Basement Sim Build... what has and has NOT worked..

[Opedog16]

Hello Forum! I am in the final stages of my basement sim build and only recently discovered this site. Oh, how I wish I had seen this a few months back. :-) My design is continuing to get tweaked as I use the room and discover what works and doesn't work, so by sharing my trials and efforts maybe there will be some tidbits here that could help the next person looking to DIY their sim.

We have a finished basement in our rowhouse and up until recently it was a rarely used guest room. As the ceiling is only 8'1" (every inch counts!) I hemmed and hawed if it would be worth putting in a sim. Finally decided to go for it and convinced the missus and myself it would double as a movie room and be totally worth it. Dimensions of the room are 20' long by 12' wide and ..as you know.. 8' high.

Working around the existing architecture was the first challenge. It has a wet bar area which doesn't come into play, but sliding glass doors at the other end which lead out to a patio. The initial design was to have impact screen at the wet bar end, however the stairs enter there and it seemed it would make the rest of the layout a bit awkward. After careful consideration, I decided to put the screen in front of the sliding glass doors. (I can hear the gasps as I type..) This was mainly so we could have a pull-out sofa as the opposite end. The ultimate goal of the room is Golf Sim, Cinema room, alternate guest room.

A few pics of the room in the initial clearing stages..





The retractable blinds in front of the sliding glass door made a good backstop for "testing" my swing room with foam balls...



And naturally, the TV needed to be hung in an optimal spot...

[Opedog16]

I had ordered my SkyTrak system back before Thanksgiving, knowing it would take 10 weeks or so to arrive. (More on Skytrak in a bit..) I researched many systems and without paying for a "new car" basically, SkyTrak was the most economical for what I had going on.

We painted up the walls to give the room a more cinematic feel and then I went to work running cables. I wanted as FEW cables visible as possible. This created a lot of stress and headaches, but ... I wanted a clean, organized look. Since drywall repair is not my forte, I tried to capitalize on the existing holes where the house speakers and can lights were located. The tricky part is that the joists run lenth-wise in the room, making it VERY tough to get wires cross-wise in the ceiling. Being a basement, I had no options to work from above. And being a rowhouse, I had no options to work from the other side of the walls. Also being a rowhouse, there's 2 layers of drywall, then a 2x6 frame before the adjoining unit starts. Well built, I must say.






TV got mounted first to give me some entertainment while working on everything else...



And the missus was a big help with installing the screen. I went with an unfinished, premium impact screen from Carl's place. I ordered a stock size (10' x 7.5' tall) to fit the room and give me a rough 4:3 aspect ration. What I didn't realize was that it wasn't going to be tall enough. I'll have a separate post on why this DOESN'T work well in a bit..

Because the screen was going to sit in front of doors, I chose to have it on a retractable roller. I ordered the roller and motor from METechs.com. It's a good product (some assembly required!) and took us a few hours to put up. I used gorilla tape to attach the screen to the roller and so far, so good! At first I was having a hard time justifying $350 for the luxury of having the screen be automated,.. but.. every time I push the button and watch it go up or down.. money well spent. :-) :-) :-)



To protect the sliding doors, I left the existing blinds in place and installed curtain tracks to go behind and around the sides of the screen. I ordered heavy-duty blackout curtains off Amazon and they work just fine. They will arrest the ball, however with force the ball still hits the wall. I don't have the clearance needed to give the curtains time to "react" on the sides. So.. shank curtains are definitely good.. but I will add some acoustic panels behind them. (Being a movie room this will be my excuse instead of saying I have a nasty slice at times.. :-) )





Mounting the projector was certainly a bit tricksy. As mentioned, I wanted as few holes as possible. I also wanted an HDMI to run from the laptop to the projector and from the TV to the projector. (In case I wanted to show tv content on the big screen. ) I ordered fiberoptic HDMI cables and it took me hours to run. Once I realized they were directional and I put once in backwards.. well.. the swearing ensued. lol.

Since projectors are not known for their sound, I figured I would use the existing house speaker system. I initially planned to blue tooth the sound from the projector to a yamaha receiver I also picked up for the room. After this was not working at the bluetooth transmitter failed to be recognized but the receiver, a light bulb went off in my head... WHY am I doing all this nonsense, running 3 inputs to the projector when I can run them ALL THROUGH THE RECEIVER???? So, pulled HDMI out from the ceiling, ran everything to the receiver, and then ran 1 HDMI to the projector. That was a time-costing mistake.. fortunately not a monetary one.




