What, you mean like this?
Yes. As someone who's somewhat involved in this kind of thing, yeah, you need to know, at some level, the position of the motion platform, so you can subtract back. We're looking at a few different ways of doing that; the easy way is for the Rift hardware to use a camera you can mount on whatever hardware (vibration probably isn't a huge issue, since we're not talking about super high frequency stuff getting sent through and it gets damped anyway; further, big transients will result in your head moving around anyway so little problems won't be too noticeable), but that's not the only method the Rift is using - or, for DK1, not the method it's using at all. So the Rift needs to know the position of the platform. Luckily this is fairly easy to accomplish; it's just a matter of picking the best way to do it, which is a problem we're working on - it's more a matter of deciding on the best policy vis how things will work going forward for Rift development, making sure things aren't too kludgy or shutting doors for other features, etc.
But that's definitely happening.
Interestingly, you can get away with quite a bit of motion - at least, non-yaw motion! - even without any compensation; the more you turn it up, you start to feel like you're sitting in a hammock inside the car tub and swinging around inside it, though, which is a decidedly bizarre sensation when coupled with the eerie realism of the Rift and the 'I'm really on a road' physical sensation of the motion system.
My best guess is that the games won't be responsible for any of this stuff; it makes much more sense to handle it as far from there as possible and as close to the hardware as possible. So for your purposes, Scawen, you probably don't have to really worry about it.
Also, Scawen - PM me if you get a chance; I'm working on something you might be interested in but the public forum isn't the best place to discuss it...
Yay!
OK, so - the alternative DLL does a strange thing: When you turn your head to the side (from the in-car perspective), tilting your real head changes the pitch of your LFS head, and vice versa. Let me tell you - due to my line of work, I don't get motion sick easily, but that's enough to make you feel funny in short order.
The original DLL works fine, though.
Tracking seems fine. I didn't notice any drift, though I only went for a few minutes at a time; maybe it would be a problem during a two hour race.
One suggestion: Right now, the Rift's yaw ('direction you're looking') seems to zero itself when LFS loads (or maybe when you go from the pits into a race; I didn't test that), but *not* when you do a 'restart race'. In the absence of an obvious way to reset the Rift's view zero - I didn't look through the 'keys' section; maybe it's there? - and even when such a key is available, it might make sense to have the zero reset whenever the car resets. Presumably in those situations the user will be looking forward by default. Or he ought to be.
Comments and issues:
These guys are the real deal, gentlemen. And, having been lu... err.. fortunate enough to correspond with Palmer (the founder of Oculus), I can personally vouch for him. He's a good guy and deserves the success.
Get out your checkbooks. If you don't have the money, get a credit card. If you're not old enough to get a credit card, turn 18.
Hell yeah! This is what I was dreaming about when I was a little kid! Screw flying cars and hoverboards; we've got the Rift!
OK, so - the alternative DLL does a strange thing: When you turn your head to the side (from the in-car perspective), tilting your real head changes the pitch of your LFS head, and vice versa. Let me tell you - due to my line of work, I don't get motion sick easily, but that's enough to make you feel funny in short order.
The original DLL works fine, though.
Tracking seems fine. I didn't notice any drift, though I only went for a few minutes at a time; maybe it would be a problem during a two hour race.
One suggestion: Right now, the Rift's yaw ('direction you're looking') seems to zero itself when LFS loads (or maybe when you go from the pits into a race; I didn't test that), but *not* when you do a 'restart race'. In the absence of an obvious way to reset the Rift's view zero - I didn't look through the 'keys' section; maybe it's there? - and even when such a key is available, it might make sense to have the zero reset whenever the car resets. Presumably in those situations the user will be looking forward by default. Or he ought to be.
Comments and issues:
- The view itself seems correct - I get the same creepy 'ZOMG those are MY ARMS!!' feeling as I do in iRacing, though the LFS driver seems to be wearing a baggier racing suit. The wheel looks correct, and depth / FOV seems correct. The eerie Rift feeling of really actually being there seriously I mean it I'm not even exaggerating man is definitely there.
- The menus are basically unusable at the Rift devkit resolution. Hopefully not an issue for production.
The GUI scale slider doesn't go quite small enough for me, though since the menus get even *more* unreadable, further shrinkage would currently be of limited utility. iRacing both scales the menu down and plants it 'out in space' in a fixed location, so you can make it large enough to be readable while being able to look around to see all of it. This works quite well, but the head tracking is actually so high-frequency that, combined with the big pixels, the GUI looks really jumpy. If I had my druthers - which I often don't - LFS would do something similar, except lowpass the head tracking down to 5hz or so. It would look a little rubbery, but it'd be smooth.
