Meant to be Seen

http://www.grin.be/blog/?p=975

Rumor has it, that this is the most impressive demo yet. Please report back Rift owners!

[youtube]http://youtube.com/HNWkxObNK1E[/youtube]

Well I'm still waiting for my rift, but I'm building up my demos, so as with the others I've given it a go and I do believe there might be an issue with the controls. I noticed the "joystick=false" button so grabbed my (now incredibly dusty) thrustmaster topgun joystick clicked the button and promptly flew up in to the air and span hugely out of controll before I'd touched anything, and I completely failed to get the helicopter to respond correctly at all. Thank god I didn't have my rift on or I think that would have been a one way trip to sick town.
There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with my joystick, so it's either the controls are very buggy or it needs the rift input for some reason?
Other than that it looks like it should be fun

It's very cool, I was never a fan of heli games (commanche etc) , but with the rift just flying around an island is so much fun!

It is awesome - once you get a hang of the controls it is so natural to be able to look around the cockpit and your surroundings - especially looking into the turns. LAnding the heli is a pleasure as you can watch out the window and monitor your height and speed!

Looks neatopie! Looks like I need to get summa doze joystick thingys.

Also, working YT embed, hopefully.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNWkxObNK1E

The setup, linked in the description to the above.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzwEo3PPh7w

That looks great, I've been interested in VR heli sims for a while. Can't wait to try this with my setup once I get my Rift!

@ Plagued: go into Windows and check your USB game controllers. Most games your joystick must be top of the list that appears. If its not, that is your problem.

The controls are kind of wonky, but its actually pretty cool once you get the drift of it. Nice stereo for sure.

I tried it just quickly to check if it works the other day (I do not yet have my Rift) and I immediately crashed into the ground in a flaming wreck. :/ Looks like it's not one you can immediately jump into, haha.

Awesome , i will have a lot of demo ready when i will receive my rift !
Also, it would be great if they could add positionnal tracking with the hydra

The demo is getting Xbox 360 controller support in a few days according to developer.

Parallaxis wrote:The demo is getting Xbox 360 controller support in a few days according to developer.

It already supports the Xbox 360 controller just fine. I mapped the up/down/left/right to the Xbox ABXY buttons and the moving to the left stick. Works perfectly!

It's without doubt the most impressive demo so far, flying slowly over the ground and close to stuff feels amazing, also seeing your body is really cool.

Great demo. I played it yesterday very fun good job. The left to right movement could be better would be nice to have turn left and right. With my joystick a Logitech Extreme the up and down throttle is backwards. It is fun flying arpund circling rocket.

it's pretty nice, the trick to controlling with mouse is that mouse position on screen is where the joystick of the heli is pointed at(you have to manually bring back to neutral). the 3d effect works nicely, though for me the center drifted a lot during 3 minutes.

This is a good demo. It made me feel a little queasy, but that's fun in this instance. I was startled when I noticed that there was a passenger in the vehicle.

Best demo I've tried yet - FUN factor through the roof!

lolol god why has no one tried to get FSX working yet LOL Im cryin over here! If your gonna go for flightsims how ever go for RoF I believe they even have their SDK out already Ill double check that. The Flight Sim community is BEGGING for someone to crack that egg!

This Heli Hell actually looks better than FSX for helicopter flying! Love the way theres a copilot in there, and the fact they have good low level detail.

It really is the best demo of the Rift so far. Mostly because of the cockpit (Where is Hawken ?!).

The latest build had some problem when I crashed into the tower where the game crashed, didn't experience that before, before I just pressed up and it fixed the weirdness.

I would really love more cool environments, some mission maybe, weather, cool music, missiles!

But so far looks really promising what the Rift han produce. It's all about experiences with the Rift. I saw this one demo where someone had taken a somewhat ugly Unity3D asset (snow world), put the player there with a weird scale and not done much more, it was still an interesting experience =)

I can really see such a sim taking off (pardon the pun) with Razer support.

