I'll try to mod the iron sight view by rewire one of the button on sharpshooter to a custom build button at the stock. When you push the stock against the shoulder, you will press the button and enable iron sight view.

To turn wired USB device into Wireless USB, you can try out below solution. Just need portable battery pack to power up.
http://reviews.cnet.com/networking-and- ... 67513.html

Pierreyes idea of putting a button on the stock sounds the easiest to implement, nice concept. I was thinking of doing something slightly similar with reload, by putting a button on the bottom of the 'magazine' so I have to 'slap' the magazine to reload.

Wireless USB Hydra etc would be awesome. I wonder what latency is added by the wireless tho?

I have used the 3rd space gaming vest and I'd recommend it as a good addition to any FPS VR setup, however it has a compressor so unless you put a battery on it and put the compressor in a backpack then you will be limited by cable/airhose length for moving around, also their game support is limited, Battlefield Bad Company 2 is listed as supported but I could never get it to work with either the steam version or stand alone version so I'm not sure if BF3 will be supported, works good on MW2 and Black Ops though, definately adds a sensory immersion and a bit of tension to FPS (i.e you find your self wanting to avoid getting shot a lot more than with out it on even though the "hits" are not painful at all) I really wish the TN Games ewould add support for ArmA II as that seems to be the best game for VR FPS with its seperate head tracking capabilities.

@Pierreye
Yet another great idea man! the button on stock for scope aiming is nice.
I also had a similar Idea for making a seperate pistol controller and rifle controller and putting a button on the back of the trigger grip of each so that when I grab out the pistol it auto changes to pistol in game and when i pick up the rifle again it auto swtiches back in game.

@James
I think GlovePie supports up to 4 Wii Remotes on one PC now so for those that want go hard out can have one for Rifle, one for Pistol one for head and one for mele (kick or punch)

There is a wireless version of the Hydra distributed to some developers. I think originally it was supposed to be wireless and there were issues with latency, so they made it wired. Really doubt they will make a wireless version anytime soon. I bet they are sitting on a fat stock of the wired ones.

Is that Aura Interactor any good? I always wanted one, but never got around to getting it. Seems really cheap on eBay, I may get one even as a collector's item. I do have the 3rd Space Vest. It actually works really nice, sometimes even too intense, but not many games support it. Even the games they claim work don't. I've only gotten COD2 multiplayer (not even singleplayer) to work. Would be great if it actually had some sort of support.

The interactor is pretty basic, but for adding some immersion for < US$15 (lots of cheap ones on auction) its pretty decent. Hell, even the power adapter is probably worth more than that . I wouldn't get one for the vest, but if you mount it to a chair, or your foot pedals etc, it definitely adds some immersion.

I might buy another one if i see a cheap deal come up, i think a few would be good for my simpit

I can confirm that the 3rd space vest works on COD MW2 Multi and Single Player, Black ops did stop working when a major game update came out but started working again after the latest driver update for the vest came out, so there is some support but not much, I can only assume that Bad Company 2 did work then a game update came out that stopped it from working and TN Games never got around to fixing it yet. They are also never answer emails in my experience. I really hope they support BF3 for the vest

@Cyber
did you try it with HalfLife2?

Sorry, yeah it worked for Half-Life 2 as well. But thats about it. I'm think COD:MW1 might be a good choice for my upcoming setup. The Vuzix driver supports both stereo and headtracking (pitch/yaw) and its supported (maybe) by 3rd Space Vest. Would love if I could get something like L4D supported though.

Also, I've made some progress on my mouse-emulation head-tracking driver:

http://hillcrestlabs.com/products/frees ... engine.php

Has anyone actually used the Freespace motion engine and Freespace trackers? sounds like it could be a good option

I asked this also. Someone in the past said this (Link Below) was a very good tracker for headtracking and hand tracking I think.

http://www.hillcrestlabs-devstore.com/s ... h-1/Detail

Not wireless but maybe in combo with the trackers this could help if worn on your off hand...?
http://www.amazon.com/PEREGRINE-Wearabl ... _e_title_1

This to:
http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Reality ... =pd_cp_e_4

Looks like 3rd vest is no go for me. I don't think carrying a air compressor would be feasible. I had make up a list of items needed for 360 degree freedom gaming.