- The head tracking doesn't work in chase view. It'd be nice if it was summed in there. The Rift without any tracking gets into motion sickness territory pretty rapidly if there's a full screen without any head tracking.
- Per previous two, the lack of head tracking in fullscreen menus and such can be an issue also. More than a couple of minutes outside of a view with tracking and you start to feel a little odd; presumably some people would feel downright ill. So it's more than just a whiz-bang feature to have the menus act like a 'virtual monitor' that stays planted in space in front of you.
- OMG, the mirrors are rendered in 2D! At least, the on-car ones; didn't check the virtual ones. Yeah, yeah, I get *why*, but it actually makes a big difference - if they're done in 3D, your eyes don't have to re-accommodate between far/near view as you switch between looking ahead and checking. And I'm still (fairly) young, and am used to screwing with my 3D vision and focus, so it'll be worse for a lot of people.
- Presumably you know this, but the non-in-car views are broken, and instead supply a left eyeful of dark gray and a right eyeful of black. If those worked with head tracking I'd totally be joining public servers, setting myself up in the stands, and attempting to blind feed myself popcorn while watching the metal fly.
These guys are the real deal, gentlemen. And, having been lu... err.. fortunate enough to correspond with Palmer (the founder of Oculus), I can personally vouch for him. He's a good guy and deserves the success.
Get out your checkbooks. If you don't have the money, get a credit card. If you're not old enough to get a credit card, turn 18.
Hell yeah! This is what I was dreaming about when I was a little kid! Screw flying cars and hoverboards; we've got the Rift!
I'm not sure whether to be flattered or alarmed that you both remembered and took the time to find where to link that.
You're not the guy who saw that video of me driving the motion platform and complimented my biceps, are you? Not that there's anything wrong with that, but, you know, stalkers and stuff...
Hard to say from the video. They might have a bit more strut travel, but the cuing has a huge effect on what you see going on. They seem to be pegging the limits of the struts on almost every corner, which isn't necessarily what you want. If you use the whole travel of the platform in normal circumstances, then the cuing goes horribly wrong when things are a little beyond normal - think turning your amp up too high. It's louder, but not necessarily better.
No, definitely not - the 'moving group' is quite different, for one. There are a lot of little differences. And it looks like they're rolling their own servo control system, which is ballsy. But the basic geometry of the 301/401 is unique among motion system manufacturers; in particular I've never see anyone using a strut design which provides lateral stability the same way ours do.
If you do a quick look back and forth here and here, you can see a few other similarities - the use of clamp collars to anchor the tops of the struts, the 'clevis leg' mount point for the strut-to-mount joint, and most remarkably, the stainless steel track, screw-mounted every 10 degrees or so, for the r-axis drive wheel, complete with wear line where the wheels go!
Theirs is also red and grey.
So, yeah, all of those things together could have been developed independently, but it seems quite unlikely.
No, of course it's not identical. And they may well have experimented with motion systems slung inside the struts before. But their '401' is so similar to ours that people are confusing them on a regular basis. Except they're saying 'slightly dangerous-looking' and 'needs refinement' about the motion-sim simulator. I'm not terribly pleased with the idea of people thinking, "That thing from Force Dynamics looks dangerous and rickety", and I've already seen it happening.
The major difference appears to be, as I said above, that it seems that their servo control system is their own. We went with an off-the-shelf servo control system from Galil and MCG motors because it's very difficult to make a powerful, reliable, high performance servo system. You're competing with people who make tens of thousands of the things; it's a bit like building a race car and trying to save money by making your own tires.
You can save money if you do it yourself, but there's significant risk involved if you don't get your specs dead on, and we felt it wasn't worth it given the relatively small amount we'd save percentage-wise.
The motion-sim guys tell me that they'd never even heard of us before I contacted them. Given the similarities between the products in a broad, broad range of disparate areas, I find that difficult to believe. I'm personally less inclined to be charitable than if they had just come out and said, "Yeah, you inspired us but, we think we should be able to sell these things anyway."
David from Force Dynamics here... these guys aren't authorized by us, and we didn't give them permission to use our design elements in their machine.
