[ANN] opentrack 2.0 beta 1 released!
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Lol where?
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http github com opentrack opentrack releases
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Hi guys,
I installed Opentrack2.3rc21 and setup the mapping of the curves. In OpenTrack is everything OK - the octopus moves in every direction as well… But when I start Falcon - 4.32/33 the movements are only in Yaw and Pitch directions - others don´t work… In OTrc13 worked in all directions… Some ideas how to fix it? -
Enable “TrackIR vector” in BMS options.
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Thanks, it´s working
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Just tried cloning the repo and building on Linux Mint 18.2, but sadly it doesn’t work. I created an issue on github, let me know if you need more details.
All the best, Uwe
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Before I try building opentrack from source (and I’d be happy to provide binaries that work on Linux Mint if there’s interest), can somebody please confirm that opentrack works ok with BMS running in WINE on Linux?
I’m currently using linuxtrack for head tracking on the Linux side of things, and I’ve come across a problem with it in that the z axis vector doesn’t work in BMS (or other sims I’ve tried running in WINE on Linux like the rfactor 2 demo). On win7 I’m using the z axis for FOV control so I can zoom in on the instruments by moving my head towards the screen, but sadly this is not possible when BMS runs in WINE (there’s only a really tiny zoom effect although the 3d glider preview works great w/r to z axis zoom, the view actually moved outside of the cockpit beyond the plane’s nose :))
As the rfactor2 demo has the same problem when running in WINE I’m beginning to suspect that it’s a problem with the linuxtrack-wine plugin or the way linuxtrack and the plugin talk to each other, so it would be great if a BMS Linux user could confirm that the z axis FOV control works with opentrack before I dive into compiling it from source (it appears Mint’s cmake version is too old for this project)
TIA & all the best, Uwe
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Hi folks,
after lots of fiddling with packages, updating my build environment to Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and lots of help from sthalik I’ve now finally managed to successfully build opentrack (git version as of yesterday) on this platform.
As I’ll need some time to update my gaming rig from Mint 18 to Mint 19 (which is also Ubuntu 18.04 based), I was wondering if there are any volunteers out there running BMS in WINE who’d be willing to give this binary opentrack build a try on their system to see if everything works. The build also includes the x-plane plugin so that would need some testing, too.
I’m also very interested if opentrack allows proper FOV control via the Z axis in BMS when BMS runs in WINE.
In linuxtrack, I hit a “glass wall” after moving my head a few cm towards the screen and then, no matter how much closer I move to the screen, the FOV simply won’t change anymore until the tracker loses the LEDs. I’m seeing the exact same behaviour when running linuxtrack with an rfactor2 demo instance running WINE, so I’m pretty certain it’s not a BMS issue.
You can download the binary build for Ubuntu 18.04 based systems here:
https://zif.gplrank.info/hoover/bms/opentrack-git-ubu1804.tar.gz
Extract it to /usr/local and launch opentrack using
/usr/local/opentrack-git/bin/opentrack
As I’ve more or less automated the build process for Linux, I’d be happy to “officially” maintain the build for this platform (and possibly other distros) in the future if there’s any interest.
I can also provide the openstack / cloud-init bash script that I developed during testing to automate the setup of the build environment as much as possible (PM me if you want to take a look).
Thanks in advance for any feedback & to “shtalik” for all the help and his zen-like patience
Uwe
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Hey hoover, I’m glad you got it working. Here are a couple of notes:
- I recommend making binary blob packages install into /opt/APP-VERSION rather than /usr/local.
- Installing into /usr/local/APP is totally non-standard. See “man 7 hier”.
- The Wine binaries may or may not work with older and newer Wine versions. Notice how the wrapper “.so” file links against “libwine”. Shipping libwine yourself wouldn’t help either, it must be the same as the Wine installation that runs BMS. In programmer terms, “libwine” doesn’t have a stable ABI.
- For linuxtrack I recommend you open an issue on their github project page. I’ve been in contact with the project author and he’s a really cool guy. Since you already used a TrackIR it’s better for you personally.
- linuxtrack is also probably easier to build.
