Home pit preparation - is decoupling HMD from the main camera possible for large pit?
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I already talked with him about these exact topics.
He said, he will have a look into it, if he finds time for.
NO PROMISES or info about any release here. -
Disabling z-axis completely wouldnt work, you need a 1:1 fesolution, otherwise, the otw just looks up in the forward-facing direction. But if you want to look up at the aft left side then, it actually will look down, if otw doesnt know where to look up.
You’ve got me backwards - I want to disable everything BUT the Z axis. I’ll be able to turn my head to see everything else in 270 degrees, but I want up/down tracking only when I nod.
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Oh sorry, replace the z with a x in my description and I think, you will get my point
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I can see that…I think. Need to get my coordinates caged!
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I already talked with him about these exact topics.
He said, he will have a look into it, if he finds time for.
NO PROMISES or info about any release here.Of course mate, just make sure to let us others know if something like that gets done. For me I am putting my sim plans on ice for the moment, or will try taking old office beamer to check how does it feel using TrackIR on something large/close to you
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I can tell you from experience, headtracking is okay to use the way it works at the moment, but far from nice immersion.
Thats my current setup and you can see, i messed up the warping a bit, as the desktop is a bit squeezed in the center, that maximises the effect of the stretched FOV in Falcon BMS. If i have time and the patience I will change that in the opposit direction and stretch the desktop in the center, squeeze it at the edges, which will work against that effect of stretching in BMS a bit.
I have the headtracker setup to have a 1:1 resolution for the horizontal headmovement until it reaches almost the edges of the 214°screen, then I pitched up the curve to cover the rest of the rearview, which is not projected.
But even with a 1:1 resolution the HUD doesnt stay centered. Better than nothing but far from perfect. -
Very nice, something like that is my baseline scenario, since probably more easier to setup on BMS side (so far flown on ultrawide). Right now however I am still a bit researching the option of half-dome system like this. Negative side is heavy distortion and the need to somewhere get a perfect mirror ball. But on the other hand turn based combat would benefit.
What warping software do you use? And noticed half-dome options there ?
EDIT: Dome technical materials here : http://paulbourke.net/dome/mirrordome/
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Dome is f*n expensive, because you need a lot more projectors. My setup is built and ready for 360° FOV, but currently only 3 of 5 elements and 3 of 4 projectors are in use, because of spaceproblems and the current lack of ability of BMS to use more frustums, what would enable a sharp and clear 360 projection without any stretching of the OTW.
When BMS is able to render multi-frustums someday, which it will be, then I have a complete cylinder which is also very tall next to me, so its a pretty good imersion, only the vertical view must be moved a bit by a headtracker, if you want to look up very high. But thats okay and waaaaaayyy cheaper, than any type of dome.
To cover the dome you suggested properly you’d need at least 4 projectors for much less “felt” projection surface, than I cover. Also you need definitely a higher room than a normal living room, because you want the vertical center of the screen at your eye-level.For warping I use fly-elise calibration pro, it can do every type of projection warping you can imagine, you could even back-project a canopy, if you have the 3d modell of it.
Yes, it will take a while, until we get multi-frustums for BMS, but it will be there someday and as you know that, dont shut yourself down on building a cockpit.
Good research at the beginning of such a project is very important, but dont miss the point to acutally start building one, it will take longer - I’m pretty sure about that - to build a COMPLETE and FUNCTIONING cockpit, than it will take BMS to have multi-frustum rendering.
Do it and start building your ACES -
Not only do you need a lot of $$$ and projectors for a dome, you need a lot of ROOM for a dome! That certainly make a dome and non-starter for me, even though I’ve spent hundreds of hours flying domed Trainers…a 270 degree flat screen is fine for me.
And I’m going to get around the problem of the HUD moving around with head tracking by building a working HUD and removing the HUD from the OTW all together. I know of at least one utility that will do that, and I can think of another trick I might consider - just turn the graphic to transparent. I want to do that to get rid of the nose model as well - I don’t think I’ve ever had a seat in a real fighter where I could see the nose over the glare shield, and I’d think you can’t see it sitting tilted back 30 degrees.
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Ehm… did you looked at the picture I posted above and where the single projector is there located? THat is a single projector half-dome idea, just that the projection light has to bounce off a mirror-ball to get 180 horizontal and 0-90 vertical dome. That is what I want to try out, but currently have trouble finding a warping software that would be able to handle something like this. Want to run this as experiment with old office beamer, if working properly then a 4k beamer should be a good second attempt since this setup is heavily loosing resolution quality on the edges.
