Half-Life 2 VR mod with head tracking (download now)

Post by **adoral84** » Thu Mar 21, 2013 9:37 am

To help narrow it down a bit can one of you copy the bin/vr.io.dll file from the .9.2 version, then install the .9.5 one and then overwrite the vr.io.dll with the one copied from .9.2, and then let me know if it starts up. I'm able to run .9.5 with 2 hillcrest with no issue but I've got a lot of other drivers etc installed so it might be something I won't be able to reproduce.

Post by **djdevin** » Thu Mar 21, 2013 8:17 pm

adoral84 wrote:To help narrow it down a bit can one of you copy the bin/vr.io.dll file from the .9.2 version, then install the .9.5 one and then overwrite the vr.io.dll with the one copied from .9.2, and then let me know if it starts up. I'm able to run .9.5 with 2 hillcrest with no issue but I've got a lot of other drivers etc installed so it might be something I won't be able to reproduce.

ehh that doesn't exist in the .9.2 version. trying some different things right now

in .9.2's /bin it's just client, server and the freespace library

Post by **djdevin** » Thu Mar 21, 2013 9:49 pm

I fixed it!

Is vr.io.dll a library for vireio perception?

I happened to have it running, and 0.9.5 launched.

Then I reinstalled 0.9.5, didn't launch perception, and it failed. Launched perception and it worked. Eh?

Post by **adoral84** » Fri Mar 22, 2013 5:27 am

djdevin wrote:I fixed it!

Is vr.io.dll a library for vireio perception?

I happened to have it running, and 0.9.5 launched.

Then I reinstalled 0.9.5, didn't launch perception, and it failed. Launched perception and it worked. Eh?

That's really odd, the vr.io dll is just the tracking code, I don't do anything with vireio in the mod.

I didn't realize you were going all the way back to 0.9.2, did you ever try .9.3 or .9.4 with any luck? Since you never used a version that had YEI support, just to rule out my initial thought I've attached an updated version of the vr.io.dll, see if replacing the one in 0.9.5 fixes the issue. (rename it to .dll first though:) )

Post by **Red_Nut** » Fri Mar 22, 2013 5:33 am

Hi,

I am getting the "cannot load library client" error message no matter what I try.
Version 9.2 9.3 9.4 and 9.5 all give me the same error. I have reinstalled everything including steam.

Do you need any hardware before this will run without errors? My plan was to get stuff working before committing to buying anything.

cheers,

Post by **adoral84** » Fri Mar 22, 2013 5:56 am

Red_Nut wrote:Hi,

I am getting the "cannot load library client" error message no matter what I try.
Version 9.2 9.3 9.4 and 9.5 all give me the same error. I have reinstalled everything including steam.

Do you need any hardware before this will run without errors? My plan was to get stuff working before committing to buying anything.

cheers,

Hey Red_Nut, that's what I'm trying to work out with djdevin, you shouldn't need any hardware to run the mod (although it won't do anything interesting) but it might be that you need some of the device drivers installed ATM (which I'll fix if that's the case). I'll try to dig up an old laptop and do a clean install without any of the development dependencies and see if I have the same issues.

Thanks to everyone for hanging in there, by being such early adopters you're effectively honorary testers for the mod (whether you wanted be one or not

).

Post by **Red_Nut** » Fri Mar 22, 2013 6:28 am

adoral84 wrote:
Red_Nut wrote:Hi,

I am getting the "cannot load library client" error message no matter what I try.
Version 9.2 9.3 9.4 and 9.5 all give me the same error. I have reinstalled everything including steam.

Do you need any hardware before this will run without errors? My plan was to get stuff working before committing to buying anything.

cheers,
Hey Red_Nut, that's what I'm trying to work out with djdevin, you shouldn't need any hardware to run the mod (although it won't do anything interesting) but it might be that you need some of the device drivers installed ATM (which I'll fix if that's the case). I'll try to dig up an old laptop and do a clean install without any of the development dependencies and see if I have the same issues.

