A New kinda gaming chair?
 

Hey there I'm Squarebox.co. I'm currently a high school student working in a engineering class on making a developing a product. I've thought about the idea of making a new type of gaming chair. I have some questions I would like to ask and I hope to get some answers back. Thank you for your time.

Questions

1.) What kind of gaming chair do you own, if you own one and what kinda probelms do you have with it?
2.) If you could have anything you wanted in a gaming chair what would it be and how would you use it?

I will add more questions later on as I need them. Thank you for answering if you do.

Re: A New kinda gaming chair?
 

office chair, ftw.

Re: A New kinda gaming chair?
 

^This is truth.

Re: A New kinda gaming chair?
 

As I don't use my kitchen table, I'm using a kitchen chair with my computer at the moment.

What I would like:
Cushy, but not so much that I sink into it and can't feel it.
Built-in warmer. That way I can leave the heating off and keep the ol' rig a few degrees cooler. =p
CUP HOLDER!

Re: A New kinda gaming chair?
 

Since all I have is just a really basic office chair, I'll say what my ideal gaming chair would be instead. It should be cushy, but not a material that will feel sticky in the summer when it's humid and my room is water. Heating, maybe, not really needed. I'd rather have a fan in the headrest or something keeping me cool. It should be sturdy, something I know will last a long time. A keypad or joystick in the armrest would be ridiculously cool, and a cup holder in the other. Bonus points for a mini-fridge ;)

A New kinda gaming chair?
 

I simply use a recliner. As for a cup holder, there is a lamp table just beside the chair. For a heater, a quilt is quite nice, and comfortable. The only addition you could ever need is a dog curled up at your feet. :nodding:

http://www.furnituredot.com/usrimage/336_recliner.jpg

Re: A New kinda gaming chair?
 

I use a old recliner as well. Its awesome, since i have my PC hooked up to my 32" HDTV its great for playing games, and when i'm done, i just have to turn it over to the TV and kick back in the recliner. I have a little square table set beside it for drinks, tv remotes, the mouse, ect...

Re: A New kinda gaming chair?
 

Your teacher will actually pass you for designing a chair to play WoW in...?

Re: A New kinda gaming chair?
 

I want an all in one wonder chair. By that I mean a tall backed bucket seat style task chair with adjustable headrest, adjustable arms, and adjustable flip up tray that holds a full size keyboard with area for mouse pad and mouse at it's side. The tray would swing up and snap sturdily in place to the arm opposite it's pivot side and be adjustable in height, distance and tilt.

The tray would swing down to the side of the arm where the pivot side is and be designed with adjustable clamps that hold the KB in place even when resting vertically in the swung away position. There would be claw like cradling device with adjustable arms that you could flip up on the right side of the tray that would lock into place to hold the mouse while the tray was stored at the chair's side.

This would be a quality chair with the old style lever and stop type tilt lock vs these modern cheap ones with a simple lever/rod and stamped hole. A hole that is invariably ALWAYS too large to actually keep the chair from tilting a bit. All the better if the stop were adjustable. When they wear even the old style ones can tilt a bit.

It would also have a spring tension tilt AND variable locking positions so that combined with the headrest and optional footrest, the chair could double as a movie watching recliner. The feet would be a sturdy five arm caster affair with locking casters. The chair would be leather with a durable mesh in the valley area of the bucket molding for ventilation.

The tray would also be sturdy enough to support an optional clamp on racing wheel, and here's a cool idea, the optional foot rest's pad would flip upside down where it's underside would allow an optional race pedal set to clamp onto as a platform. Storing it foot pad up would hide the pedals and keep the dust off them.

Re: A New kinda gaming chair?
 

To be honest, I think designing a modern, reasonably comfortable chair would be beyond the scope and timeframe of a high school project. To be perfectly honest, I'm pretty happy with my current chair, its only flaw being that the backrest tilt mechanism is completely screwed so it gives me absolutely no support when sitting upright whatsoever. Fix that, and you have a pretty good chair. Not perfect, but at least doable.

Re: A New kinda gaming chair?
 

If I wanted an all out gaming chair, this is what I would want.