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Thank you Stanislaw. I’ve already opened a bug on the linuxtrack github and I’m also in contact with the linuxtrack-wine author who told me it must be a bug on the linuxtrack side of things; sadly I haven’t heard back from uglydwarf since first mentioning the issue a few weeks ago:
https://github.com/uglyDwarf/linuxtrack/issues/149
/usr/local/opentrack-git was a first shot and I’ll change that around later if anyone expresses interest in binary builds for Linux (currently I have the feeling I’m the sole Linux opentrack user on the planet :), and I’m not even a user yet as I’ll still have to update to a 18.04-based system)
I was thinking about including the build date in the directory name so we can keep several builds alongside each other.
As for the WINE version, I’d go with winehq stable which is where I get the development files from in the cloudinit script, so I hope the versions will match in a runtime environment that uses the binary build.
All the best & thanks for your feedback,
Uwe
PS: If you could confirm z-axis FOV control works as advertised in BMS on Wine that would be great.
PPS: I’m not a TrackIR user, I’m using FaceTrackNoIR with the pointtracker plugin and the DelanClip. -
Thank you Stanislaw. I’ve already opened a bug on the linuxtrack github and I’m also in contact with the linuxtrack-wine author who told me it must be a bug on the linuxtrack side of things; sadly I haven’t heard back from uglydwarf since first mentioning the issue a few weeks ago:
He’ll get to it. He’s a really decent guy and was in fact instrumental in opentrack’s support for “trackir enhanced” titles.
currently I have the feeling I’m the sole Linux opentrack user on the planet
There are few users. Check the issue tracker for closed issues. I’m generally hostile given Linux users are an entitled bunch and can’t RTFM before claiming something’s broken. Use Windows if you can’t RTFM. So yes, I’ve been more patient given you’re from the BMS community and we’ve had a few interactions.
My position has been consistently that Linux is an OS for software developers and not regular users. The GUI’s don’t give enough control over the internals and are buggy. This has been true over a decade.
I personally use Linux support for Valgrind and clang sanitizers. Proper support for X11 keystrokes is something that took few hours to complete but years to even start.
And no, you can’t achieve the same level of compatibility, or the same performance for new game titles, whether with gallium-nine or any particular drivers. There’s also a good reason old games have comparable performance but new ones don’t.
I was thinking about including the build date in the directory name so we can keep several builds alongside each other.
I’d suggest including the date (in year-month-day format) along with the git commit. BUT the better solution is to finish the .deb generation scripts. See: https://github.com/opentrack/debian
As for the WINE version, I’d go with winehq stable which is where I get the development files from in the cloudinit script, so I hope the versions will match in a runtime environment that uses the binary build.
This is unlikely to be the same version as the distro’s version. Also note that distros provide separate “wine” and “wine-development”, or possibly even “wine-staging” packages. They’re all of different versions.
PS: If you could confirm z-axis FOV control works as advertised in BMS on Wine that would be great.
I did some years ago. It’s not likely to be any different, given the original trackir code was written by Retro quite a few years ago. You can check the leaked sources for the original SuperPak.
I’m not a TrackIR user, I’m using FaceTrackNoIR with the pointtracker plugin and the DelanClip.
opentrack supports IR tracking via libv4l. You’re unlikely to encounter problems. The unstable branch is quiet now and users confirm stuff works.
cheers,
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Thanks for the input, Stanislaw.
I remembered this morning I have a spare laptop lying around that I already upgraded to 18.04 a few months ago, so I decided to give the binary build linked to above a try on this machine.
Yay!
I only needed to install two exta packages (libopencv_videoio and libtqserialport) and opentrack launched without any missing library errors. I think most folks actively using WINE on Linux will already have the winehq versions / repos installed (like it was the case on my forgotten notebook), so we could put this info into the install instructions in a ReadMe.Linux file or similar.
The sine wave sim works nicely and I even got some “octopus movement” by using the pointtracker plugin without a clip, just waving my hand in front of the camera, so that part seems to work, too. I’ll do some more testing with a proper clip & cam later.
As for linuxtrack, I was told by the developer of the linuxtrack-wine plugin that z-axis tracking used to work fine years ago when he was still actively developing the code, so he suspected something must have changed within linuxtrack itself about the handling of the input to the wine plugin; I’ll be monitoring the github issue for new comments on the problem.
I tried to compile linuxtrack myself from source at first, but ran into similar problems as with opentrack, so I decided to fix the opentrack build problems first as I hadn’t tried your tracker yet and its community seemed more active on github.