Thanks to everyone for hanging in there, by being such early adopters you're effectively honorary testers for the mod (whether you wanted be one or not ).

Thanks adoral84, djdevin's the first other person I've seen to be having this error, the difference being he can get 0.9.2 working and I can't. HL2 is the best game ever and now that you've put the idea of HL2 in my head I'm dieing to see play it.

Post by **djdevin** » Fri Mar 22, 2013 11:13 am

adoral84 wrote:That's really odd, the vr.io dll is just the tracking code, I don't do anything with vireio in the mod.

Crazy! Maybe having Virieo open activated something with the hillcrest or video that makes it behave. I'll try the new dll when I get home.

Post by **3dvison** » Fri Mar 22, 2013 4:58 pm

quote="Red_Nut"
the difference being he can get 0.9.2 working and I can't.

I am getting the "cannot load library client" error message no matter what I try.
Version 9.2 9.3 9.4 and 9.5 all give me the same error. I have reinstalled everything including steam.

I am just like you Red_Nut.
I have done full removal and reinstall of every thing over and over but have yet to get any version of HL-VR to work.

And adoral84, I have nothing but praise and gratitude for you and your hard work.
I hope I don't come off as crying or ungrateful.

Post by **adoral84** » Fri Mar 22, 2013 5:03 pm

3dvison wrote: And adoral84, I have nothing but praise and gratitude for you and your hard work.
I hope I don't come off as crying or ungrateful.

Thanks, and not at all, hopefully there's something in common I can solve for here. @3dvision, can you post your info about your PC and what trackers you're trying to use? I've got a fresh PC I'm going to try it on today from scratch so hopefully that'll turn something up.

Post by **djdevin** » Fri Mar 22, 2013 5:53 pm

Alright, here we go:

So in my Perception dir I had some other DLLs because I was doing some development:

msvcp100d.dll
mscvr100d.dll

Whenever I ran Perception those DLLs loaded, and HLVR worked.

So I copied those files to steamapps\phiberoptikk@hotmail.com\source sdk base 2007 (next to hl2.exe) and now HLVR runs without Perception.

From what I've read those DLLs are only needed if something was built with Debug instead of Release. Eh?

Post by **3dvison** » Fri Mar 22, 2013 7:16 pm

Laptop(will check spec.s) Win 7 32bit, Hillcrest(head) Yei3(Hand)

Post by **German** » Fri Mar 22, 2013 7:31 pm

Hey adoral, what's the proper way to update this? Just install over the top? Also, any luck with adding options to adjust the default orientation of the YEI-3? I really want to try this with my DIY.

Post by **3dvison** » Fri Mar 22, 2013 7:32 pm

djdevin wrote:Alright, here we go:

So in my Perception dir I had some other DLLs because I was doing some development:

msvcp100d.dll
mscvr100d.dll

Whenever I ran Perception those DLLs loaded, and HLVR worked.

So I copied those files to steamapps\phiberoptikk@hotmail.com\source sdk base 2007 (next to hl2.exe) and now HLVR runs without Perception.

Ok I did this.
I still get the Client error and HL-VR won't load without Vireo running.
But if I run Virio HL-VR will load, even with or without Hillcreast tracking.
The problem now is, after the game loads to the opening menu, the screen looks split but with two images on each side for a total of four and the images look like they are melting ???

Post by **adoral84** » Fri Mar 22, 2013 8:56 pm

djdevin wrote:Alright, here we go:

So in my Perception dir I had some other DLLs because I was doing some development:

msvcp100d.dll
mscvr100d.dll

Whenever I ran Perception those DLLs loaded, and HLVR worked.

So I copied those files to steamapps\phiberoptikk@hotmail.com\source sdk base 2007 (next to hl2.exe) and now HLVR runs without Perception.

From what I've read those DLLs are only needed if something was built with Debug instead of Release. Eh?

@djdevin Ok thanks for digging that up, it looks like I was building that vr.io dll in debug :/ I'll change this over and push an update tomorrow.

