Sometimes you just gotta hit "submit payment"

[Toonces]

I suppose this thread goes here and not somewhere else...

Anyway, my mom is coming out to visit in October.  We have one small room in which my computer, aquarium, and books reside right now that will double as our "guest room".  Thing is, in order to fit a hide-a-bed couch thingy in here I have to get rid of my huge L-shaped desk I've been dragging around for the last 7 years.  No big deal, it's been completely destroyed over the last several moves and I was able to claim it for its full replacement value on my move out here.

As I said back on Wargamer (I think), I got the thumbs up from Mrs. Toonces to get an Obutto gaming cockpit as my replacement desk.  Well, I procrastinated so long that now they have a new one out called R3volution or something to that effect. 

I priced them out and was going to go with the standard cockpit until I calculated it all out and, with shipping and the accessories the R3volution was only about $100 more.

I add to cart, put in my shipping info, calculate...and almost barfed.  Close everything out, go do something else, come back, do it all again, leave again....this goes on and on.  Finally, realizing that this could go on all day, I just close my eyes and hit submit payment.

It stung, but the pain has already faded.  Sometimes you just gotta stop thinking about it and just press the little left mouse button and be done with it. 

So, I have a R3volution with flight accessories shipping out and should be here in a week or so.  Might be a decent review for Grogheads, we'll have to see.

Way, way more expensive than I was looking to spend, but I guess I just got tired of dicking around with it.  I just hope I love it as much as I think I will.

Let's see if this works:





http://www.obutto.com/gallery_r3volution.html

[Toonces]

Now, don't tell anyone, but I am hoping that Santa brings me a Warthog HOTAS to flesh this bad boy out around Christmas time...

[TheCommandTent]

Dude that is seriously awesome.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

Can you adjust the position of the joystick and throttle and move them onto the sides of the chair?

[Toonces]

From what I understand, everything is completely adjustable.  In fact, the R3volution supposedly incorporates all of the customer feedback from the original cockpit making the R3volution a true working/gaming desk where you can push and pull the needed components in and out.

To be perfectly honest, I didn't research this nearly as much as I probably should have for as much as it cost.  But the feedback on SimHQ for the original cockpit was so overwhelmingly positive, and the consensus seems to be that the R3volution improves upon the original in every way, that I just took a leap of faith on it.  I mean, what was the alternative?  Go to OfficeMax and get yet another particle board computer desk that a) doesn't do flight sim gaming well and b) gets destroyed as soon as I have to disassemble it when I move again?  Been there, done that, and hopefully this new desk is a bit more indestructable than the pressboard crap I've been using the last 20+ years...

[LongBlade]

Gratz! That looks awesome. Let us know how you like it.

[MIGMaster]

You bastard !  ;)

[Martok]

Damn.  I just got wood... 

[bob48]

I'm just so green with envy...that is seriously nice kit......Oh, I hate you, BTW :-))

[Toonces]

Shipped today...looking good for arrival pre-weekend!  W00t!

Thanks for the kind words; I'll be sure to let you know how it all works out. ;D

[Bison]

Nice seat Toonces.  This will of course come back to haunt you at some point when the missus wants something.

[Arctic Blast]

Holy crap! I think we're obligated to worship you now.  :o

[Staggerwing]

I sense another Vimeo upload on the horizon.

[Toonces]

Got everything set up...finally.  Initial installation was 4.5 hours (beer free) and then another hour to adjust.  There is a lot of customization available so after everything was together it took a while to move things around to find the best fit.

I spent the better part...no actually all...of today transferring the computer and peripherals over, plugging everything in, then unplugging, moving everything around again, etc.  That was about another 6 hours of work.  I'm fairly pleased with where the cockpit is set up, but I still haven't found a sweet spot for how to set up the controllers. 

Overall my feelings on the cockpit are mixed.  I'm not going to say I dislike it but there are definitely some aspects to it that I don't like that were not apparent in the web advertising.  For example, there is simply no way to mount a stick and have the keyboard/mouse tray move in and out.  Also, I don't see any way to keep a stick mounted full time- you can't use the keyboard with the stick set up from what I can see.  And, I simply cannot find a perfect position for the stick and throttle; no matter what one arm is stretching a bit more than my comfort zone.  Granted, I'm 5'4" so this stuff isn't catering to someone as short as me, but still...

I'm going to try to write up a mini-review for you guys so I don't want to say too much now.  I haven't even gamed on it yet, so I'm going to take a break and fly some BMS Falcon and see how it feels doing what it's supposed to do.   More later!

[Bison]

Give it time brother man and break that bad boy in.  I'm sure you'll figure out in time how to adjust it to fit your needs comfortably.  I find that it always takes me months to really get used to new setups.  Unrelated but the wife a few years ago bought me a new lazyboy.  I really did not like it the first few months, but then it just started to feel right.  I figured out how to setup my laptop and mouse into a comfortable position and I ended up neglecting my desktop rig for several weeks.