Have the Collective mapped to one controller and the Cyclic mapped to the other.
Throttle is in the collective so simply map this to the Razer's trigger as its pressure sensitive.

The main problem would be the foot pedals ?



p.s - I used to be a helicopter engineer in the Australian Navy... I think it would be fun to attempt a landing on the back of a ship.

mickman wrote:I can really see such a sim taking off (pardon the pun) with Razer support.

Have the Collective mapped to one controller and the Cyclic mapped to the other.
Throttle is in the collective so simply map this to the Razer's trigger as its pressure sensitive.

The main problem would be the foot pedals ?



p.s - I used to be a helicopter engineer in the Australian Navy... I think it would be fun to attempt a landing on the back of a ship.

I did that in GlovePIE ages ago in Take On Helicopters. It's really cool. Unfortunately I never got around to releasing it. I used the triggers for the pedals. I can't remember how I did the throttle, but I think I mapped it to roll on the collective, or something like that.

Regarding Razer controls: I guess you could always map each controllers trigger to the pedals... but it sure would feel weird pulling up on the collective & at the same time pulling in a trigger on the collective to move the left pedal... That would just feel so unnatural.. & this is all about an authentic realisation.. yes ?
"authentic realisation" .... If I were to want such an experience I best purchase a proper set of foot pedals that sit under my desk...

for those of us with less flight time in real helicopters, a decent joystick should be just as emersive, as if you didn't know there were supposed to be peddles you wouldn't miss them.
You can get usb peddles quite cheaply if you want.
I had an old thrustmaster joystick with a twist grip that I used to use for helicopter games I used the twist grip rather than peddles as room was limited, not a "realistic" interface, but allows you to controll all the right things and is more accurate than a joypad. Not sure I can see an advantage with the hydra, unless you needed to reach forward and press a few buttons or tap the fuel gauge before plummeting to your death
On the joystick front I checked WiredEarp's suggestion and my primary controller was indeed the hydra, but swapping them over made it better but the helicopter was still uncontrollable, like the joystick was completely calibrated wrong, despite it showing as calibrated perfectly in other apps. Anyone else used a joystick?

Cymatic Bruce needs to try this...

@ Plagued: how did you swap them over? Did you unplug the Hydra? If not, try that?

I'm downloading it now just to see what its like on a monitor. Will see how well it works with a joystick and foot pedal setup...

WiredEarp wrote:This Heli Hell actually looks better than FSX for helicopter flying! Love the way theres a copilot in there, and the fact they have good low level detail.

Wired, do u have the rift working for FSX?! If so can you post up some vids? Sim HQ would die to see those. Or are you just postulating that it looks better? Fsx has everything. Planes, helos environments and it runs at 100 fps on even mmoderate settings. I'm reallg puzzled why everyone is freaking out over bow good tbis helii hell demo is. (No offense it is pretty awesome) when there is an entire world of aircraft waiting to be explored. I believe cyber said that vierio could do it. (All be it just for day time scenarios).

I can't wait to get mi e to start tweaking as best I can to get current games ported.

Hooves wrote:

WiredEarp wrote:This Heli Hell actually looks better than FSX for helicopter flying! Love the way theres a copilot in there, and the fact they have good low level detail.

Wired, do u have the rift working for FSX?! If so can you post up some vids? Sim HQ would die to see those. Or are you just postulating that it looks better? Fsx has everything. Planes, helos environments and it runs at 100 fps on even mmoderate settings. I'm reallg puzzled why everyone is freaking out over bow good tbis helii hell demo is. (No offense it is pretty awesome) when there is an entire world of aircraft waiting to be explored. I believe cyber said that vierio could do it. (All be it just for day time scenarios).

I can't wait to get mi e to start tweaking as best I can to get current games ported.

Unfortunately MS has the FSX code on lock down. Therefore, you would have to rely on injection (vierio). So it's not going to be as good as a game that natively supports the Rift.