Yes, uglydwarf is a great guy, he helped me a lot getting up to speed w/r to x-plane on Linux and headtracking, so I’m hoping he’ll address the issue (or at least maybe give an idea what to look for) soon.
To send opentrack tracking data towards BMS all I need to do is to select “wine” as the output plugin, right? Do I need to copy your NPClient*dlls into the WINE_PREFIX I’m using? I think I checked this before and they’re exactly the same size as the ones I’m already using with linuxtrack and BMS, I might want to look at the md5 hash though.
If you’d rather like to keep Linux build / install specifics out of this announcement thread please let me know and I’ll open a separate one. (hopefully in soon-to-appear “Linux and other OSes” subsection of this forum that I’ve been dreaming about for a few years now :))
As for your views on Linux as an end user platform I think we discussed that before in the “Linux dedicated server” thread, so let’s just agree to disagree for now
Thanks again for your help & I’ll report back later about how the actual tracking goes.
All the best,
Uwe
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Thanks for the input, Stanislaw.
I remembered this morning I have a spare laptop lying around that I already upgraded to 18.04 a few months ago, so I decided to give the binary build linked to above a try on this machine.
https://i.imgur.com/ttjuqxs.png?1
Yay!
I only needed to install two exta packages (libopencv_videoio and libtqserialport) and opentrack launched without any missing library errors. I think most folks actively using WINE on Linux will already have the winehq versions / repos installed (like it was the case on my forgotten notebook), so we could put this info into the install instructions in a ReadMe.Linux file or similar.
A few things:
- winehq .deb versions were missing winegcc or something crucial to it. I tried using them and it wasn’t too long ago.
- you don’t need dependencies like libqt5serialport{,-dev}. that one’s for the hatire tracker. you only need libopencv including videoio and Qt5 dev headers/tools (including lupdate and lrelease).
- opentrack will handle moving the installation directory around. you can move from /usr/local/opentrack to /opt/on-the-moon/foo and it’ll work just fine.
- just in case, don’t install stuff like Wine to /usr/local. use /opt/app-name with optional version. just get the habit right. you can symlink the executables to /usr/bin.
- don’t ever install anything to /usr/local.
You can put build information on the opentrack project’s wiki, and if you can confirm this information is complete, I’m going to link to it more officially. Please note, using “debootstrap” you can create a fully-working chroot environment for a particular distro in order to verify whether there’s something else needing to be installed.
As for linuxtrack, I was told by the developer of the linuxtrack-wine plugin that z-axis tracking used to work fine years ago when he was still actively developing the code, so he suspected something must have changed within linuxtrack itself about the handling of the input to the wine plugin; I’ll be monitoring the github issue for new comments on the problem.
I’d like to know whether X and Y scaling is fine and only Z scaling is broken. They’re probably multiplying by the wrong value when outputting position coordinates.
- If all position changes are wrong, you can present that as a solution to the developers. The scale should be 0->1000 and BMS needs 200-300 or so. Depends on a game.
- If X and Y works while Z remains broken, it’s a more involved issue.
To send opentrack tracking data towards BMS all I need to do is to select “wine” as the output plugin, right? Do I need to copy your NPClient*dlls into the WINE_PREFIX I’m using? I think I checked this before and they’re exactly the same size as the ones I’m already using with linuxtrack and BMS, I might want to look at the md5 hash though.
In order to use the Wine plugin you need to:
- Make sure any game is stopped.
- Start opentrack with Wine output once. If Wine initializes the WINEPREFIX, wait for it to complete. Otherwise just stop tracking after a second or two.
- Start a game.
- Start tracking when you need it.
You only need to perform this procedure once for the WINEPREFIX you’re using, unless something changes the NPClient64.dll path.
If you’d rather like to keep Linux build / install specifics out of this announcement thread please let me know and I’ll open a separate one. (hopefully in soon-to-appear “Linux and other OSes” subsection of this forum that I’ve been dreaming about for a few years now :))
As for your views on Linux as an end user platform I think we discussed that before in the “Linux dedicated server” thread, so let’s just agree to disagree for now
I’m happy you’re doing this, both personally and for the project’s sake. There’s indeed some Linux following and we might be able to contact many of the users, even if not on the BMS forum.
Is a Linux board going to open on this forum? I’d like that too. The chief issue is your opentrack binary version being intrinsically tied to the Wine version on your system. A script installing opentrack from the ground-up would be helpful to users as well. I’m going to work on the .deb package builder in the meantime.