3dvison wrote: Ok I did this.
But if I run Virio HL-VR will load, even with or without Hillcreast tracking.
The problem now is, after the game loads to the opening menu, the screen looks split but with two images on each side for a total of four and the images look like they are melting ???

I've had a lot of issues with vireio running with source games, even unmodded ones. About 75% of the time it loads a mostly black screen with some artifacts in the bottom right corner, sometimes it renders split 4 times instead of two (I'm using a gtx680) :/ I'm not doing anything with the rendering yet so unfortunately what you're seeing is likely just a result of vireio not playing nice with your particular video card setup. I am going to support the rift optics directly so you won't need vireio, I can try to get the SBS stereo in tomorrow if it helps, I'd prefer to wait on the warping until I have more info from the SDK on the specifics. You'd at least be able to run the mod with SBS (albeit distorted) if vireio is giving you problems.

German wrote:Hey adoral, what's the proper way to update this? Just install over the top? Also, any luck with adding options to adjust the default orientation of the YEI-3? I really want to try this with my DIY.

You should be able to just install over a previous version. Check out my post http://vrmods.wordpress.com/2013/03/18/ ... tup-guide/, I outline the process of reorienting the YEI through the 3 space suite. You may have to do a bit of guess and check though to find the right settings. It's x=pitch y=yaw and z=roll by default, so if you for instance wanted to swap the pitch and yaw select yxz.

When you start the game up you'll need to run vr_calibrate console command (bound to the "L" key) when your head and weapon are both level and facing the same direction.

Post by **mscoder610** » Fri Mar 22, 2013 11:36 pm

I uninstalled my previous version of Half Life VR, ran the 0.9.5 installer, and no issues launching / playing the game. (Not that I have any trackers still, though)

If you're running with Vireio Perception and have the issues where you see the screen split 4 times, or a hall of mirrors effect, or anything like that: Try the Debug 1.0.1 binaries of Vireio. Alternatively, grab the source from GitHub and build it yourself, but in Debug not Release mode. I think there's still some unresolved issues with the Release builds and some Source games.

Post by **adoral84** » Sat Mar 23, 2013 9:22 am

@mscoder - Good to hear you didn't have issues. If it runs w/o trackers it should be fine with them, I think it was mostly issues involving the tracking dll being built in debug mode that requires an additional dependency not available on their machine. (and maybe on yours through some of the dev tools I'd guess you have installed based on your username

).

Here's a version with everything built in release, and I also found that there was a bug with using a single tracker with vr_swapped_trackers on which it actually was by default. So that might explain some people's issues with a black screen if they were using one tracker (yei or hillcrest).

https://s3.amazonaws.com/HLVR/halflife-vr-0.9.6.exe

Post by **Alkapwn** » Sat Mar 23, 2013 6:15 pm

Are you able to get access to the SDK before you actually receive your Rift? I can't remember if they said it would be included inside the Development Kit or if it'd be available through the website once the development kits were shipped.

Would it be possible for us to share the SDK with you in order to give you a head start on implementing it, before you get your Rift.

And also, has Valve gotten in contact with you at all by any chance? I'd be curious to see what their thoughts are on what you've done so far. Cause I know in the latest engadget video they were saying that they want to wait and see what the response is from the TF2 test. BUT from what I can see, even having not tried it yet myself, it seems like you've gotten this pretty nailed down with the whole "VR best practices" that everyone's been talking about.

Lastly, something to think about once the Rift comes out. There's gonna be a lot of games that may not take the step into VR and make their current games Rift ready. There's a lot of stuff that you've tweaked in order to make HL2 and Crysis work properly in VR. What if you made a business out of it? You could start a kickstarter campaign for the most popular/requested game. Then decide how much time and effort that would take you to make it Rift-ready and set that as the kickstarter goal. You clearly have both a knack and knowledge for what needs to be done, and from what I've seen online so far, the best integration of a previously non-VR game. Just something to think about as I know I'd be among your first backers. Imagine doing things like taking the tracker off the gun and placing it on your chest, for games like Mirrors Edge, and have the chest control body direction and Rift control head direction.