Wired, do u have the rift working for FSX?! If so can you post up some vids? Sim HQ would die to see those. Or are you just postulating that it looks better? Fsx has everything. Planes, helos environments and it runs at 100 fps on even mmoderate settings

Nah, I haven't received my Rift yet. I use FSX quite a bit though. This Heli Hell demo actually seems more immersive than FSX however (love the copilot etc). Controls are pretty crap however - maybe I need to try the top skill level, but it seems that pitch/bank is artificially limited to a certain amount. I get a better impression of flying close to the ground than I do on FSX - maybe I just need the right FSX plugins or something.

My suggestions for Heli Hell 2 is to have a mode removing the pitch/bank limits (if it doesn't exist already) and to support 'proper' inputs.

For a helicopter, one hand/joystick should control pitch/bank (forwards/strafe) and the other stick should control height. Joystick twist functionality should be set to turn (or at least, be remappable). If these changes were made, then it could be used as a fun helicopter simulator. Currently, having turn on the cyclic instead of strafe just felt wrong. With the controls remapped in this way, anyone could then use PPJoy to hook up whatever input devices they have (pedals, throttles, etc).

This is really cool. Good work.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/kXLIzh1yl4Q

Hydra support for positional tracking!

Awesome! Excellent work guys

Awesome work....now integrate SimVibe support and put a buttkicker on your chair

Almost shat bricks when i saw the gunman in the back.

This is without a doubt one of the best demos out there, the imersment level is incredible. I have been flying for a couple of hours straight now and no feeling of nausea what so ever..

Good work guys!!

Looking superb. Can't wait to try this when I get my Rift in the near future!

I've been playing this for hours. Just circling around, landing, taking off, landing, taking off, circling around.
And it's just an island. This very limited single demo is more fun than any arcade machine I've ever tried.

edit; With this soundtrack: http://open.spotify.com/user/tjmontana/ ... ALIme2dJMq

The Laptop. The Rift. The Hydra, The PS3 controller. The mouse. The taking of glass off. The wedging of one hydra stick under the head strap...... Cables EVERYWHERE and me tangled up with it . Oh...and the blind fumbling trying to find the 'turn on analogue sticks' buttons with no glasses on.

It was absolutely awesome when I finally managed to get myself settled in there with the Hydra tracking not going nuts.

It could do with some some way of calibrating the sensitivity of the Hydra though. I seemed to be able to look over my feet quite easily with only moving a foot or so forward.

Just being able peer over the side when landing makes it so much better.

Can i reconfigure the joystick? I can only yaw and pitch with my joystick. Roll is not assigned to any axis

Yep, I had the same issue CV. I think this is the biggest limitation so far, no roll on the joystick. If it was added, you could use real heli controls to control it (cyclic and collective).

I tried to find a utility to map my joystick to keypresses to hack this in, but couldn't find one, could probably do it with GlovePIE or FreePIE, but it would be best if there was just an axis control added for roll...

WiredEarp wrote:Yep, I had the same issue CV. I think this is the biggest limitation so far, no roll on the joystick. If it was added, you could use real heli controls to control it (cyclic and collective).

I tried to find a utility to map my joystick to keypresses to hack this in, but couldn't find one, could probably do it with GlovePIE or FreePIE, but it would be best if there was just an axis control added for roll...

It would be pretty useless since it would not be a stepless control :/

You could use the mouse emulation, but it would be hard to get it in sync

edit: Also whats up with throttle control, its inverted which I could deal with. BUT its sluggish as hell, you have to stop a descent way earlier than when flying a real heli otherwise the heli wont recover until its too late

It would be pretty useless since it would not be a stepless control :/

It wouldn't be any worse than using the keys for roll (which i use) - and would at least put it on the correct stick.

I don't think the flight model is designed for accuracy I'd also like to see a 'real' mode, without the auto centering.

Please, please enable joystick support for Z(roll), X(Pitch), Y(yaw) and reversing throttle. Love the demo except the controls drive me batty and the sim is so immersive, enabling accurate controls would be the icing on the cake!