Meant to be Seen

adoral84 wrote:

3dvison wrote:Hi adoral84,
Is there a way, or will there be a way, to use the two buttons on the YEI 3 that comes packaged in a plastic case ?

Ideally they can still function as mouse clicks even when the device is being accessed via the api, but somehow I doubt that. I'll poke around and see if there is an option for that.

I missed this thread X.x sorry for the delayed responses.

You can use the buttons through the joystick HID device. The HID is separate from the other calls to the sensor and should work.
The next firmware upgrade will allow multiple commands to be streamed, making assessing the raw data, button states, and battery levels much easier. Its a big overhaul on the API's too.

I will be trying this mod out over the weekend, this looks awesome!!!

If you need any help with the YEI 3-Space Sensor integration email us at support@yostengineering.com

RoadKillGrill wrote:
I missed this thread X.x sorry for the delayed responses.

You can use the buttons through the joystick HID device. The HID is separate from the other calls to the sensor and should work.
The next firmware upgrade will allow multiple commands to be streamed, making assessing the raw data, button states, and battery levels much easier. Its a big overhaul on the API's too.

I will be trying this mod out over the weekend, this looks awesome!!!

If you need any help with the YEI 3-Space Sensor integration email us at support@yostengineering.com

Thanks RoadKillGrill, that's great news and makes the cased version of the YEI very useful. If I send over some snippets of the YEI integration I'd love to have you guys make sure I'm getting the most out of them, I'm spending most of my time on engine integrations.

Speaking of, I've been working with Cryengine 2 & 3 and so far they've been really great to work with, I now have a real proper head/neck model (and I've got everything in place to add Mel's additional spine tracking I think). This weekend I'm going to focus on the gun tracking. After that I'll be spending a lot more time on the general VR integration library I've started to make it easier for people to mix and match trackers and other random input devices.

adoral84 wrote:

RoadKillGrill wrote:
I missed this thread X.x sorry for the delayed responses.

You can use the buttons through the joystick HID device. The HID is separate from the other calls to the sensor and should work.
The next firmware upgrade will allow multiple commands to be streamed, making assessing the raw data, button states, and battery levels much easier. Its a big overhaul on the API's too.

I will be trying this mod out over the weekend, this looks awesome!!!

If you need any help with the YEI 3-Space Sensor integration email us at support@yostengineering.com

Thanks RoadKillGrill, that's great news and makes the cased version of the YEI very useful. If I send over some snippets of the YEI integration I'd love to have you guys make sure I'm getting the most out of them, I'm spending most of my time on engine integrations.

Speaking of, I've been working with Cryengine 2 & 3 and so far they've been really great to work with, I now have a real proper head/neck model (and I've got everything in place to add Mel's additional spine tracking I think). This weekend I'm going to focus on the gun tracking. After that I'll be spending a lot more time on the general VR integration library I've started to make it easier for people to mix and match trackers and other random input devices.

Can I throw beer money your way? Not a joke. PM me if you have a convenient way (Paypal, for example).

Sent you pm! @adoral84

Dantesinferno wrote:Sent you pm! @adoral84

Nothing yet. Try again, perhaps?

Mel wrote:

Dantesinferno wrote:Sent you pm! @adoral84

Nothing yet. Try again, perhaps?

Edit: Disregard...misread quoted text.

djdevin wrote:I caved and bought another Hillcrest tracker to see this in action - works well!

It'd be nice to get an option to flip which tracker is gun and which is head.

Hey djdevin, I'd love to hear more about your experience, what kind of controller did you use, sitting or standing, what was the biggest thing that jumped out to you that needs to be fixed (to me it's the viewmodels in HL2, and the drift but that's more a tracker issue)?

For now with just two trackers I can add vr_swap_trackers or something but I need to have a much more configurable solution that works across games with any number of custom inputs. This weekend I'll try to post more details on where I'm looking to go.

Mel wrote: Can I throw beer money your way? Not a joke. PM me if you have a convenient way (Paypal, for example).

Thanks for the offer, but for the moment I think I'm already drinking too much beer

Thanks for the offer, but for the moment I think I'm already drinking too much beer

I understand the words individually, but I'm having a hard time grasping the concept you are trying to communicate.

adoral84 wrote:Hey djdevin, I'd love to hear more about your experience, what kind of controller did you use, sitting or standing, what was the biggest thing that jumped out to you that needs to be fixed (to me it's the viewmodels in HL2, and the drift but that's more a tracker issue)?

I have the gun tracker attached to a Wiimote that I'm using for buttons (and nunchuk for WSAD movement) - so standing up for rotation.