Post by **Red_Nut** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 2:49 am

adoral84 wrote:@mscoder - Good to hear you didn't have issues. If it runs w/o trackers it should be fine with them, I think it was mostly issues involving the tracking dll being built in debug mode that requires an additional dependency not available on their machine. (and maybe on yours through some of the dev tools I'd guess you have installed based on your username ).

Here's a version with everything built in release, and I also found that there was a bug with using a single tracker with vr_swapped_trackers on which it actually was by default. So that might explain some people's issues with a black screen if they were using one tracker (yei or hillcrest).

https://s3.amazonaws.com/HLVR/halflife-vr-0.9.6.exe

I still get the cannot load library client error

Post by **adoral84** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 5:52 pm

Red_Nut wrote: I still get the cannot load library client error

Ok, wasn't sure on your issue since you couldn't get it working even with versions built before the vr.io.dll was even extracted, but hopefully it'll fix some of the other guys' issues. Just to double check, you do have the source sdk 2007 installed right?

Alkapwn wrote: Are you able to get access to the SDK before you actually receive your Rift? I can't remember if they said it would be included inside the Development Kit or if it'd be available through the website once the development kits were shipped.

Would it be possible for us to share the SDK with you in order to give you a head start on implementing it, before you get your Rift.

Not yet, hopefully it'll be available soon, dev kit or no, I'd like to start getting the rift stuff finalized. If I don't get my dev kit fairly early anyone who gets access to the SDK could definitely give me enough info to help me move forward on a couple of things so we'll see, hopefully I'm in the first batch (I ordered the morning the kickstarter began).
[/quote]

Alkapwn wrote: And also, has Valve gotten in contact with you at all by any chance? I'd be curious to see what their thoughts are on what you've done so far. Cause I know in the latest engadget video they were saying that they want to wait and see what the response is from the TF2 test. BUT from what I can see, even having not tried it yet myself, it seems like you've gotten this pretty nailed down with the whole "VR best practices" that everyone's been talking about.

No but I'd definitely like to pick their brains, hopefully I'll get enough from their GDC talk to sort out a couple of things I feel like need the most work.

Alkapwn wrote: Lastly, something to think about once the Rift comes out. There's gonna be a lot of games that may not take the step into VR and make their current games Rift ready. There's a lot of stuff that you've tweaked in order to make HL2 and Crysis work properly in VR. What if you made a business out of it? You could start a kickstarter campaign for the most popular/requested game. Then decide how much time and effort that would take you to make it Rift-ready and set that as the kickstarter goal. You clearly have both a knack and knowledge for what needs to be done, and from what I've seen online so far, the best integration of a previously non-VR game. Just something to think about as I know I'd be among your first backers. Imagine doing things like taking the tracker off the gun and placing it on your chest, for games like Mirrors Edge, and have the chest control body direction and Rift control head direction.

I appreciate the vote of confidence, but the number of games that are open-source or moddable enough to be really ported effectively is fairly limited, and I don't think I could make a full time job of it. My focus with these mods was to get at least a baseline set of functionality that other devs could use hopefully to help them decide what kinds of control schemes they want to implement. I'd definitely be willing to share my experiences with any developer who's looking to get started in VR since I've tried a enough things to have a decent feel for things that work and things that don't. I'll definitely continue working on these mods and I have a few other things I'd like start as these settle.

I'm trying to give myself a bit of a break from this project for the next couple of days so that when I get my dev-kit I can really dig in and get things implemented. I was hoping to have it by this thursday since I have a long weekend but I'm not holding my breath.

Post by **3dvison** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 7:51 pm

Hi adoral84,
I was wondering what your top 3 or 4 buys would be today, to use with a Rift?
I think we will all start with a Rift, strong computer and good headphones, but after those three, I would like to know, what you feel should be buy number 1, buy # 2, buy#3 ect, in order of importance, for making a good VR setup.

