Home pit preparation - is decoupling HMD from the main camera possible for large pit?
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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!