I agree the gun view models are a little wonky, since in real life when you aim a gun you aim it straight, but in most FPSes the gun is angled unrealistically. When you "center" the gun in the game, it should realistically be in front of your face looking down the sights. There's an arcade-like and realistic approach to this - in real life you'd probably never shoot a weapon while NOT looking straight down the sights, so maybe we have a command that positions the gun model that way - you would have to hold a button to ready the weapon and then press a trigger to fire. That would simulate it correctly in the game and allow for physically bringing the gun tracker up to your eyeline for a more realistic feel. The arcade solution is probably just to get the view models more out of the way - I don't think we can make it much better than that without full XYZ positional tracking (to know where the gun is in relation to the head).

To battle the drift I mapped a button on the Wiimote to vr_center_weapon so I'm able to quickly recenter.

I had a chance to try out the mod over the weekend, and it seems to work.

I couldn't seem to get the a sensor orientation that had the yaw correct. Which way did you have the 3-Space Sensor attached to your head?

Also if you are using the raw IMU data I recommend changing the setFilterMode to 0 if you have not already. No need for the microprocessor calculating the orientation on-board if you are not using it.

Also for the buttons, you can have the device register as just mouse buttons if you set the axes to none in the 3-Space Suite (Sensor->Advanced->Mouse Customization). That way you can get the gun shooting without changing any settings in-game.

@RoadKillGrill I'm glad it worked for you in general, I haven't figured out how to reorient the YEI tracker in their software the way you can with the hillcrest, I've got through the various recalibration steps but it doesn't seem to affect the values that are returned when getting the raw IMU data. I'm already running with setFilterMode 0. If I can't sort something out with the axis orientation in the YEI drivers I'll just allow you to configure the game with a transformation matrix. Mine is currently oriented with the USB connection to the left and the buttons on top but this is fairly odd.

@adoral84 The raw imu data is currently unaffected by setting the axis directions, this is another feature that is being added to the new firmware. Currently only the calculated orientations use the axis direction settings.
For the time being you can just negate and swap the sensor components as needed to get it into the correct space.

Jose wrote:

... I tried 3 lvds boards and they all went died within ~10 minutes of powering up so I've got a partially assembled one sitting off to the side that I haven't been able to use ...

Did you use the same AC adapter on all 3 boards? On my diy rift (5.6 inch screen, HDMI and VGA board), I was originally using a brick-style AC adapter with the output as 12V 4A max, but some of the components were getting really hot, so I switched it to a PowerLine Universal AC Adapter set to 9V 600mA.

So today I recieved 3 LVDS replacement boards for the 5.6" DIY rift setups and two powerline adapter set to 9v 600ma and like clockwork after about 15 minutes with the display on it did the same blinking green/red power light issue that I had on the previous 3. The board was warm in a few spots but nothing that would cause issues with electronics in my experience. Does *anyone* have any advice on this before I screw up the remaining two boards, this is the absolute worst. These were again purchased from Vitrolight on ebay from the same link that's in the DIY rift instructions.

That boggles my mind. In those 10-15 minutes, were you able to get any signal to it? What happens if you connect the "key board" and press the power button?

The screen works fine for those 10-15 minutes (connected with a VGA cable today, didn't have time to try HDMI), I had the 'keyboard' connected from the start and all the menus and settings seemed to work. Then it loses connection with the computer, the screen turns blue or black and none of the keys bring up the menu or anything. I've tried the actual LCDs with new boards and there doesn't seem to be any issue with the actual panels, just the board. I guess I'm just going to have to stick to software, at least there I can just recompile :/ I still have 2 more boards but I'm hesitant to try anything unless someone has an idea as to what could possibly be happening. Should I just try a lower voltage, maybe 6v 600ma on the powerline adapter?

That sounds really weird and I have no idea what's causing that. How have you set the polarity on the powerline adapter?

Btw I'm still enjoying your mod. The 250hz update works really good and is a lot more comfortable than 125hz.

So it's been a while since I've posted any new videos, this is still an early one of the Crysis mod but I wanted to share the progress:

[youtube-hd]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJx21yuCi7E[/youtube-hd]

This is the exact same setup as HL2, so if you can play my Half-Life VR mod you can play my crysis mod.

Looking good man. You work fast.

Looks fantastic! Is there a place I can go to see/read more about your progress? A blog etc.

Your modding work is not only hugely impressive, but it's work like this that will give this VR push real momentum, and is potentially hugely influential. Personally I think this looks good enough that I think I'm going to have to get a setup like yours even if only to play a tiny handful of games on, as it looks too good to miss. Keep up the good work!
EDIT: PCGAMER article about this here: http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/02/26/crysi ... your-face/

Have you had any experimentation with the bluetooth YEI tracker? I'm thinking about trying to add bluetooth to the embedded YEI sensor so that it could be mounted inside of the gun.