Post by **Red_Nut** » Tue Mar 26, 2013 7:08 am

I reinstalled steam, hl2 and the source sdk 2007, ran source sdk 2007 to make sure it was installed, ran black mesa to confirm that mods work and then installed the hl vr mod.

Is there any way I can help trouble shoot this? It's unlikely I'll be the only one with my problem and I'd like to help rather than just complain on a forum.

Post by **adoral84** » Tue Mar 26, 2013 7:39 am

Red_Nut wrote:I reinstalled steam, hl2 and the source sdk 2007, ran source sdk 2007 to make sure it was installed, ran black mesa to confirm that mods work and then installed the hl vr mod.

Is there any way I can help trouble shoot this? It's unlikely I'll be the only one with my problem and I'd like to help rather than just complain on a forum.

Thanks. You should be able to use the program below to see the dependencies of the various dlls in the bin folder including the ones not on your system. If you can let me know which ones are missing that'd be really helpful.

http://www.dependencywalker.com/

Post by **Annon** » Tue Mar 26, 2013 7:17 pm

adoral84 wrote:
Red_Nut wrote:I reinstalled steam, hl2 and the source sdk 2007, ran source sdk 2007 to make sure it was installed, ran black mesa to confirm that mods work and then installed the hl vr mod.

Is there any way I can help trouble shoot this? It's unlikely I'll be the only one with my problem and I'd like to help rather than just complain on a forum.
Thanks. You should be able to use the program below to see the dependencies of the various dlls in the bin folder including the ones not on your system. If you can let me know which ones are missing that'd be really helpful.

http://www.dependencywalker.com/

I have a similar issue, can run when perception is running, but can't otherwise.

Here's the DLL's that dependency walker says are missing:

GPSVC.dll
IESHIMS.dll
MSVCR80.dll
STEAM_API.dll
TIER0.dll
VSTDLIB.dll

Post by **adoral84** » Tue Mar 26, 2013 7:45 pm

I don't think dependency walker is going to work correctly for this scenario given how hl2.exe loads the client & server dlls. It shows those same assemblies as missing on my machine with both my mods and Black Mesa but everything loads fine for both.

Here's a big block of things to try from the Black Mesa forums, apparently this happened with that mod a fair amount as well. Also you might want to try installing the Source SDK base & Source SDK 2006 tools as well (*I've found several sites mentioning this so definitely try it). If having the other source sdk installs fixes it I'll update my installer to require them.

A potential fix, or not.

!PLEASE READ!

How to fix "Could not load library client." ->

If you're having trouble with the "Could not load library client." error, here's a potential fix:

Go to "C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\sourcemods\{mod-name}"
Open "gameinfo.txt".
Scroll down to "FileSystem".
Change "SteamAppId 218" to "SteamAppId 215" (without "").
Save and close the file.
Exit and restart Steam.
Once Steam has restarted, there should be a {mod name} entry in the library (All Games).
Click "Play".
If it launches without any error, enjoy! If the error still persists: Exit Steam and proceed to the next step.
Go to "C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\sourcemods\{mod name}", again.
Open "gameinfo.txt".
Scroll down to "FileSystem".
Change "SteamAppId 215" to "SteamAppId 218".
Save and close the file.
Exit (if you haven't already), restart Steam and play the game afterwards by clicking "Play" in the library (All Games).

-----

Note: This one did work for me, fortunately, but please remember, this may or may not work for you and I guarantee for nothing, thank you!

If it does work, however: Happy shooting!

Also, norton and other anti-virus programs have been occasionally known to interfere with souce mods, are you using any particular virus protection?

Post by **adoral84** » Tue Mar 26, 2013 8:07 pm

3dvison wrote:Hi adoral84,
I was wondering what your top 3 or 4 buys would be today, to use with a Rift?
I think we will all start with a Rift, strong computer and good headphones, but after those three, I would like to know, what you feel should be buy number 1, buy # 2, buy#3 ect, in order of importance, for making a good VR setup.