USB, headphone/microphone jacks and an e-sata port on the side of the upper part of the chair. The chair is then connect wirelessly to the computer.

Have speakers in the top of the back/head rest, so I can turn my 5.1, into a 7.1 surround sound system.

Cupholder would be nice, but not super important. If there was one, make it cooled.

Have small, down-ward folding WASD gaming keys and and mouse pad.

LEDs draped over this bitch! That are then wired to games, so in crysis they change colors when you change nanosuit modes.

Thats all I can think of for now, get on that bro!

Re: A New kinda gaming chair?
 

I'm really liking all if not most the ideas you've guys been giving me. Thanks to everyone who's been given me ideas so far and please keep them coming. I've desided I'm going to be posting my progress through-out this time. This project is expected to be finished by sometime in May or early June. Thank you everyone.

Re: A New kinda gaming chair?
 

Hell, I'm gonna try putting some of the stuff I suggested into my own chair. Good luck bro!

Re: A New kinda gaming chair?
 

It was hard to tell from your wording (making a developing a product) whether they're requesting a full product, or will accept a shoddy prototype or just a well detailed drawing of the final design. One would think a high school class on such a subject would suffice with a detailed drawing or at the very least a shoddy prototype resembling the basic idea. Otherwise they'd end up with a lot of fully finished but very simple products without the resources a university would have. Then again some of the biggest money makers are simple ideas no one else has thought of.

Re: A New kinda gaming chair?
 

Sorry for my typo's. I ment I'm currentlly a highschool student making and developing a product. I'll make sure to look for typo's more offen.

Re: A New kinda gaming chair?
 

So you're actually going to make the chair as well as design it? To be honest, as I said before, that seems a bit of a tall order for a high school student in a single year.

:lulz:

Re: A New kinda gaming chair?
 

ok so i have a problem with typo's lol.

Re: A New kinda gaming chair?
 

And we only had 16 weeks to get customer input. (Photos, Buisness Cards, Interviews, Serveys.) The whole nine yards. I'm sure I can do.

Re: A New kinda gaming chair?
 

ok guys I got more questions.

3.) What do you think about the idea of a compartment to put your gaming rig in?
4.) What are your thoughts about a gaming chair with a internal cooling system?

Looking forward to the answers

Re: A New kinda gaming chair?
 

Sounds like this would be a $5-600 chair.

If thats the case, you've got an extremely niche market and the likelihood of it being successful is extremely small.

Re: A New kinda gaming chair?
 

In a chair? Seriously? You might as well stop designing a chair and start designing a VR Cockpit.

Kind of impractical. Why on earth would you want to put so much hardware into a chair that it needs active cooling?

Re: A New kinda gaming chair?
 

I think putting the computer in the chair would be rather troublesome. Chairs tend to move and spin, and having 50 different cables connected to a spinning, rolling chair tends to be not good.

Re: A New kinda gaming chair?
 

The typo was the obvious part, the vagueness is what's perplexing. A few of us here have asked or implied the complexity of whether you really are required to make a fully working finished product, and you haven't really answered that. Develop could mean developing plans for such a product, as many inventors do and have someone else manufacture it.

Re: A New kinda gaming chair?
 

Computer compartment in chair:
No. For so many reasons. Gaming chair, implies customers with powerful computers, implies big computers, implies big compartment. Bigger case comes along? Compartment's useless.
Gaming rig implies hot rig, compartment implies airflow restriction, implies hotter than necessary rig, bad.
A lot of gamers like visually appealling cases, hiding that away in a chair might not be a selling point.

Cooling system:
You've got my idea backwards! Cool yourself in a hot room. Why not have the room cooler - along with your rig - and keep yourself warm?

I don't like the in-chair audio idea. Sound-wise, the speakers would have to fit with your existing setup, and there are too many different ones to garantee a universally useable system.

I like the idea of a headset jack, maybe have some sort of integrated mic instead?

Also, I agree with Omen's post. If you could provide some evidence of what you've put into the project already - concept drawings, research, etc. - that would prove that you're serious about this, and promote more thoughful, detailed responses.

Re: A New kinda gaming chair?
 