The chances of them independently developing everything from basic geometry to strut design to the strut mounts to screen position, rotation axis center, and the stainless steel drive track around the machine, are... small. Unfortunately there isn't a lot we can do about it except try to make sure people know what's really going on.
I find it somewhat ironic that someone passed off their video as his own work, without asking, and is trying to make money from it in an entirely different country!
The chances of them independently developing everything from basic geometry to strut design to the strut mounts to screen position, rotation axis center, and the stainless steel drive track around the machine, are... small. Unfortunately there isn't a lot we can do about it except try to make sure people know what's really going on.
I find it somewhat ironic that someone passed off their video as his own work, without asking, and is trying to make money from it in an entirely different country!
Yes.
You're confusing maximum accelerations with *jerk* - the rate of change of acceleration. Even a fighter plane can't go (effectively) instantly from +1 to -5gs like an F1 car can. Or at least could.
Think about F.Alonso warming up his tires - that's hard enough with a 1000lb vehicle stuck to the ground with soft tires and downforce; it'd be flat-out impossible with a 40,000+ vehicle sliding around through the air. A fighter plane can probably generate some fast transients, in specific scenarios, but not *faster* than a race car, which can generate *instant* transients quite easily, and does so on a fairly regular basis.
If you want to get full-scale accelerations, it obviously is. But in general, flying is a pretty nebulous thing (I've done it, though not in a jet!). The feel you have isn't anything like the feel in a race car, and you don't USE the feel in the same way.
They're two very different disciplines, but my opinion is that it's a lot easier to screw up motion while simulating a race car than a plane.
"I'm Mark Webbah, mate! Throw another shrimp on the barbie! G'day from down undah!"
You guys should read what Soro's saying a bit more carefully before you dismiss him - he's obviously thought this through and makes a lot of good points.
Soro, you misunderstood my post - I meant exactly what you say, actually: Transitioning between 'real' lateral/longitudinal acceleration and 'faked' (via rotation) lateral/longitudinal acceleration.
The reason this is a Good Idea is that - again, Soro, good job - vehicles have very short transition times. A car can go from accelerating at 1g to decelerating at 3gs in basically zero time - but a motion platform that relies on rotational position to simulate that feel takes quite a long time (relatively - for us, maximum transition time is about 1 second, for others usually longer). During that period of transition, you get incorrect forces. Center of rotation can reduce that negative perceptually, by moving your butt (or, if the CoR is very high, your whole body) the right way during that transition. Basically, a high center of rotation starts to 'automatically' accomplish what Soro suggests.
But you need a very high CoR indeed to get good enough for a truly correct feel during bad transients.
It should be pointed out that, even with problems during transients, a driving simulator can be an excellent training or simulation tool. If you're driving well, you're already driving with a minimum of load transients (except in certain situations like jumping HARD on the brakes in a formula car). It's if you start to get into a tank-slapper that the transients get really bad. So if you're driving reasonably well, you don't 'bump up against the end-stops' of the platform's capability that much; most of the times you really want to feel what the car is doing (and you're not about to fling it into the scenery) aren't transient situations. Of course, the faster and lighter your car, the faster the transitions are. Motion simulators are bad at fast formula cars and downright awful at go-karts, unless you turn down the maximum *level* of force to increase the speed of transition between different loads.
I hope that was somewhat clear.
Soro, you misunderstood my post - I meant exactly what you say, actually: Transitioning between 'real' lateral/longitudinal acceleration and 'faked' (via rotation) lateral/longitudinal acceleration.
The reason this is a Good Idea is that - again, Soro, good job
- vehicles have very short transition times. A car can go from accelerating at 1g to decelerating at 3gs in basically zero time - but a motion platform that relies on rotational position to simulate that feel takes quite a long time (relatively - for us, maximum transition time is about 1 second, for others usually longer). During that period of transition, you get incorrect forces. Center of rotation can reduce that negative perceptually, by moving your butt (or, if the CoR is very high, your whole body) the right way during that transition. Basically, a high center of rotation starts to 'automatically' accomplish what Soro suggests.But you need a very high CoR indeed to get good enough for a truly correct feel during bad transients.
It should be pointed out that, even with problems during transients, a driving simulator can be an excellent training or simulation tool. If you're driving well, you're already driving with a minimum of load transients (except in certain situations like jumping HARD on the brakes in a formula car). It's if you start to get into a tank-slapper that the transients get really bad. So if you're driving reasonably well, you don't 'bump up against the end-stops' of the platform's capability that much; most of the times you really want to feel what the car is doing (and you're not about to fling it into the scenery) aren't transient situations. Of course, the faster and lighter your car, the faster the transitions are. Motion simulators are bad at fast formula cars and downright awful at go-karts, unless you turn down the maximum *level* of force to increase the speed of transition between different loads.