@RoadKillGrill, is there any way I can order an embedded version of the sensor that includes the bluetooth transceiver you are using in your packaged model? Seems more cost effective than ordering the packaged version and just ditching the case, buttons, and battery..

@Annon the Bluetooth has a different board design to add the buttons, battery, USB plug, and Bluetooth module. We can make custom design that is smaller but it this is usually for large volume orders.

The Bluetooth has lower rates than the wireless model and much lower than the USB or serial communication methods. The Bluetooth Sensor does not have the HID support over Bluetooth mode. It can still be used for the weapon, just the button states will need to be accessed with the new stream protocol.

I think we can offer a Bluetooth sensor without the case and battery if you can just email us at support I can get someone who can quote you a price.

An easier sollution to view model problem might be to add a laser sight.

Edit: now that I think about it, that won't work so well. Mod looking good though.

adoral84 wrote:The screen works fine for those 10-15 minutes (connected with a VGA cable today, didn't have time to try HDMI), I had the 'keyboard' connected from the start and all the menus and settings seemed to work. Then it loses connection with the computer, the screen turns blue or black and none of the keys bring up the menu or anything. I've tried the actual LCDs with new boards and there doesn't seem to be any issue with the actual panels, just the board. I guess I'm just going to have to stick to software, at least there I can just recompile :/ I still have 2 more boards but I'm hesitant to try anything unless someone has an idea as to what could possibly be happening. Should I just try a lower voltage, maybe 6v 600ma on the powerline adapter?

I now have a 12v 1200mA going to my board. We might have different boards but maybe it's not getting enough.

The 5.6" unit I bought actually came with a 12V 2000mA adapter that I was using for a while. Both tip positive. Never had any problems.

TheHolyChicken wrote:Looks fantastic! Is there a place I can go to see/read more about your progress? A blog etc.

Your modding work is not only hugely impressive, but it's work like this that will give this VR push real momentum, and is potentially hugely influential. Personally I think this looks good enough that I think I'm going to have to get a setup like yours even if only to play a tiny handful of games on, as it looks too good to miss. Keep up the good work!
EDIT: PCGAMER article about this here: http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/02/26/crysi ... your-face/

Thanks, I've been telling myself to set up a blog about all this and I do plan to in the relative short term, up till this point any free time I've had has been used up working on ( or playing ) these mods. I hope to get the setup really polished, simple and cheap enough that most enthusiasts will be able to enjoy it without any grief, and I hope the extra content helps the Rift catch on even more (although I think they've got that covered on their own honestly). I'm also really looking forward to the rift and enough people potentially using something similar to have a VR multiplayer server or two.

djdevin wrote: I now have a 12v 1200mA going to my board. We might have different boards but maybe it's not getting enough.

The 5.6" unit I bought actually came with a 12V 2000mA adapter that I was using for a while. Both tip positive. Never had any problems.

Thanks for the info, I'm totally at a loss on this one. I was trying 12V 1000ma before and had the same issue (this is what is printed on the board).

Is it possible to track the gun's position in space? Or is it only tracking the 6DoF rotations of the gun? Because it's be sweet if you could start with iron sights up, and you move the gun to where that'd be for you, and hit calibrate and it stores that location in 3D space. So whenever you lift the gun up close to that position it cues the iron sight view in the game. Would something like that even be possible?

It is possible to tie the head tracking to absolute Joystick Position? If we can do this, then we can have lot of flexibility to use third party head tracker.

Any plans to support alternate orientations with the YEI 3-Space Sensor? I must have mine aligned different from yours because the movement doesn't line up, even after hitting the L key. Tracking works fine after a tare in my little Unity test bed so I'm not sure what's going on.

German wrote:Any plans to support alternate orientations with the YEI 3-Space Sensor? I must have mine aligned different from yours because the movement doesn't line up, even after hitting the L key. Tracking works fine after a tare in my little Unity test bed so I'm not sure what's going on.

Yes for sure, I'm using the raw IMU data with custom sensor fusion so calibration and tare through the YEI app have no effect in game with the current version of their APIs. I'll add in some overrides for the default calibration via console commands in the game.

Out of curiousity how is your tracker oriented?

adoral84 wrote: Out of curiousity how is your tracker oriented?

I have the embedded, raw board(I'm not afraid of a little soldering) so it's flat, on the top of my DIY Rift with the USB pins on the left. It just worked better for the strain relief.