1. HMD = Sony HMZ-T1 (need to find a way to supply DC voltage through portable battery pack.
2. Gun = Wii Sharpshooter
3. Wireless HDMI = ASUS WAVI (just send an email to them asking about 720p 60hz 3D support). 12V 2A DC IN (24w).
4. Portable Battery Pack = PowerStream Universal Li Ion Battery Pack Industrial version. For ASUS WAVI, based on the capacity should be able to provide the power for 2.5 hours. Get the industrial version because it come with higher capacity battery. Plus I choose PowerStream because of build in IC regulator so that there is no sag in output unlike normal rechargable battery. Need 2 units. One for HMD and another for ASUS WAVI.
http://www.powerstream.com/PST-MP3500-I.htm

Anything else?

@pierreye
the compressor is very small probably about same size as SONY HMD control box but twice as thick and maybe you can use one of the Wireless USB on the Wavi for the vest data but cant be sure about that, I can check the compressor voltage when I get home but I am sure is quite a low input, only thing is its noisy but I find its not to bad when I use hadphones with it (and I have open type headphones so with sealed head phones like on SONY HMD then you shouldn't really be able to hear it), plus you can attach a bag to the vest to carry control box, batteries and HMD control box. I will be using the vest like that in any case for my setup

Also another thing to consider if you want to be able to feel explosions and rumbling environmental effects then you can (depending on your space availability) setup a platform like the one pictured in this thread:
http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=120&t=13327&p=62318&hilit=platform+vr#p62318
and attach a ButKicker Gamer or ButtKicker Hometheatre to it and it will feel like the ground is shaking when there are explosions etc.

I guess it really depends on how hard out you want your setup to be

I would use this battery instead:

http://www.amazon.com/Energizer-XP18000 ... B002K8M9HC

It has a LOT of capacity for the price, and can put out a lot of power. The 5V output is limited to 500ma, so what I did was buy a 12v to 5v switching stepdown regulators.

@3dvison: I'm thinking the Hillcrest may be the best option as a head-tracker on the HMZ-T1. Though I've never used it or the software, seems legit.

Also, the Peregrine is NOT a data-glove. It can only be used for macros and things like that (e.g. touch your thumb to your middle finger). It doesn't track motion, or bending. It just has contacts on special parts (like the tip of the thumb and fingers). Pretty much useless for VR, except it does look cool.

The P5 glove has nice finger bending tracking, but the motion/position tracking is wonky. I never got it to work quite right. At times it was cool, and some of the demos were nice. But it is a little limited. No where near what something like the Razer Hydra provides. But again, it looks really cool. Probably worth $50 just to try it if you are into VR.

Fakespace disagree!

http://www.inition.co.uk/3D-Technologie ... nch-gloves

Ok, well I guess you can still call it a data-glove, but it is not what you think of from movies.

@machine - Thanks for the info. Thanks for your help to find out the voltage requirement for 3rd Space Vest. I just check their website but currently they only have XL size. I need M size. The VR pod looks nice and that give me another idea. If we can build something like the VR pod but with a full circle at waist height (maybe buy some hula hoop to hack up a VR pod). Then we can mount four large button on our waist at front, left, right and back. Think of us as one giant joystick. Then tie a wiimote to one of the leg for sprint and jump action.

@Palmer - I check out the energizer battery manual but it mention the 9v-12v output is in 10.5v 2A. Do you think it will work for 12v 2A requirement for ASUS WAVI. I can't work out the calculation for the capacity based on the product spec. Let's say for 24W requirement (12v, 2A), how long would the battery last?

@pierreye: The hula-hoop thing is not a back idea. Maybe instead of pushing buttons, there are ropes attached that pull the buttons. May allow for better movement.

@cybereality - I'm thinking about button on the body will provide freedom in orientation as it doesn't matter where your direction is.

Yeah, that makes more sense. Ideally we could do the same thing using positional trackers for a much cleaner setup.


Made some progress on my head-tracking app. Now the 1200VR is supported!



Tracking is really choppy right now, so I still have a little to work to do before its usable. But when this is finished it will allow head-tracking with 1200VR in any game. Later I can add support for other stuff people might want (Hillcrest IMUs, etc.).

Good! You actually should consider to add VRPN support, it's open protocol which immidiately will make your software compatible with a lot of different tracking systems.

