@WiredEarp
Don't you get tangled up using the hydra with a HMD?

I have a few Ideas about using solenoids for FFB that I am going to be experimenting with soon, If it works out usable then i'll make a post about it

The Falcon is pretty cool, and Novint seem to be supporting it well. I haven't used mine in a while, simply because I don't have the space on my desk anymore. But I would like to bust it out and give it a shot again. The new XIO thing looks like it will be a better fit for a VR setup, though.

My solution for this was to use the trimersion gun, (The same as the guy in the video) with the gyro moved from the hmd to the gun. HAd to write a glovepie script to compensate for the poor quality gyros, but it works pretty well. Not sure Cybers wii gun will work too well, as without a shoulder stock my instinct was to move the gun arround without my body following it. Planning on making a simple wooden stock, with cheekpad to prevent gun/hmd collisiion, and hopefully it will solve that problem. May also make a scope style mount for a wiimote, as the tracking looks better. Over on rcgroups a lot of guys have bought trimersions, then not used the guns, so would probably part with them, if any of you guys want one. Also, the wiimote gun cover things are for sale in the local £1 shop, if any uk people intrested in trying one.

If I get really bored one day I may also make a fake magazine for reloading. HAve to pull it to reload or something. Slightly more realistic than a reload button.

Machine, would be good to see what you have come up with for the solenoids, was considering something similar myself. I figured it could work with some sort of band pass filter that only fed gun frequency noises to it, perhaps with a noise gate to make sure only loud noises activate it. Trouble is I think such a thing would always either activate from none gun sounds, activate from other gun sounds than your own, or not activate reliably. Using sounds that only came from dead center would be a good start. Or perhaps your technique is completly unrelated to audio?

Perhaps slightly off topic, but I also made a clone of the aura interactor. Is pretty cool, even though the effects it provides aren't quite right, when you are ignoring it and concentrating on the game any sort of haptic feedback is way better than none. Is awesome with my force feedback racing wheel.

Thanks for the compliment and glad that I can contribute some ideas and design. I'm quite surprise we can build a really good freelook gun devices for VR with off the shelf items and really powerful glovepie automation script.

@cybereality - I had the wiimote gun attachment but I don't really like it as the trigger is mechanical. There is some delay when pulling the trigger. You need to mod the trigger to shorten the distance before it register. Also, holding a wii gun is like a pistol, not rifle. Tracking is really smooth and I don't feel any lag at all. Please try out this setup with VR1200 and let us know if it feel natural.

@WiredEarp - You can add vibration to wiimote when pulling the trigger. I try that but it will screw up your aiming due to vibration. You can modify the script by adding the command wiimote.rumble = true.

After more tweaking and getting a feel how it work by playing few chapters of COD:MW2, below is the changes for the script.
1. Nunchuk joystick now is pressure sensitive. Slightly push the joystick for walking and push all the way for running.
2. You can now melee with jabbing action.
3. Auto centering. When you hold your gun within +/- 1.1 degree in 0.2s it will auto center every 5 seconds. You can slowly move your gun up/down and it will register for auto centering. I found out auto centering in iron sight mode is quite annoying when you try to aim for head shot so I disable auto centering when you hold the aim button.
4. Temp map the nunchuk c button to disable mouse movement as now I'm trying out on tv without HMD. So I need to manually aim the gun back to the middle of the screen when I move too far left/right without turning. Just hold c button and point back to the center.

Other ideas I have is to map a second wiimote that is tie to the leg. When you kick your leg = melee. When you jump, well jump. crouch by bending your knee and detect changes in pitch.

Anyone want to try and mod an AK 47

For aiming with the Wii Remote did any one think of using the IR camera instead of motion tracker?? I know there are directional and accuracy issues with the standard "sensor bar" because it only has 2 IR emitters on it, maybe someone with some programming skills could put together a glove pie script that allows the IR camera to track multiple IR emitters that are different shapes (so it knows which direction it is pointing) the more IR emitters the better the performance would be, I know with the Time Crysis Gun on the PS3 they did this using about 6 IR emitters I think and that game was supposed to be very accurate and could also tell distance and angle from the screen once calibrated (I never used it though only read about it)

@bobv5
Mostly just Ideas at the moment but I plan to start experimenting with this by the end of the week. Audio filters is the first choice for FFB activation because it can be applied universally and requires no Driver to make it work, it should be possible to remove most of the false FFB by cutting off the filter when the trigger is not being pulled. I will let you know how it progresses once I start.