I hope that was somewhat clear.
Last edited by perisoft, .
> You attack Subaru with your sword. Subaru takes 3 damage.
> Subaru attacks with SANDBLASTER! You take 53 damage.
> Subaru attacks with SANDBLASTER! You take 53 damage.
Wait, am I supposed to post a pic now? I haven't done this before.
If so, I guess maybe this will work:
http://www.force-dynamics.com/rally404.jpg
[nodding head] ♫ You are the dancing queeen, younnng and sweeeet, only sevvventeeeen... ♫
I'm David from Force Dynamics. First, this is a pretty cool thread, and it's gratifying to know that a bunch of people out there appreciate what we're doing!
Second, to Soro: Your idea isn't a bad one at all. After all, if you consider the best possible simulator, what would it do? It'd be able to move, laterally and longitudinally, exactly like a car. Benefit? Perfect simulation. Negative? Needs 4 square miles to operate and a 900hp servo system.
But you can do a pretty good job even with far less, just like you describe. But it's still very expensive - that's why we didn't do things that way. There's a system out there called the National Advanced Driving Simulator (yes... NADS... I know) that has a whole Stewart platform on a huge X/Y table. It needs its own building and cost $15m plus, if I recall.
So, what do you do in the absense of that? Try to get as close as possible. There's a whole range, from most expensive to least:
1: Real car
2: Simulator with same motion range as real car
3: Simulator with large motion range; tilts to do 'constant forces' as it runs out of XY travel
4: Simulator with very high center of rotation (above your head); your butt is actually moving laterally during rotations, so it's basically like 3
5: Simulator with reasonably high center of rotation (like the 301); not as good as 4 but probably half the cost or less for the same dynamic performance
6: Simulator with low center of rotation (under your butt). This is awful, since your entire body moves the OPPOSITE way it should for any given force input
The one thing nobody's mentioned here is yaw (rotation; spin). That, to us, is the single most important force you can have with a ground vehicle simulator of any kind. Very few, if any, companies out there have any yaw, and the ones that do have only small amounts (+/- 15 degrees maybe), which cripples its usefulness. A large amount of correctly-done yaw trumps almost anything else (aside from really bad errors like sub-chassis centers of rotation and inverted forces!).
Well, that's just not nice!
(I set the car up horribly in order to make it slide around a lot, to show how the rotation axis works. And then I drove like a weasel on amphetamines, too. If I drove like that all the time while testing I'd be pretty sore...
)That was actually a customer of ours who was looking to set up a series of sim racing centers. Unfortunately sometimes investors hem and haw until it's too late to do a project. But we're still going strong; companies don't tend to release new models after ceasing trading...
First off, this price list isn't supposed to be public. Its being posted on this forum will confuse issues greatly in countries where we have exclusive distributors (often due to differing warrantee and safety requirements that change the retail price of the machine quite a bit). Normally I'd think, "Well, who's going to know about the LFSforum post?" but I've seen it happen before and it takes a lot of explaining.
The Momo wheel option is there basically as a hold-over and due to previous customer requests. We don't recommend it, but as our wheel is far more expensive, the option is there if a private customer wants it. The hardware required to mount that "$60 wheel" actually does cost something, as the wheel doesn't just magically snap into place in the machine.
Also, perhaps you would like to build one-off custom brackets, with shop time at $40/hour, with good fit and finish, for $5? If you can, I'll buy them from you.
And finally, if you would like to point out a list of our competitors who are providing better hardware for 1/10th the price, I'm all ears. Otherwise, accusing my company of ripping people off with useless glitz won't sit well with me.
-David W.
[edit: A quick note about pricing - I'm not saying that nobody should say, "Oh, it's about $30k." But if you're talking to friends about it, I would appreciate if you say, "It's about $30k in the United States." That's really all that needs to happen for everything to be a lot clearer!]
Last edited by perisoft, .
I don't have an external video of the production 301 up yet, but it's on the list of things to do. There are a few on Youtube, though.
Multicamera is also on the todo list. Rallycross, too... but maybe not in the BF1!
Multicamera is also on the todo list. Rallycross, too... but maybe not in the BF1!
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