Assuming you have a decent PC (and a smooth 60 fps really is important), headphones and the rift I think the basic essentials would be something like:

Some type of controller - xbox 360 controller and/or razer hydra - The latter is definitely a more legitimate vr controller that will hopefully get a lot of custom support (I know I've been messing with it) but you can't beat the xbox 360 controller for out of the box support at this point. Either way, I'd really suggest trying something other than mouse+keyboard (even at the expense of reduced precision) because if you've played PC games for any amount of time you've built up a sort of reflex that you'll fall back on for twitch mouse movements rather than naturally moving your head. Watch the videos from GDC of hawken players using a controller vs a mouse and keyboard, typically the mouse user's head is much more fixed. Plus analog movement control is really critical to feel smooth and immersed.

If you've got the budget one thing I've found to be one of my favorite adds is the buttkicker gamer - http://www.amazon.com/Buttkicker-BK-GR2 ... cker+gamer. The additional haptic feedback really adds to the immersion in all sorts of games, whether it's feeling the deep thump of a grenade or shotgun, the vibrations from cutting across a rumble strip in a racing game, or actually feeling the vibes of your spitfire engine in IL2. It easily hooks to the base of most office chairs so it's really easy to set up.

Beyond that, find a VR related game kickstarter you like and back it, a shortage of vr-focused content will be by far the most limiting aspect of immersion for the foreseeable future

Post by **Red_Nut** » Wed Mar 27, 2013 5:15 pm

adoral84 wrote:
Red_Nut wrote:I reinstalled steam, hl2 and the source sdk 2007, ran source sdk 2007 to make sure it was installed, ran black mesa to confirm that mods work and then installed the hl vr mod.

Is there any way I can help trouble shoot this? It's unlikely I'll be the only one with my problem and I'd like to help rather than just complain on a forum.
Thanks. You should be able to use the program below to see the dependencies of the various dlls in the bin folder including the ones not on your system. If you can let me know which ones are missing that'd be really helpful.

http://www.dependencywalker.com/

Alright, I've been a bit busy the last 2 days so I'll try that and the stuff from black mesa forums when I get back from easter holidays.

Post by **adoral84** » Thu Mar 28, 2013 8:05 pm

I've been messing with the hydra a bit, I'd like to get it working in the mod this weekend but I'm having issues with it just not picking up the controllers when I initialize the API. Everything initializes fine but it's like there aren't any devices connected. I've run other sample applications with no issue so everything seems to be installed correctly. Has anyone had any issues like this? I haven't been able to find anything useful on the internet. Assuming I can get that worked out everything should be in place. From the other sample apps I've tried the responsiveness on the hydras seems plenty good enough to work well with the mod.

Also, I did some more digging on the 'unable to load library client' and it appears there is a VC++ 2010 runtime distributable that is required. Other games and applications may have already installed it which would be why it works on some machines and not others. I'll add the dependencies and hopefully that'll fix those issues for everyone.

Post by **mscoder610** » Thu Mar 28, 2013 10:29 pm

Do you have a code snippet for how you're initializing and testing the Hydra?

Post by **MaxPalmer** » Fri Mar 29, 2013 2:05 am

3dvison wrote:Hi adoral84,
I was wondering what your top 3 or 4 buys would be today, to use with a Rift?
I think we will all start with a Rift, strong computer and good headphones, but after those three, I would like to know, what you feel should be buy number 1, buy # 2, buy#3 ect, in order of importance, for making a good VR setup.

Hi,

For those that will be getting the Rift, what hardware would be needed to support the separate gun tracking / aiming as seen in the video? Would a Hydra work or would you need something else? Only asking because I was slightly confused about what the hillcrest tracker was needed for in some of the earlier discussions - i.e. is it being used for head tracking, weapon tracking or both?