I hadn't looked into it before, but it looks like they support a ton of stuff. I will certainly explore that option at some point.

Thats great cybereality,
Even with the stutter, I can still see how the new 6dof Vuzix head tracker seems to respond better than the old 3dof tracker. This is only from watching videos, but the new tracker looks like it moves when you move, the old tracker looked a bit sluggish or drunk, kind of a marshmallowy movment. There was a delay from when you move and it starts to move ? But it would catch up, like you were hooked to the tracker with a springy marshmallow...LOL...Does that make sense from your use with the VR920 ?
Like I said, I am not talking about stutter. That is different.
This new tracker with your driver, looks to have stutter, but the marshmallow movment is gone. Nice work...

The new tracker is way better than the one on the VR920. This new one has almost no jitter, and much smoother overall performance (less cross-talk, etc.). There still is a slight delay (more than the Razer Hydra, for example) but you can only notice if you move fast. Otherwise its really top-notch.

Here is a video of a quick test I did in the OGRE 3D engine. Should give you an idea how smooth it is:

speaking of the Razer Hydra...
some spread the concern that the magnetic field device that tracks the motion wouldnt be suited for full 360°-Freedom Movement coz of the short distance of tracking the controller.
But what if the magnetic device will be placed upside down on top of the ceiling, where the distance is always the same whatever side the user is turning to. Sure there have to be some code implementations but it should work. or not?

That may be possible, but you are still limited by a relatively short cord. Unless you found a way to make it wireless I don't see how it would help.

I mentioned in a previous post somewhere that it should be possible to mount it on the ceiling directly above your head (or under a platform under your feet) with the front half facing you. That way you'd have less variation in the range and generally a gun emitter will be in the sweet spot more than if you have it directly in front of you, so that when you turn away the distance is greatly increased.

Theoretically it would gain you some extra range in the most needed dimensions, but I think you'd need to hack up drivers to convert motion viewed by the tracker from that angle into a 'normal' angle.

Note that I just have the hydra on the desk directly in front of me, and it tracks fine for me when I turn 180 degrees away.

I'm going to tryout head tracking. Just order the wii extension cable that would allow me to mount the wii motion+ on my head using bicycle helmet or headband and connect it to wiimote with the extension cable either to the hand or leg for additional function. Will try to modify the script to read data from 2 different wiimote.

I had an idea: What if you used a headtracker on an HMD (for example on the 1200VR) with simple mouse emulation (yaw, pitch). Then additionally you used a controller (say the Wii Motion+) for a gun, but only enabled the pitch. So yaw would only be on the headset, basically you would have to physically turn to shoot. But the controller would still have some movement (pitch only). So basically you would not have to rotate your head if you didn't want to. You could rotate your whole body, and then move the controller up or down to aim. Would this work?

Another idea I had: same setup with 1200VR and Wiimote+. However both support full mouse emulation in yaw/pitch. However you would need to hold a button down (say the trigger on the nunchuck) to enable the movement of the controller. So if you didn't press the button, the view would only be changed by the headtracker. That way you could turn around without double turning (since the Wiimote also effects yaw). But then if you stopped, you could enable the gun to move and aim. Seems like a decent setup. What do you think?

Obviously it would be great if you could move head and gun independently, but there is not the software to do that yet (but I am looking into it). Any other ideas to solve this problem?

I'm not sure it would be possible to decouple head movements from head movements in most FPS games, even by intercepting DirectX calls since the visor corresponding to the gun is always centered in the screen.

It may be possible by doing a two-step rendering pass, one for the game logic to account for the gun, but without any rendering, then another one without the game logic but with a rendering with altered coordinates to account for head movement. In this case the position of the visor should be calculated to display it at the proper position. Also the timing of the game logic should be kept identical for the two passes to not have drift while shooting, which sounds quite complicated to do.

Could be funny to try that on a FPS game with full access to the source code like Quake III for example. It could help test the concept without all the difficulties related to DirectX DLL injection/interposition at first.

cybereality - The idea looks good. We can try it out in action to see how good is the integration of head tracking with pointing gaming device. I can rewrite the script that without pressing the C button on Nunchuk, it will pass the control of mouse move to head tracker. When press the button, the mouse move action will be pass to gun devices. Currently I don't have a HMD to try it out but I'll prepare the script once I got my extension cable.

fredz - I believe what we want is a combination of on rail shooting game where we can move the shooting cursor within the view and fps shooter mouse look where the head tracking will change our view. The question now is without developer support, how can we move the shooting cursor within the view instead of fix position in the center. Without access to source code, I can't see how this is possible. HL2 source might be a good place to start but we need someone with programming mojo.