I would love to see a razer hydra interation. one controller for the weapon and the other for the camera movement. Playing while sitting on swivel chair.

Well last night I had all the iron sights working with a few bugs I needed to work out, but it appears EA has stepped up their game in their attempts to be the world's worst game publisher, apparently now they've screwed up their already redundant DRM and I can't load the game anymore... I'll send EA a note but I don't imagine they'll be particularly responsive.

I guess in the mean time I can do some work on the viewmodels in HL2, after working with crysis I have a few things I'd like to carry back over into the source engine.

Oh No!!!!

And a bit of half-life.... as real-life


http://colombiareports.com/colombia-new ... oilet.html

This looks like an amazing mod, thanks for spending the time adoral.

With my rift arriving soon I'm keen to get the setup in place so I can use your mod to the fullest.

Firstly wondering what the best quality of sensor you support? Would it be the YEI - 3 -Space controller rather than the Hillcrest.
I can't remember what the sampling freq of the hillcrest is - is it 250Hz vs the 1000Hz on the YEI?

Also the Oculus looks to be shipping with their own custom built tracker (not sure if it's a derivative of another manufacturer) will you be supporting this in your mod too. I think their sampling freq is 1000Hz too - but not clear if they will be selling trackers seperately?

How many sensors do you currently support -
-head tracker
-another for neck alignment?
- another on the gun
Anywhere else?

Thanks for your help.

yunti wrote:This looks like an amazing mod, thanks for spending the time adoral.

With my rift arriving soon I'm keen to get the setup in place so I can use your mod to the fullest.

Firstly wondering what the best quality of sensor you support? Would it be the YEI - 3 -Space controller rather than the Hillcrest.
I can't remember what the sampling freq of the hillcrest is - is it 250Hz vs the 1000Hz on the YEI?

Also the Oculus looks to be shipping with their own custom built tracker (not sure if it's a derivative of another manufacturer) will you be supporting this in your mod too. I think their sampling freq is 1000Hz too - but not clear if they will be selling trackers seperately?

How many sensors do you currently support -
-head tracker
-another for neck alignment?
- another on the gun
Anywhere else?

Thanks for your help.

When the rift comes out I'll integrate their api into the mods I've been working on, and if they do sell their trackers separately I'll try to make sure they're supported as well (I probably won't buy one unless they're significantly better that the handful I already have).

In it's current state I'm only using 2 trackers, one for the head and one for the weapon, but I have most everything in place to support additional custom inputs for movement and spine position. Even with only two points being tracked and supporting a handful of trackers it's already apparent I need to have some sort of more flexible configuration system to allow people to control their setup, orientations, etc. I have a few ideas on where I want to go with that but haven't put much time in it.

I'd also like to add support for the razer hydra, for seated play with separate head / weapon tracking I think it might be the ideal setup. Anybody done any custom work with one? I'd love to get some pointers on anything that worked great/issues encountered.

I spent a bunch of time back in the source engine this weekend since I was having DRM issues with crysis and fixed up a few things things, and spent even more time trying to improve the way the viewmodels (on-screen weapons) move around. I'm not sure why but I'm having issues getting them to behave as expected (no issues at all with the same concepts in crysis) and I'm pretty sure they'll have to be heavily modified to work the way I want them to (especially with positional tracking factored in).

Hi adoral84,
I got a chance to do a quick test run with my Diy Rift.
It must be me doing somthing wrong on install/setup, because the Hillcrest doing head tracking went far far off course with just a little bit of head movment, and it seemed the recenter button did nothing. Does this sound like somthing you have come across before ?

Someone else mentioned something similar about the tracking being overly sensitive because they weren't running the 250hz firmware for the hillcrest. It could be that or maybe mouse emulation in the vireio drivers in addtion to the actual head tracking (but that would only make the yaw values scale). Is it just overly sensitive somewhere around 2x the sensitivity?

I had this happen, the yaw was about 4 x more sensitive, but I realised I plugged in the hillcrest after I had started the game, so it was using mouse emulation. Once I restarted the game with the tracker plugged in it worked perfectly.

Could you please add FreePIE support?

You can use the Freetrack shared memory pipeline which has built in support in FreePIE

The Pipeline name is "FT_SharedMem" the data struct looks like (C# code)
You need to define the whole struct but ignore everything other than yaw, pitch, roll

edit: I have no problem creating a custom shared memory plugin for FreePIE if you dont like the layout of Freetracks struct. Maybe a struct that have two trackers, one for head and one for weapon

@adoral84 have you thought about open-sourcing this on github? I'd be interested in tinkering with it, and I'm sure others would here as well.