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And where exactly do you wanna place your pit?
That would obstract the projection, as its shown in your picture -
And where exactly do you wanna place your pit?
That would obstract the projection, as its shown in your pictureI was hoping the F16 cockpit has the HUD projector quite in your face behind the selector numerals, might be candidate holding the mirror ball. And yes, the 180 FOV will not be directly achievable as my head will be some distance from the mirror, putting you off center of the half-dome, still, right now in my mind having vertical 80-ish degree space is worth having only 170-ish FOV.
Still, office beamer and I have relatively round and white tent Was hoping to beg some warping software sales guy for a trial and try it in it with some makeshift setup to validate the idea before committing to building anything.
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Interesting Approach!
Don’t know if I would be satisfied with the result of so much work, when I cannot turn my head left 90° to look left 90°. Thats something you do incredible much more often, than look up so far. -
Interesting Approach!
Don’t know if I would be satisfied with the result of so much work, when I cannot turn my head left 90° to look left 90°. Thats something you do incredible much more often, than look up so far.Well, I described a single projector setup in the picture, if you read the full article I linked below it, you can scale up and with two projectors shining on the mirror ball from two angles 90 degree apart you can create a 270FOV 3/4 dome. So theory is there, just for that setup I would have to think how to avoid the projector bleeding edge light directly to your eyes (since square light hitting a ball has corners missing) as in that setup the projectors are practically on your 10 and 2 o’clock shining towards you.
Anyway, great theory and article I linked imho, the issue so far is that after contacting two warping software vendors, I got a big NO on modeling such a setup with a ball mirror. Niche inside a niche here.
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FYI, pointer from the same article, looks like “planetarium” hobbyist are into this a bit. Here is a picture of a product to generate a half-dome system for a beamer.
And here a small company product (just googled, not researched yet, but their pricing are jaw dropping):
http://www.eplanetarium.com/gaming.php -
Yes, extremely complicated to setup properly.
I hated it already with my “easy” configurationBut keep pushing, if you want go into that direction.
Personally I dont think its the best suited approach for our needs as Simmers.
An Alternative for looking up could be a bigsized curved tv, which sits overhead the projection-zylinder, but thats something completely different and would need to be assesed. -
Here’s some great reference sites I’ve found for doing dome projection -
http://paulbourke.net/dome/domeinstall/
http://paulbourke.net/dome/mirrordome/
https://www.instructables.com/id/Projection-Dome/
And this would certainly make an excellent dome projector…IF they ever make it -
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/catopsys/immersis?ref=video
For me - and I’d think for most of us - the limiting factor in the sheer size of a dome is the height of it. I’m figuring that I’ll need about a 3 meter diameter at a minimum to get the projection area and size that I want…3 meters is WAY outside of the bounds of an 8 foot ceiling, which is all the space I have available without building another building just to house my pit! I could truncate the dome and just build it floor to ceiling, and I’ve considered that too. I’ve flown Trainers housed in geodesic domes and you’d be surprised and how quickly you adjust to the fact that they aren’t true spheres - but they have all used external projectors and require one projector per facet…$$$$$$$!!! Way outside of my pay scale…
The spherical mirror method is the one best suited to us from a cost standpoint. It’s the warping software that brings most of the expense. Here’s some examples -
https://www.immersaview.com/display-software/
https://www.immersivedisplayinc.com/
https://www.plexsys.com/display/
https://univisualtechnologies.wordpress.com/
Some of these can run into the kilo-$ price range…particularly ones that do the 3D warping required for use in a dome! I had some other really nice ones that were sub-$1K in cost, but it seems those companies have since gone out of biz…which is a shame, because there were a few of those I really liked. Simpit Tech in NZ used to sell it’s warping software as a standalone but they’ve sopped doing that for some reason…maybe they still will if you contact them and make a specific request?
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Hello!
Nice thread here! I am also very interested on building such a big screen, and also wanted the same solution for the JHMCS.
We definitely need 360 degrees support from BMS. If this is going to happen some day, then moving JHMCS symbology as if it would be a mouse cursor, would be easy thing for the devs to do, I guess.
If you guys find any way to trick Falcon as it is today, and get closer to this goal, please share!
Many thanks!