Thinking about it a little more, I guess it may be a little bit simpler than I initially though, in fact it could just work like standard stereoscopic rendering.

At the start of each new rendering pass you'd need to read the position of the head from the HMD head-tracking, which you'd use to modify the camera matrix for each corresponding Direct3D camera function call to account for the head position.

Hopefully the collision detection is not based on rays intersections with rendered polygons, so the logic would work as if the view was rendered from the initial position (mouse position for the gun). You would then only have to render the crosshair at the correct position just like in a stereo 3D driver.

I guess it should also be possible to account for roll/yaw/pitch by simply modifying the camera matrix accordingly.

Interesting project indeed, could be funny to try even without an HMD with only a mouse (head) and a Wiimote (gun) for a start.

Yes, that is what I had in mind. It should be just as complex as writing a 3D driver. In fact DDD had some experimental head-tracking that worked kind of like that. It used a web-cam, but the tracking was very bad. However you could see how it would work in theory. I might also probably put together a quick proof-of-concept in a custom 3D engine (using OGRE, etc.) just to test the control schemes quickly. But I think I have a good idea how it should work just based on the mod Vuzix did for UT2004, which includes like 4 different head-tracking schemes.

@ Cyber: I had an idea: What if you used a headtracker on an HMD (for example on the 1200VR) with simple mouse emulation (yaw, pitch). Then additionally you used a controller (say the Wii Motion+) for a gun, but only enabled the pitch. So yaw would only be on the headset, basically you would have to physically turn to shoot. But the controller would still have some movement (pitch only). So basically you would not have to rotate your head if you didn't want to. You could rotate your whole body, and then move the controller up or down to aim. Would this work?

Thats basically what I have done, only I dont believe you really need the button! If you set the sensitivity right on both the gun and the headset, then when you turn your whole body (gun + headset) you get accelerated turn (you can turn down sensitivity to adjust this if you need). When you just turn your head, you can correct your aim with the gun. It might feel weird to some people, but it definitely helps the immersion for me, over just using the gun. I can quickly look over my shoulder and aim my gun at people, or I can just look ahead and fine aim with the gun, etc.

@ pierreye: if we have source code, it should be fairly easy to add in independent aim/movement. Easiest way would be to keep the existing system, and just add a new viewpoint, kind of like Fredz was talking about using the drivers, but using the source code would be much better in terms of tuning etc. Maybe we should all decide on a game to work on and see who can hack it first! winner gets a Sony HMD! Ok, dreaming now ;'-0

Regarding the head tracking and gun tracking at the same time, I had another solution. If I can feed both data into GlovePIE, I can detect if both sensor turn at the same time, I can do a offset value to compensate for both sensor to cancel out the double turning rate. Also, WiredEarp solution does make sense. Set the gun motion sensor to lower sensitivity for fine aiming.

Try to look at Valve Source SDK. I read there are few fan mod games available. Someone had integrated head tracking for lean function in HL2 as his PhD research. If we managed to mod the aiming cursor that is movable within the screen, then we'll hit the jackpot for FPS VR gaming.

Having both move at the same time could work, and may be the more natural solution. I will have to test this out.

Man I hope my Wiimote+ comes soon. I ordered from Hong Kong and they take forever.

Hi Cyber. Is that a nintendo wiimote or a clone? I read that some of the clones are pretty horrid.

You don't need access to source code to do this, you only need to write an interposer for DirectX calls, just like NVIDIA, DDD or iZ3D did for their stereo drivers. I've done that already in Linux but I've never tried in Windows yet. This way you can alter any DirectX function call in a game and adapt it to your needs, for example by modifying the camera matrix to present another part of the scene or by displaying the laser sight at another position (or none if not in the viewing zone).

That's a bit simpler than writing a 3D driver I think, because you only have to write some interception code and modify the camera matrix. You don't have to manage all the other things related to stereoscopy, like rendering twice, managing different outputs (page flipping, interlaced, etc.) or types of glasses.