Thanks and apologies if I've missed something in the previous replies,

What you've done looks great. HL2 is one of my favourite games, although I've just started playing BioShock Infinite on my PC with a new graphics card and am blown away by the quality and detail. Now, just how scary is Ravenholm and the elevator section in VR?

Max

Edit: OK, so as I understand it the tracker - HillCrest or YEI - could be used to track the gun and the Hydra might be supported at some stage in future. Still not sure if there's an advantage to having 2 trackers + the Rift?

Post by **TheHolyChicken** » Fri Mar 29, 2013 3:26 am

He wrote a guide here:
http://vrmods.wordpress.com/2013/03/18/ ... tup-guide/

People may be mentioning multiple trackers because they are using DIY Rift setups, so they would have a tracker in their gun AND hmd. If you're planning on using the Rift, you just need to get the one tracker (for the gun).

Post by **adoral84** » Fri Mar 29, 2013 7:05 am

mscoder610 wrote:Do you have a code snippet for how you're initializing and testing the Hydra?

Code: Select all

        rc = sixenseInit();
	
	if ( rc == SIXENSE_FAILURE )
	{
		printf("Sixense init failed\n");
		return;
	}
	
	for (int i=0; i<sixenseGetMaxBases(); i++) {
		rc = sixenseIsBaseConnected(i);
		if ( rc == 0 ) {
			printf("Sixense base %d not found\n", i);
		}
	}

I've tried it several ways but I ended up copying what I have out of the simple3d example that was included in the sdk. That example works on my machine fine too. Another question if you've familiar with coding against the hydra, can you use the api to just get the orientation and position and let the buttons & joysticks go through as normal xinput / directinput?

MaxPalmer wrote: Edit: OK, so as I understand it the tracker - HillCrest or YEI - could be used to track the gun and the Hydra might be supported at some stage in future. Still not sure if there's an advantage to having 2 trackers + the Rift?

There are some ways you can use a 3rd tracker to track body orientation and simulate some 6dof movement based on the additional orientation of the upper back but it's currently not integrated at all so only one tracker in addition to the rift will do anything.

Post by **mscoder610** » Fri Mar 29, 2013 5:59 pm

Here's the Hydra C# code I've been using as a reference:
https://github.com/AndersMalmgren/FreeP ... aPlugin.cs

The sleep between the sixenseInit and the calls to sixenseIsBaseConnected does seem to be needed. I built your snippet as-is and got that bases 0-3 weren't connected. I added a Sleep(1000) after the init call, and then I got that base 0 was connected and could query data from it:
http://pastebin.com/t2JTUt0P

Post by **adoral84** » Fri Mar 29, 2013 6:18 pm

mscoder610 wrote:Here's the Hydra C# code I've been using as a reference:
https://github.com/AndersMalmgren/FreeP ... aPlugin.cs

The sleep between the sixenseInit and the calls to sixenseIsBaseConnected does seem to be needed. I built your snippet as-is and got that bases 0-3 weren't connected. I added a Sleep(1000) after the init call, and then I got that base 0 was connected and could query data from it:
http://pastebin.com/t2JTUt0P

Cool, I'll update the code with a retry loop like the freepie plugin, thanks for digging that up. I've also been going through the SDK so hopefully I can get a head start on the actual rift integration even though I don't have a dev kit just yet.

Post by **mscoder610** » Fri Mar 29, 2013 6:37 pm

No problem. As far as buttons / key inputs go: My first thought is that you can leave that for MotionCreator 2 to handle. I assume most people with a Hydra will have already downloaded this, and be at least slightly familiar with how the profiles work:
http://sixense.com/products/motioncreator

You should be able to use Hydra position / orientation in whatever way you wish (directly with the Sixense SDK), and have a MotionCreator profile for the game which'll handle button mappings and the like.

