mrchriz

[mrchriz]

Adding OpenGL support would be great, especially for aerofly FS with its photorealistic graphics (unfortunately also OpenGL only).

[mrchriz]

Forgot to mention: Disable the “Roll” axis in the Rift tracker of the “server instance”, else looking down the roll of the rift will mess up your view.

[mrchriz]

After some googling & tinkering I found the killer setup together with up to 6 degrees of freedom headtracking (meaning you can lean forward to read your cockpit instruments from up close, you can go up with your body to look above the cockpit, you can lean left/right etc.):

You need two instances of opentrack open at the same time (because the SimConnect protocol is broken on the latest versions, which however offer the best Rift headtracker support, I’m using both a new and an old version, which I connect to each other via UDP protocol).

First instance: opentrack 2.0a8 (“server” instance):
– Main tracker: Rift (leave all axes activated)
– Auxiliary tracker: aruco (aruco works by scotch taping a printed symbol to the front of your Rift. Your webcam (I use a PS3 Eye) will pick it up and calculate your position). Disable following axes on this tracker: RX, RY, RZ, TX (as I do not want horizontal movement to place me outside the plane ;-))
– Game protocol: UDP (use IP 127.0.0.1, port 5550, and allow in Firewall)
– Axis inversion: TY
– Make sure all curves are linear and “translation compensation” is disabled
– Map Ctrl-Shift-Z to “center” key

Second instance: opentrack 2.0a6 24 (“client” instance):
– Main tracker: UDP (use IP 127.0.0.1, port 5550, and allow in Firewall)
– Auxiliary tracker: None
– Game protocol: SimConnect
– No axis inversion
– Make sure all curves are linear and “translation compensation” is disabled
– Map Ctrl-Alt-Z to “center” key

How to go ahead:
– Run “server” instance, push start button
– Run FSX/Prepar3d (works in both), skip error message that headtracker is already in use by another application (this is what we want ;-))
When in cockpit, center view by pressing Ctrl-Shift-Z and Ctrl-Alt-Z
– Run “client” instance, push start button (you need to at least run “stop, start” as soon as you are inside your cockpit for FSX to activate the SimConnect tracking)
– Enjoy FSX in 5 degrees of freedom (6 if you also enable TX axis in aruco on “server” instance => as mentioned I prefer to disable it not to be placed outside my cockpit)

aruco needs sufficient light to be directed at the printed symbol attached to the front of your Rift (just place a lamp in front of you, won’t bother your view as you wear the Rift anyway).

aruco allows you to use a number of printed symbols for the tracking, however I am using http://www.outerra.com/images/787.svg (just printed from this page in the browser => credits to Brano Kemen => http://outerra.blogspot.be/2013/08/absolute-positioning-with-oculus-rift.html ).

Also make sure you pick the highest refresh rate for the camera as possible (I am using settings of 120Hz and 640×480 resolution in the camera setup of aruco, in the preview window I get around 70-80Hz).

Hope it helps & cheers ;-)

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