"it should be possible to remove most of the false FFB by cutting off the filter when the trigger is not being pulled"

So obvious, don't know why I didn't think of that.

I was looking at using vst software filters, but had some problems routing the audio to them. If this can be made to work it would allow much more complicated filtering to be done.

@ pierreye, sorry I haven’t managed to input much towards your work so far but a close family member has been taken ill recently and Iv been spending the spare time Iv had between my dissertation and other uni work at the hospital. Things aren’t looking too bad at the moment so hopefully all will be back to normal soon.

I have still been following the thread and I was so impressed with your video I ordered a motion plus and am going to borrow a unused numchuck and controller off of my parents so I can have a try of your script. Maybe with a few alterations I will try it in the BF3 Beta that is out on Thursday.

I have been researching the move controllers and hoped working my way through the 23 page thread on motioninjoy I mentioned before would show me the way to do it. The guys there seemed to have put a lot of effort into hacking the move controllers, but although they had success with the blob tracking and controlling the light over Bluetooth, the controls mainly only seemed to function when linked by usb using the libusb used for the six axis pads. I believe they had some success with the motioninjoy program but the way it was written some of the needed data was inaccessible and the people at motioninjoy wouldnt make it visible (i could be wrong but I think that was the jist of it). The last comment was posted in June so for now the thread and the efforts of those involved seems to have died off. I need to go over it again (as I rushed through it) and try out their work to see what can actually be done. I will keep searching to try and find a way to hack the Move and Nav controller as I havnt tried anywhere else apart from youtube. There are some clever people that have managed to do it on a Linux based system but there are more problems with windows Bluetooth. Here is the Linux move in operation

http://www.pabr.org/linmctool/linmctool.en.html

I did consider running a virtual pc with Linux running to capture the info from the move and transport that to the pc but im not sure if this is possible atm. I think most are hoping the move.me software will give them enough access to the data to crack the problems with the move. I have tried getting it from sony.com but I cant seem to log in to the Sony playstation sites atm.

There are a few other ideas I have but Im not sure if its just blue sky thinking Im doing as I need to read up about the subject matter as non of this is in my area of expertise. For anyone that has any experience in this area, if you want to have a look at this info site I found they used a Arduino board to give bluetooth connectivety to a sixaxis and a wiimote.

http://www.circuitsathome.com/mcu/ps3-a ... eld-part-1

http://www.circuitsathome.com/mcu/ps3-a ... eld-part-2

http://www.circuitsathome.com/mcu/ps3-a ... eld-part-3

I was wondering how possible would it be to do it to a move controler. If it is a reasonable idea but knowbody knows for sure I will look into it further If im heading in a wrong direction let me know and it will save me time. Thanks

Found this thing on eBay, seems like it could be of use as an alternate shell for the gun:



Its the Cabela's gun. You can get them for around $15. Its designed for the Wiimote/nunchuck buy I guess it could be modded to fit a Hydra or whatever.

@pierreye
I have only just read through the entire thread, nice work on putting together and tweaking the glovepie scripts to make this work so well! Are you using the positional info for aiming from both the Wiimote and the PS Move? or which one is the primary device?



When you enable the "rumble" on the Wiimote does it rumble when the button is pressed or does it actually get force feedback information from the game and rumble when shots are fired?


@Cyber
That looks like a pretty good option for the Wii controller for those who just want something to plug and play and not mess around hacking the hardware into a different gun shell, hydra should be easy to fit to it. Personally I plan to use a Airsoft shell and hack a Wiimote and nunchuck into it for a slightly more realistic feel and look.

