours only for BeamNG, I would like to ask you:
Is it working correctly now after final BeamNG update? Can you feel road surface with motion platform?
is it working with car mods? Is it different motion feeling for different car mods?

I will appreciate answers regarding these topics, because can't find any information on internet. Thank you in advance

 

Yes it works correctly now. The team at NLR provide excellent support. They gave me access to a beta version of their software to test and then a couple of weeks later the beta was released.

The NLR V3 Platform comes with a program called "Platform Manager". The program allows you to easily create parameter sets for a Sim. In fact you can create many "sets" for a Sim. So you can if you like create a different "set" for each car and activate the matching set when you drive the car in BeamNG. In practice I only create 1 or 2 "sets" for a Sim. I only have 1 "set" for BeamNG.

The parameters are of 2 types :- Motion and Special effects (SFX).
Motion effects are for tailoring the amount of Lateral, Vertical, Horizontal G-Forces; Bumps intensity; Weight Transfer and Drift forces.
SFX are for vibrational things like Rev Limiter, Gear Change, and Wheel Slip effects.

Unfortunately at present BeamNG only has Motion effects not SFX. I think this is because up until recently BeamNG Telemetry has not been sufficient to enable these effects. However I can see that in the latest version BeamNG has improved Telemetry data so, hopefully, NLR support should improve as more people use the platform with BeamNG.

So you can appreciate from this that you cannot vibrationally feel the road surface. I use a ButtKicker and 4 Daytona pucks together with SimHub's Bass Shaker support to implement these sorts of effects together with Engine vibrations, braking effects and the like. I use this Bass Shaker support to provide these effects in all the Racing sims I use. The NLR Platform Manager has got shaker (Tactile) support but I find that SimHub (DonationWare I think) is much better. In some Sims I use both SimHub and NLR Tactile (SFX) support.

I have had the NLR V3 for a few years now and their technical software support is excellent. The unit has been totally reliable, for which I am glad as I am in the far south of New Zealand and getting something repaired on the unit would be a logistical nightmare.

I hope this answers your questions. For me this was a large expense and perhaps at the time difficult to justify, but I am really happy and satisfied with it.

 

@JustPlayingNZ thank you very much for such detailed answer. I just wanted to be clear because not that much information regarding NLR.
Regarding vibrational road feeling I just want to be clear - does NLR provide tactile feeling for road pathholes and bumps, or just G forces? Regarding vibrational feeling like gear change, engine revs I have Buttkicker and Simhub. But it's not working properly with BeamNG, can't feel any bumps or engine revs, only simulated road texture which does not represent road surface at all ( I supose this topic for another thread).

 

Understand I am just a user of the platform not a support person for NLR Maybe if you email Matthew at ‎support@nextlevelracing.com and mention that I (Tony Bew) passed on his name to you he might get some more precise answers to your questions. I have found him to be very helpful.

In answer to your first question - as I understand it, NLR provides feel for bumps but not via "Tactile" effect. It is more of a vertical G-Force effect called "Bumps Intensity".

Your remarks regarding Buttkicker and Simhub are interesting. I recently set up my Butt Kicker and shakers for BeamNG and I seem to get all my effects OK. Certainly I get Engine vibrations fine. I tried to upload a file here. (change .txt to .siprofile and it should work)

NLR might not be trying hard enough to get BeamNG working fully. They have a LUA script which they "plug" into BeamNG. I am not sure if this has been revised and how closely they have worked with BeamNG on it. However, I notice that in BeamNG December update BeamNG now provide a "MotionSim" output to a port which NLR is NOT using (they still use the LUA Script). This is in addition to the "OutGuage Support" port that SimHub uses. I don't know what data is passed on "MotionSim" port but maybe BeamNG can help there?

Anyway there looks to be plenty of scope there for NLR to improve their support for BeamNG in the future. I have found them responsive to suggestions in the past.

 

Hi. You were right. Only the Simulated Road Texture is working. I had been fooled by mainly running on Hirochi track which has good force feedback kerb textures in it. The force feedback is so good I didn't think too much about where the bumps were coming from. I have recently downloaded Spa and Nordschleife and these conversions of Assetto Corsa tracks don't have proper kerb textures as Assetto Corsa works differently. Consequently I find these tracks very flat (good but flat). So I suppose the answer to your question is that at the moment I don't think you can get what you want. How this will improve in the future I don't know but hopefully it will.
I suppose it's possible that BeamNG is providing the data but neither NLR nor Simhub are taking advantage of it. Maybe SimExperience or some other software might work better but I haven't seen anything on the 'net to indicate this.