For example, I previously did a quick update of the Unity AngryBots demo to make my right Hydra controller control the camera in-game:
http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpbb/viewtopic.p ... 43#p111143

Now, I opened up MotionCreator2, and duplicated the HalfLife2 Dual Analog profile. I set the EXE name to match my sample project, then on the Mouse Pointer tab of the profile, set Enabled=False and sensitivity=0. When launching the game, my right Hydra still controlled the camera (using the Sixense SDK directly with Unity), but I could use the left analog stick to move around (=> WASD keys), right trigger to shoot (-> mouse click), etc., all going through the MotionCreator game profile.

Post by **ikedude** » Fri Mar 29, 2013 9:27 pm

I've been messing around with the Hydra and this is what I use for initialization. Making the assumption of one base is bad... but otherwise it works fine.

Code: Select all

	int result = sixenseInit();

	if(result != SIXENSE_SUCCESS)
	{
		PrintNote("Failed to initialize");
	}

	result = sixenseSetActiveBase(0);

	if(result != SIXENSE_SUCCESS)
	{
		PrintNote("Failed to Set Active Base");
	}

	else
	{
		sixenseSetFilterEnabled(1);
		bool notReady = false;

		do
		{
			notReady = false;
			sixenseGetAllNewestData(allData);
			for(int loop = 0; loop < NUM_CONTROLLERS; ++loop)
			{
				if(allData->controllers[loop].which_hand == 0)
				{
					notReady = true;
				}
				else if(allData->controllers[loop].which_hand == LEFT_HAND)
				{
					leftHand = &allData->controllers[loop];
				}
				else if(allData->controllers[loop].which_hand == RIGHT_HAND)
				{
					rightHand = &allData->controllers[loop];
				}
			}
			Sleep(10);

		}while(notReady);
	}

Also: LEFT_HAND = 1, RIGHT_HAND = 2

Should probably have an escape after a certain number of tries...

Post by **donkaradiablo** » Sun Mar 31, 2013 5:06 am

With the Hydra, would it be possible to
-Carry the base in something like a belt bag for 360 degree gaming
-Use right hand for aiming
-Use left hand to do gestures, like trowing grenade, reloading by "pumping the shotgun"
-Maybe use the left hand for ie Minority Report like rolling gesture to move forward could feel more natural than using a thumb stick
-Use left hand for jumping (gesture)
-Use left hand for crouching (when it's lowered, relative to the right hand)

That would also make a smooth transition to VR Gloves/Leap Motion possible.

Also, a GTA mode in first person perspective, with Rift and Hydra support would be a killer app

Post by **mscoder610** » Sun Mar 31, 2013 10:06 am

I briefly tried the "carrying the base in a bag" idea too since I was curious. It doesn't really work at all with the MotionCreator profiles that use mouse emulation, but it seems like it could work in this mod, depending on how Adoral84 handles calibration. Once the base turns with you, the Hydra would be working differently than the other 360 trackers though, so you might need 2 Hydra calibration modes (stationary vs moving base).

Post by **adoral84** » Sun Mar 31, 2013 1:13 pm

So I've been working on a couple of things, trying to get the rift tracking in place and working more on razer hydra integration. The razer hydra is working in game, although when I pull the rotation quaternion from the sensor and translate it to the euler angles that source uses I get some odd behaviors that I haven't seen with any other trackers, similar issues to those discussed in the thread below. Clearly the tracking is much more accurate that this in other demos so hopefully it's simply a bug that I can work around.

http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=139&t=16051

It does seem that you can use the tracking info while the buttons still use the game profile from the hydra configurator, but I haven't found a way to disable the mouse emulation on the motion controller which completely ruins everthing. If I disable the configurator the movements work well but I lose all button and joystick mappings. Does anyone know how to create custom game configurations?

My hopes are to get the rift tracker in place and ideally some basic hydra weapon tracking in place so that this week when I hopefully get my dev kit I test it out and release something that does everything but the stereo warping (vireio appears to do that pretty well with the dev kit for source games with a bit of tweaking from what I've read).

Post by **Annon** » Sun Mar 31, 2013 4:16 pm

@adoral84, I got my rift on Friday. If there's any testing or anything I can do to help you out let me know.