Even better, I found THE PUNISHER™ Killer Rifle

Okay that one is nice! definitely the way to go for plug and play Wiimote Plus setup....
USA buyers can get it here:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Wii-Punisher-Ki ... 089wt_1135

Thanks, some good info here guys.
I think the wiimote rumble is 'dumb' and just rumbles when you fire. Nothing wrong with that however. I was actually thinking of using my paintball gun tonight when playing COD to see what difference the sound+vibe will make. Should provide some nice kick and sound, and might piss the neighbours of a little

I played COD on a console the other day and while i'll never switch from mouse + keyboard to a console controller, I did like the vibration on firing.

I have an Aura Interactor strapped under my sim chair. Its a bit of a PITA cos some sounds (like voice) will come through the low pass filter still. However, it definitely adds immersion, really cool when you open up with the chaingun and Commanche and can feel the vibrations from firing it.

With my sims (Blackshark, FSX, etc) I have found that even if you just push your subwoofer up against your pedals etc, then the added vibrations really help immersion as well.

What we really want is some easy way to hack games, so we can choose which sound effects to play through the Aura. Then we could have much better FFB. I can think of some ways it could be done easily (if the sound effects were all separate memory mapped files, you could monitor accesses to them and cause the same sound effect to be played down another sound card into the Aura. Many games however map everything into one file and just index inside it. Guess it still might be something worth looking into at some point tho...

Those guns look good, the last one especially. Although, for that price, I can probably just buy a cheap chinese airsoft gun cheaper.

Oh, last night I tried something new. Used my Z800 with mouse emulation, at the same time as my FPSgun. This actually worked surprisingly well, as it meant I could quickly look around with my head (it moves the gun, but thats not so bad when you also have a gun moving it) or turn, and then use the gun for fine aiming. Going to have another try tonight, but it definitely helped with the claustrophobia/tunnel vision effect you get wearing a HMD, and didn't seem to cause issues like I expected it would.

Re the Hydra, its perfect for aiming etc, but I'm having gesture issues. reload works as do some others, but sometimes they just seem to be totally confused/work at weird times/stop working. I suspect it has to do with me turning more than 180 degrees away from the controller. I dont see any glitching on the test SDK app, so currently I think its a problem with the Hydra gesture code. I'm playing around with the Hydra setup currently, as I want it to jump/stand when I move the gun up quickly, duck when i move the gun down to a certain height, and I was also thinking of making it recognize shoulder height, so that it will automatically 'look down the sights' in the game when I hold it to my shoulder. I'm not sure currently if this is possible with the current scripting system, or if I'll need to use the SDK to watch the Hydra stream and detect these states and push out a keystroke.

@ machine
'Don't you get tangled up using the hydra with a HMD?'

I do sometimes. I have to remember to not turn more than 3 360's in the same direction as I get the cables wrapped around me. I'm just in the process of suspending the HMD cable from a hook so I should be able to get more turning there, and am going to look into doing the same thing with the Hydras. I think I can run the cable up the side with tape, so the cable exits at the top, not the bottom of the Hydra.

@ pierreye
Those are some cool mods! I especially like the pressure sensitive movement (are you just making the character walk/run depending on joystick moved distance? I might steal that idea and the kick bit.

My gun currently consists of 2 Hydras, but i'm in the process of trying to make it do everything just using one Hydra. That would mean that I could then put the other Hydra on my P5 glove, and use that for other gestures (like punch to do a melee attack, and a throw to throw a grenade). Just have to work on the Hydra configuration, which isn't particularly user friendly unfortunately currently.

I remember reading on another post about a pedometer that is Wii compatible so maybe that can be used to detect walking/running on the spot

@WiredEarp
is the Aura Interactor similar to the ButtKicker?

If you are going to Hack games to optimise sound for FFB then you may as well hack the Novint Falcon FGen Driver and get the Recoil FFB data from that, then you get intensity as well (i.e. shot gun is more powerful than a pistol) and that could be translated into a variable voltage to run a solenoid.

I suspect so, it seems to be basically a fat, subwoofer type thing that vibrates but doesn't make much noise (it does make some noise). It has a really hefty power amp transformer and an amp/control box thing that you can select the sensitivity of the sound and I think the frequency it stops (haven't had mine going for a while because you need to plug in the chair and that PC has been a 2nd FPS pc for my mates for a while . When its strapped to your chair and you fire a loud gun you feel every shot. Great when a missile hits as well. You can wear it as the worlds dorkiest vest but I don't think I could ever be bothered. There are better force feedbacks vests if you want to go down that path.