I extended the legs on my tripod so I could put my projector on top and find the optimal position for it vs the screen, throw distance, etc. Not the best setup, if I'm being honest. Having your projector wobbling up on top of the tripod while you walk around a dark room is a bit unnerving. Best to have someone stand in the hitting zone while you stand on a chair with the projector in multiple spots. :-)




Once the valance was up to hide the screen and curtain rails I opted for a strand of led rope light. For no other reason than to pretend to be fancy. I won't lie... I hardly ever use them. LOL!



At least with the screen, projector and audio equipment hooked up I could watch the playoffs while waiting on the launch monitor..



Even built a little club tray ...



The SkyTrak arrived SuperBowl weekend so it made Superbowl Sunday a lot more fun. My next post I'll start to go through my issues and learnings having used the room for a month, now..

[Instron4204]

Thank you for sharing your setup with photos. Looks amazing.

[Agolfman]

That's a great build...smart to get the SO involved and fully bought in!

One thing for down the road might be a projector with lens memory (essentially preset aspect ratio settings). I use this one, purchased used
(only 1080p, but enough) and is awesome, for my movie room. https://www.projectorcentral.com/JVC-DLA-RS45.htm

It looks like you're shooting a 4:3 image (does Skytrack use one or multiple aspect ratios natively?). But anyway, once you start watching movies, you'll get a variety of aspect ratios to deal with: widescreen, cinemascope, etc. Having presets for each size, with an automatic zoom to fill the screen is pretty cool. I have a garage Sim with a separate movie room, so I built a 2:35 screen and am very satisfied with its size (110") for both HD TV and widescreen movies.

The good news with switching from the receiver, which you've now discovered, is that you get a lot of flexibility for adding gaming platforms, AppleTV, etc into the mix as needed, as long as you have the HDMI ports.

Great build and enjoy!

[DavidU]

Love the Bills Game on the big screen!

[Opedog16]

Thank you all for the kind words. The project still has many tweaks to do, and a few questions I'll throw out to the forum down below...

Agolfman ... you landed on some very good points with the screen sizes and your setup sounds great! Do you have pics of your sim on here? I'll be completely honest.. when I first started this project, the movie portion was really not too high on my priority list. It was more of an "excuse" to justify a $5k+ room makeover. But there came a time when I found myself getting sucked down a "home theater rabbit hole" and browsing a forum similar to this one regarding home theaters. I am not an audiophile by any stretch and since the speakers in the ceiling were part of the original house build, I figured what the heck.. let's try and use them. And as you suggested, I was able to put the firestick in one of the 4 HDMI inputs on the receiver and life is so much easier since I started thinking outside the box. But we thoroughly enjoy watching movies down here, even if it's a 4:3. The firestick seems to do *pretty well* with that ratio, although it does come down lower than the screen and about as wide. However when a movie is queued up, the black bars on top and bottom are present and you soon forget about aspect rations, etc.



That being said..the screen is the BIG issue I have going on right now. As the screen doesn't go all the way to the floor (for the life of me I can't figure why I didn't order one taller!) I needed weight on the bottom to arrest balls easier and not have wrinkles for movie watching. I folded the screen over and stapled a hem, then slid 1/2" EMT into the sleeve. I initially covered this with a piece of PVC with a slit cut lengthwise to tidy it up and give it a finished look.




Well, the PVC became a very "bouncy" spot for balls and they went flying back by me when hit too low. And when using a 5 wood, for example, the impact on the lower part of the screen just pulled the staples out and the screen with it.

The next design I tried was using zip ties to secure the screen to the weighted rod. This had the same effect. I went back and made a new hem using a LOT of staple. Instead of covering the weighted rod with PVC, I used pipe insulation (foam noodles, basically) and then wrapped with white duct tape for a more pleasing look. Unfortunately, the staples still pulled out when balls hit low on the screen.






So, I've already resigned to the fact that I need a screen which comes to the floor and then some. I like the look of it being just "slightly" above floor level, mostly for when watching movies.. so I'm thinking I can still have the weighted bar attached to it, but when golfing this bar will be resting on the ground with a few inches of screen curled up around it and hopefully that will not put any stress on a hem.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this or does anyone have their screen not totally down to the floor?