Ok this is so everyone here is on the same page. This whole point of this project is to learn about the design process. Identify, Gather, Research, Analyze, Decide, Implement, and Feedback. We Identify a problem, Gather information about the problem, Analyze it, Decide how to fix the problem, Implement our way to fixing the problem, and then get Feedback on how well we did about fixing it. My problem was how to make a gaming chair better. (Not actual Problem Statement.) Right now I'm getting the Consumers Voice, (Calling Businesses, Surveys, Visit Stores, Interview, etc...) After I get this I move onto the next step which is designing. We do not have to patent this product for the school is not going to pay for patenting out product, but we have to do it as if we was going to patent it and learn the process how to. I do not intend to patent and sell this design. (Could in the late future.) This is just a high school project for my Engineering class.

Re: A New kinda gaming chair?
 

You still have yet to answer the essential question we keep asking: Are you actually going to construct this chair?

Re: A New kinda gaming chair?
 

It sounds like it's more about studying a certain type of product in a given market niche and coming up with a better design, than about actually making a product.

You certainly could have been more precise and used better word structure though. Perhaps pay attention more in English class where they teach you how to actually use paragraphs.

If that's the case, part of your problem is going to be that the gaming chair market is a very small and specified one. That is due largely in part to most console gamers not really requiring a specific chair due to gamepads being flexible enough to use anywhere, and conversely PC gamers tend to require a desk for the KB.

There are a lot more race game specific gaming chairs made than general "gaming chairs" per se. I HAVE seen a non race game gaming chair by Playseat, but in reality it's just a bucket style office chair with small platforms in front of each arm rest for a joystick or keypad, so even it is race/flight oriented.

Playseat America

Do some checking and you will find you bit off quite an insurmountable project if you plan to design a generic gaming chair that facilitates all types of games via anything more than mere built in speakers. You'd basically be reinventing the gaming chair market were you to add any other features because currently no such product really exists.

http://www.videogamechairs.com/video.../xrockerii.cfm

http://www.videogamingchairstore.com...isource/Detail

The best product of such type I've seen is the Playseat Elite Office/Gaming chair. If you use KB/M you'd basically be using a gaming keypad on the left instead with your mouse. It's claimed to somehow support center mounted racing wheels too, though I've yet to see how. I've seen no optional wheel attachment for it on their site. Cheapest I've seen them is $587 online and $599 at Wally Mart. It doesn't even have leather upholstery either, it's just a synthetic leather made of vinyl.

http://www.atgstores.com/products/?t...888023&af=1761

Re: A New kinda gaming chair?
 

Yes I am constucting this chair. Once we have the designing step done.

Re: A New kinda gaming chair?
 

If that's the case, I'd love to see pictures and the like. As I said before - concept drawings, sketches, models - all of that would make it more interesting.

Re: A New kinda gaming chair?
 

It's going to be a monumental task then, esp for a high school project. Might I suggest you pick one feature other than built in audio, even if it's peripheral mounting like Playseat does with the Office Elite, and try and improve on it in some small away or offer a feature that is different and less expensive product overall. It is very hard just to determine what features would be most desired, along with pricing on such a product.

IMO the Office Elite could definitely be improved upon and made more cost effective by just offering a different left peripheral platform that would have a KB mount that swings inward and clips to the right platform, along with making the base and peripheral arms out of something less expensive than aluminum.

With their chair you are stuck having to use keypad and mouse or joystick and yoke and despite some being fairly elaborate, keypads never can replace what you can do with two hands on a KB, such as in a game like NFS Hot Pursuit 2010.

The chair could further be improved by adding a socket for an optional steering wheel mount to the front middle underside of the seat like other models of their chairs do. I found out btw it is NOT the Office Elite that has such a feature. The chair that does is $500, but has no peripheral mounts on the arms.

Re: A New kinda gaming chair?
 

Sorry I haven't been on in a while. (Spring Break and all) I'm back now and I've started working on the design on the chair. I have concept drawings done that I'll post and soon and there digital. Works been slow, but we've covered alot of ground on how I'm going to do this. Thanks guys for the support and advice. I really need it. lol. Thanks.