Damn, now i'm probably going to be bidding against you for the next one on TM ;-0

@James - No problem. Take your time. We still have 1-2 months before HMZ-T1 launch. If you can get at least PS3 Navigator work, I could replace the Nunchuk. I ordered another USB dongle which MotionInJoy developer use for testing so hopefully that dongle will enable PS3 Navigation through bluetooth.

@mAchiNE - I'm using the gyro info from WiiMotion+ only for mouse look. The data is relative to last position. I also use the pitch from WiiMote for level reading and auto calibrate the center view. Can't extract the gyro info from PS3 Move as GlovePIE doesn't support PS3 Move natively. I actually use MotionInJoy driver to connect PS3 Move as joystick and GlovePIE read the device as Joystick only. The rumble is enable when you hold the fire trigger through scripting. Doesn't feel like kickback effect, more like handphone vibration.

@cybereality - The punisher looks like one mean rifle. It come with rumble feature build in. If the effect is like kickback effect, then I would prefer this mod. I think it is doable for a secondary vibration system using PS3 dual shock controller. We just have to hack open the hardware, take the motor and modify it to move forward/backward a weight to provide the kick back effect. Then we can use GlovePIE to connect the PS3 dual shock controller as second joystick.

@WiredEarp - The joystick is distance sensitive. If you push it slightly up, it will send "w" command. If you push it all the way, I program it to send "Shift+w". You can check out my latest script and it's quite simple as long as you can capture JoyX and JoyY analog reading. For vibration feedback, I'm using a quite powerful subwoofer, Rythmik FV15HP subwoofer. It's a 600w 15" sub and I can feel the rumble with every explosion if I turn up the volume.

@WiredEarp
Yeah sounds very similar to the ButtKicker but the Buttkicker is probably better, you can really feel grenade explosions etc and also feel some of the louder sounding guns as well. Don't worry about me competing if one comes up on trademe I have a ButtKicker AND the TN Games 3rd Space Vest as well so I don't think I need one

Quote from Joystiq.com
If its true the I can't wait till the wireless one comes out!

Do you guys think 3rd space gaming vest would be a good addition? They release new driver version 4.0 in July 2011. I imagine playing COD:MW2 with HMD, 360 degree rifle and directional force feedback vest would be awesome. If anyone can come up with roller shoe directional tracking than it would close to matrix style gaming!

I think cybers wii gun originates from this company called CTAdigital, I belive they have just made it black and rebranded it, if its not the same it looks remarkably similar in shape. If anyone wants a closer look as the pictures on ebay arnt to clear here is a link to the CTA version

http://www.ctadigital.com/item.asp?item=2601

they have another version that is very similar here

http://www.ctadigital.com/item.asp?item=2405

It just dosnt have the mag tripod or scope

There is also something like this which may be good for grenade throwing knifeing etc

http://www.ctadigital.com/item.asp?item=2507

the only thing is we would need 3 wii remotes to do head tracking, gun tracking, grenade and knife attacks

They make alot of attachments I even found a PS3 rifle that has a dongle and all the buttons built in, it looks like a M4 M16 style rifle, I think the controller itself would show as a sixaxis pad as it has no motion sensors built in, so may be able to be used on PC, with a wii mote strapped to it it would work great, there is also a move attachment addon that comes with it so if that gets hacked the move could be used instead. Here is a video on it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc43OS2wQaI

@ WiredEarp I like the idea of bringing the gun up to you shoulder level to enter into iron sight/scope view. If altitude can be calculated this should be fairly easy to do. However if it is not calculable for some reason we could use another mote on your head, then couldnt it be done by working out the distance between them?? Im a bit behind how it all works so Im just chucking ideas out atm.

Even better if altitude can be calculated use 2 anyway, ironsight by distance to mote on head compared to that of the gun, duck and jump by altitude on head mote, that would be awsome.

@ pierreye I think a good 3rd space vest would be a great addition but with never using one myself Im not sure how good they truely are.

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.