Author Topic: TrackIR functionality has degraded  (Read 2018 times)

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TrackIR functionality has degraded
Before the new DLL linking scheme track IR had full six-degrees of freedom. Besides looking vertically and horizontally you could zoom in and out, as well as pivot. Now it's down to two. IS there any kind of fix, or is anyone looking into restoring the original functionality?

 

Offline Swifty

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Re: TrackIR functionality has degraded
It's just your imagination. Pitch, yaw, and translation are still there. I just tested it out myself with a cockpit. The effect is really hard to see without one.

 

Offline Herra Tohtori

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Re: TrackIR functionality has degraded
Before the new DLL linking scheme track IR had full six-degrees of freedom. Besides looking vertically and horizontally you could zoom in and out, as well as pivot. Now it's down to two. IS there any kind of fix, or is anyone looking into restoring the original functionality?

Zoom was never implemented in FS2_Open as a TrackIr functionality or otherwise. The word you're looking for is translation (not the language kind either).

The implementation is, and has always been, at most five degrees of freedom: X, Y and Z-axis translation, rotation on pitch and yaw axes. Roll is sadly not implemented so far, for reasons beyond my sphere of awareness.

Roll would be an important addition to the TrackIR DLL's as it would bring full 6DOF support to FS2_Open... and of course, actual zoom (variable field of view) would be very, very beneficial either as a scripted or in-engine feature.
There are three things that last forever: Abort, Retry, Fail - and the greatest of these is Fail.

 

Offline Swifty

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Re: TrackIR functionality has degraded
Roll isn't in there because I wasn't sure what effect it'll play on calculations involving the player viewpoint. It's probably negligible but I simply moved on to other things.

I'll probably get back to TrackIR sometime to implement the full 6DOF. And replace Z-translation with FOV.

 

Offline Herra Tohtori

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Re: TrackIR functionality has degraded
Roll isn't in there because I wasn't sure what effect it'll play on calculations involving the player viewpoint. It's probably negligible but I simply moved on to other things.

I'll probably get back to TrackIR sometime to implement the full 6DOF. And replace Z-translation with FOV.

Don't do that. Or implement the z-axis zoom as follows:



-|_____________|____|____|+
  translation only     |      FOV only
                           |
                      translation+FOV



This is (pretty much) how it's implemented in the 6DOF add-on for IL-2 Sturmovik, and it works reasonably well, although players can select to disable the z-axis zoom and isntead use manual FOV controls, which I much prefer to do.

The reason for this is that translating the movement of your head into movement of the viewpoint in the game is intuitive enough. But when forward-backward movement starts to affect field of view, it's only really intuitive when you are looking straight ahead. That's why I prefer to keep my head tracking as head tracking, and control the field of view manually.

If you do implement FOV as part of z-axis movement, it needs to (IMHO) be player-controllable to select the mode. Either by releasing two versions, or including an in-game option to set the mode.

As far as I'm concerned, getting roll to work would be a priority for the TrackIR implementation, and getting FOV adjustment working independent of TrackIR, because quite simply field of view adjustability needs to be available for everyone, not just TrackIR/FreeTrack users. If then you want to include FOV functionality in Track IR implementation, that'd be the bells and whistles part.
There are three things that last forever: Abort, Retry, Fail - and the greatest of these is Fail.

 

Offline Nuke

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Re: TrackIR functionality has degraded
roll data is reported to the game engine from the dll as far as i can tell, its just not used. when i added trackir functions to the scripting system roll was indeed in there, and as far as i can tell, it works. the game just needs to be told to use it.
« Last Edit: September 29, 2010, 05:41:57 am by Nuke »
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