Flight Commander Chair

My good friend recently purchased an X-Rocker Pro gaming chair as a replacement for his old computer chair. He found it to be very uncomfortable to use as a PC chair because you cant lean back in it while using the keyboard. It does work well when you lean back, however, so we thought "Why not turn it into a flight commander chair for playing Elite: Dangerous?". So we did. Here are our results.


If you want to try and duplicate (or improve on) our results, here is what we used:

Materials:
X-Rocker Pro Sound Chair (With stand)
x52 Saitek Pro Flight HOTAS
11"x36"x1" Solid sturdy wood. We used a $26 plank of Oak found in the Lowe's hobby wood area.
8x 1 1/12" long 6/32 countersink bolts and nuts.
14x 1 1/2" premium wood screws.
Flat black spray can paint.


Tools:
Drill
Jigsaw
Rotary Sander
Measuring Tape
Micrometer
3D Printer to print the foot we used to secure the joystick. You can download the file here.

Getting everything lined up and measured. Here you can see our mission essential liquid sustinance on the couch.

Cutting the first board out. We should have used a circular saw for this as the cuts would have been cleaner.

Cutting out the slot for the handle.

Test fit on the handle. It is quite snug.

And the sticks.

Sanding it down and adding a nice bevel.

Epic sanding.

Sanding complete.

Another test fit. At this point we also drilled holes for mounting the wood to the arms and the joysticks to the wood. I forgot to take photos however.

Painting it flat black to "match" the chair.

We measured the feet that come with the joystick suction cups and made a 3D model and printed it on my friends 3D printer.

We heated up the bolts on the stove and pushed them through. This method provides a stronger bond then trying to tap it with the bolt itself.

Comparison of the feet we made and the suction cup that comes with the joystick.

Test fitting the feet on the joystick. This was a little scary as we didn't know if they would break and get stuck inside. They held up well.

Test fitting the joysticks through the holes. Everything is lined up.

Screwing in the board to the handle. We tried to screw in 2 more screws from the side, but the handle seems to have a hard metal plate inside it and couldn't drilled through. 7 screws hold it well enough.

Joystick mounted to the handle.

Final product.

Its almost like you are sitting in the chair... And you have no legs.

Full setup. The immersion level with the Oculus Rift is incredible. The hand locations virtually match the ones in game.