Know that when Linux starts being a useful platform for end-users, I’m the first to say so. For now I’m tracking work on KDE Plasma, wined3d, Mesa, gallium-nine, DRI and so on. Even when not using Linux on my workstation. OSX has even worse GPU support so it’s out of the question as a Windows game box replacement.
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Another small update:
I installed BMS on my lowly laptop (Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, M 540 i5@2,5GHz, 4GB RAM, gt220 mobile gpu){1} and connected a home built clip. Tracking works quite nicely using the “octopus” as an example, also the FOV range seems much bigger than in linuxtrack; I’m seeing z coordinates from 5 (far away) to -25 or so (near the screen). Mind you that’s using the unmodified laptop webcam so I’d expect better results when using a ps/eye cam or dimming down the webcam using some exposed film (I’ll try that later) to improve tracking quality.
I may also give linuxtrack a go on the laptop in order to compare its tracking values with what opentrack shows.
I had to start tracking in opentrack before launching BMS in WINE, otherwise it would not let me tick the relevant TIR boxes in the “view control” advanced setup screen.
During the next week I’ll hopefully get around to modifying my build scripts as we outlined above to include a proper path and a build date.
A Deb package would be great to have available, but I’m afraid my last attempts on package building management date back to the very early Red Hat / CentOS days and I’ve never fiddled with building debs yet.
Would a PPA be easier to use here?All the best, Uwe
1: I’m getting suprisingly good fps in “moving mud” over water in KTO after dialling down all the graphics
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Mind you that’s using the unmodified laptop webcam so I’d expect better results when using a ps/eye cam or dimming down the webcam using some exposed film (I’ll try that later) to improve tracking quality.
There are two kinds of ps3 eye cameras. One can be modified only with losing the ability to set FOV anywhere else than 75. The other one allows for FOV of 56 and I’m happy to have one. Having fov 75 on the red dot will make your points occlude one another a lot.
I had to start tracking in opentrack before launching BMS in WINE, otherwise it would not let me tick the relevant TIR boxes in the “view control” advanced setup screen.
See my previous post.
1: I’m getting suprisingly good fps in “moving mud” over water in KTO after dialling down all the graphics
Over water is different.
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I’m pleased to make available a new binary build for Ubuntu 18.04 based Linux systems to the BMS community:
https://zif.gplrank.info/hoover/opentrack/opentrack-git-20181113.tar.gz
The archive includes an “opt/”-Prefix so you can extract it to your root folder, but as shtalik mentioned above the binary is location agnostic so you should be able to extract it to whereever you like.
Please let me know if any shared libraries come up missing on your end and I’ll try to help track down the appropriate packages (or just use “apt-file search <library name=”“>”).
All the best, Uwe</library>
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The binary works fine on Linux Mint 19 (based on Ubuntu 18.04), I just needed to install guvcview to turn down the camera gain (my ps/eye has the IR filter removed) and opentrack worked beautifully swivelling the “Octopus” around in the preview. Now on to BMS running on Linux / WINE, I’ll report my findings here if that’s ok.
I didn’t need to install any additional libraries except these:
apt install –install-recommends libopencv-videoio3.2
apt install --install-recommends libqt5serialport5All the best,
Uwe
EDIT: Works like a charm including FOV z-axis control, very nice
Falcon BMS in WINE running alongside YAME64 (the blank spot is where my A10 tablet usually sits on the 2nd monitor):
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Good Job Sthalik !
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Hi folks,
I’m happy to announce the availability of a new opentrack git build for Ubuntu 18.04 based 64bit systems. You can download it here:
https://zif.gplrank.info/hoover/opentrack/opentrack-git-20190118.tar.gz
MD5 checksum:
fdb2a6ae0d13750310c340ca62a4378d opentrack-git-20190118.tar.gz
The tar archive extracts to /opt/opentrack-git-20190118 as usual.
All the best & have a good weekend,
Uwe
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Hey,
Please install libevdev-dev and libeigen3-dev before configuring with cmake. Otherwise you’re missing several modules.
I’m attaching an AppVeyor config for building on a clean Ubuntu 18.04 environment. It’s notably missing “software-properties-common” and “curl” since AppVeyor VMs have it in already. You should be able to automate the build based on that.