I was originally going to get a finished screen with the grommet holes all the way around, however the people at Carl's Place said that if it's going on a roller the unfinished is best. (I guess the reinforced sides don't roll up too well.. )

Any feedback is greatly appreciated. The shorter screen at the moment definitely falls into the category of what does NOT work. Also, I've been placing padded tiles on the ceiling to eliminate the rogue high shots. I'll eventually extend these all the way down to over the hitting mat as my irons will sometimes kiss the ceiling if I do a proper follow though.

[GarnetGolf]

Why don’t you just drop the screen mount down and get a taller valence? That would give you a slightly wider aspect ratio which would be preferable for movies.

[Opedog16]

GarnetGolf ... I had considered dropping the screen down to make up the space. That gives a new set of hurdles. While certainly do-able, I'm trying to weigh out the options of time/effort/money spent.

A new screen with better dimensions means I have to disassemble the current screen, mount the new screen, then reteach the upper/lower limits of the motor. (That last one is easy enough.) So effort and time, it's about 2 hours of work I suspect. Money-wise, it's the cost of another screen... approx $600.

To lower the screen I have involves a new valance all the way around. Means new wood, more foam padding and presumably more material to cover it. Then remounting. It also means shimming the current brackets that hold the screen roller up. The bolts that hold the brackets are screwed into some rather large mollies on the other side of the drywall in the ceiling. (Naturally where the brackets fell there was no stud above them...) So if I back the bolts out too far they will slip out of the mollies and then I'll have to try and realign or put another mollie up there. Time and effort.. probably a day in total along with a trip to the hardware store and fabric store. Money-wise it's a better choice for sure.

So that certainly is a consideration, and one which may win out depending on my ambition level. The aspect ratio isn't really an issue for me so it's not high on my list of things to fix. The sim software displays great on the screen, and when it's movie time it works just fine. Maybe not up to snuff with a GREAT theater room but it's fine for our needs.

I appreciate the input on that option. My next step is to disassemble the failing bar and revamp. I have hit balls with no weight at the bottom and it does ok. The missus thinks I should just let it hang free. But if I worm-burn one, I feel like I'm asking for trouble.

[Agolfman]

So, here’s my build thread:

https://golfsimulatorforum.com/forum/build-your-own/enclosures/34771-starting-my-garage-buildout

Some changes, over six years
1. Upgraded to FS X2
2. Upgraded to 1080p Panasonic projector
3. Upgraded to iPad Pro
4. Upgrade to CCE mat
5. Added photo drop cloth to front of original netting

very happy with all of the above. I’ll post a pic of the movie room in my basement. That uses a fixed screen that I built from a Formica material popular on the AV forums. It’s hung with French cleats and very moveable to access my irrigation shut off valves twice each year. That’s built to a 2.35 aspect ratio, so I manage that picture with lens memory and zoom, all done from my JVC remote.

I think you have two tradeoffs, which you already know:
- Managing impact screen performance and appearance
- Maximizing picture quality for movies.

for me, I don’t think the impact screen for movies is good enough. We’re all seeing 4K quality on LCD/OLED displays and the image quality gap has never been greater with impact screens. If you’re going to watch a movie or 4K content, it might as well be great.

The way to think about these tradeoffs is probably to experiment. Here’s what I’d suggest for each:
- try un-weighting the impact screen bottom. You might find removing the staples gets you to your preferred length and performs better as it will have even less resistance in the mix to absorb impact better...if that doesn’t work, check out this thread.

https://golfsimulatorforum.com/forum/build-your-own/enclosures/282282-crisp-and-clear-picture-cloth-over-impact-screen

I added this cheap “front screen” and really like the result. Highly recommended.

- would you consider a second movie screen in front of your valance (or move the valence)? My first theater build had a Da-lite manual screen that I pulled down for movies and worked great. High quality screen and clean install. Retract when using the Sim. Case could be a ball magnet, but, might be able to protect it. Funny, I’ve had my old one listed on CL for months at $60 and no serious takers. I bet there’s a used one in your area somewhere. Cheap and easy to experiment with.

here’s a link to that model: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...213639ba886c97

wish I could be of more help, but this is the world of tradeoffs and accommodating compromise in more ways than we wish, such is the hobby.