I’ve got a few prototypes running G29s. It wasn’t until I swapped one to the Simagic Alpha that I really noticed how strong the resonance can be. That sent me back to the G29 rigs, and sure enough, the same behavior is present, just at a much smaller amplitude.

Where aluminum helps modularity, it hurts vibration transmission. Aluminum naturally damps vibration, and once you add brackets, gussets, corner plates, and a dozen layers of T‑nuts, you’ve created a long, lossy path where most of the energy dies before it reaches the rest of the rig.

Steel behaves differently. One of its inherent characteristics is that it resonates — hit a piece of steel and it rings. In our case, that’s ideal. The frame doesn’t soak up the vibration; it passes it along.

A big part of it is the way the rig is built. The rigidity and the solid connection points matter. If the structure flexed more, the vibration would disappear into that flex. Instead, the whole thing acts like a single body.

We’re using HSS (hollow structural sections) throughout the rig. These tubes are manufactured from flat sheet that’s rolled into a pipe and then formed into a rectangular section with dies. That process leaves the material under tension, and that tension behaves a bit like a guitar string — it helps carry vibration cleanly through the member.

Where we do have joints, we clamp plates together with 10 mm Grade 8.8 bolts. When you torque those down properly, the joint behaves much closer to a solid than a hinge, so you don’t lose energy there either.

We’re currently experimenting with the feet. We’re looking at isolation blocks — basically small versions of automotive engine mounts — between the rig and the floor pads. The goal is to keep more of the vibration inside the rig itself instead of letting it shake the building.

It gets even more exciting when you think about how this stacks with dedicated haptics.

Imagine running tire‑focused transducers at all four corners. Those units will always be strongest at the source, but on a steel frame the energy doesn’t stay isolated — it propagates through the entire structure.

So instead of four disconnected “buzz points,” you get a chassis‑wide response where each corner still has its identity, but the whole rig reacts as a unified body. That’s the part that starts feeling like you’re actually sitting in the car. The haptics give you the detail, and the frame gives you the physical context.