For businesses running more than one rig
Commercial sim racing
Speccing one sim rig is a hobby problem. Speccing twenty is a purchasing problem: they have to be identical, the order has to be right the first time, and somebody has to know which bay has the older pedals in it. This is a free tool for that — build one rig, duplicate it across every bay, and calculate the whole room yourself, down to a parts list you can order from.
Open the rig builder → Calculate a room
Calculate a room
Calculate it per bay and multiply. A complete bay — rig, screen and PC — configured from consumer parts and bought at retail, before furniture, flooring, fit-out and the lease.
| Spec | Per bay, complete | 4 bays | 8 bays | 13 bays |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Entry Direct drive base, wheel and pedals in one bundle on a folding frame, a single 27-inch screen and a PC that will hold 1080p. What a pay-per-session bay can survive. | £1,450 £500 rig · £950 screen & PC | £5,800 | £11,600 | £18,850 |
| Standard Direct drive with a separate wheel and a three-pedal set on a cockpit. The sweet spot for most venues. | £2,100 £1,000 rig · £1,100 screen & PC | £8,400 | £16,800 | £27,300 |
| Load cell Load-cell braking — the upgrade that changes lap times and the one experienced customers notice — on a bigger screen. | £2,750 £1,500 rig · £1,250 screen & PC | £11,000 | £22,000 | £35,750 |
| Profile frame Aluminium profile and higher torque, stiff enough for competition and constant use, with a PC that will drive 1440p at a high refresh. | £3,500 £2,000 rig · £1,500 screen & PC | £14,000 | £28,000 | £45,500 |
Round numbers on purpose — a figure quoted to the penny for a room that does not exist yet is false precision. The rig part is what the rig builder prices exactly, from live retailer listings across 941 products and 77 brands, in pounds, euros or dollars. The screen and PC are estimates and are marked as such rather than folded into a total.
Turnkey, or configured yourself
Almost everyone selling into this market sells a finished simulator. Turnkey commercial units run from roughly £18,000 to £37,000 each, and the trade rule of thumb for a mid-range commercial rig sits around £2,200 to £3,700. The same bay configured from consumer parts is the table above.
That gap is real, and so is what you give up for it. A turnkey unit arrives assembled, on a commercial warranty, usually with a motion platform, and somebody else's phone number when a bay goes down on a Saturday. Speccing it yourself means you own the integration: you choose the parts, you check they fit, you build them, and you carry the support. For a venue with someone technical on staff that is a straightforward trade and the numbers are not close. For one without, it is not.
What nobody publishes is the middle of it — the actual parts list, priced, with the fitment checked. That is what this tool is. Build a bay, then duplicate it across the room.
The mistakes that scale
Everything that goes wrong on one rig goes wrong on all of them at once, and the order is already placed by the time anyone notices. These are the three that cost real money:
- Torque against the frame. A direct-drive base putting out more than the frame is rated to hold will flex under braking. On a home rig that is a disappointment; across a room it is a re-order of every frame you bought.
- Quick-release families. Wheels and bases are brand-locked more often than not. Buying the wheels and the bases from different makers because each was the best price is how you end up needing twenty adapters nobody budgeted for.
- Cockpits sold as universal. They are drilled for a fixed set of bolt patterns, and universal means the common three, not yours.
The builder holds a fitment profile for every product — quick-release family, torque, bolt pattern, mounting style, pedal plate, rig class — and checks a build against itself before anything is ordered. The fleet view runs that same check across every bay at once.
What the fleet view does
- Duplicate a spec across any number of bays, so the room is identical by construction.
- Track ordered against installed, so a part-built room is legible while it is being built.
- Spot drift — the bay that got different pedals after a repair, before it becomes the bay customers avoid.
- Check every bay at once with the compatibility engine, rather than one at a time.
- Export the costed list or an asset register, which is usually what finance asks for next.
Who this is for
Sim racing venues and arcades, esports arenas, simulator hire and event companies, karting centres adding an indoor offer, car dealerships fitting a showroom, universities and colleges running motorsport engineering courses, and corporate offices putting a rig in a breakout room. Anywhere the question is how many rather than which one.
Our own hardware, in quantity
We make the shift lights, gear indicators and marshal-flag displays that venues tend to want on every bay — they are the parts customers notice and photograph. Bulk pricing is published, not negotiated: 20% off ten units, 30% off fifty, on every product page. They are made to order in the UK, so a fleet-sized run is a normal order rather than a special one. See the products, or ask a question if you need something the pages do not answer.
Common questions
How much does it cost to set up a sim racing venue?
A complete bay configured from consumer parts — rig, screen and PC — runs about £1,450 at the entry end to £3,500 for an aluminium profile frame with load-cell pedals. A four-bay lounge is therefore roughly £5,800 to £14,000 in equipment, and eight bays £11,600 to £28,000, before furniture, flooring, fit-out and the lease. Turnkey commercial simulators, by comparison, start around £18,000 a unit. The rig builder prices the rig part exactly using live retailer listings across 941 products, and the fleet view multiplies it across however many bays you are building.
Is it cheaper to build sim racing rigs than to buy turnkey simulators?
Substantially, and the gap is not close — a complete bay from consumer parts is £1,450 to £3,500 against roughly £18,000 to £37,000 for a turnkey commercial unit. What you give up is real though: turnkey arrives assembled, on a commercial warranty, usually with a motion platform, and with somebody to call when a bay goes down mid-session. Speccing it yourself means you own the integration and the support. With someone technical on staff it is a straightforward trade; without one it is not.
How many sim racing rigs do I need to open a venue?
Four is the usual entry point for a lounge and is the lowest-risk way to test a location. Eight is the size at which a venue can run leagues, tournaments and private hires without turning walk-ins away, which is where most dedicated sites land. Thirteen or more is arena territory. Whatever the number, the thing that matters commercially is that the bays are identical — customers compare lap times across them, and a bay with different pedals is a bay people complain about.
What is the best sim racing setup for a commercial venue?
The one you can buy twenty of, repair quickly and keep identical. That usually means a direct-drive wheel base in the 8–12 Nm range on a stiff frame, a load-cell brake, and a single screen rather than triples — customers cannot tell the difference in a ten-minute session and it halves the PC cost. Avoid a spec built around one discontinued part: when a bay goes down you want the replacement in stock, not on a six-week backorder.
How do I cost a multi-rig build?
You do it yourself, in the tool, in about five minutes — that is the point of it. Build the spec, add it to a fleet, set the number of bays, and it produces the costed parts list at live retailer prices and exports it. There is no form to fill in and nobody to wait on. Our own hardware has its bulk pricing published on each product page: 20% off ten units, 30% off fifty.
Do all sim racing wheels and bases fit each other?
No, and this is the mistake that gets expensive at volume rather than at one. Quick-release families are brand-specific, cockpits sold as "universal" are drilled for a fixed set of bolt patterns, and a direct-drive base putting out more torque than a frame is rated for will flex it. Getting that wrong once is an annoyance; getting it wrong across twenty-five identical bays is the whole order. The compatibility engine checks every bay before anything is ordered.
What do sim racing venues, arcades and esports arenas use?
Overwhelmingly consumer hardware, bought in quantity, on commercial-grade frames — not the £30,000 motion simulators that dominate the search results. The economics only work if a bay pays for itself, and a £1,000 bay at a few sessions a day does that quickly. That is the setup this tool is built to plan.
Can I track what is installed in each bay?
Yes. The fleet view holds a build per bay, so you can see where a bay has drifted from the house spec — older pedals, a different wheel after a repair — and export the lot as an asset register. It runs the compatibility engine across every bay at once rather than one at a time.