Skyrim Virtual Reality Experience, from the author of Thu'uMic

[psychohampster]

Deadly,

Looking at the various input so far, I wonder if making a 3rd party program like we did for Thuumic, to handle translating all of the various "vr" input into one recognizable input set for Skyrim might be the solution.

 

One thing that does worry me too, is input lag of all these systems vs. keyboard. If it becomes to great might become unplayable.

[civ77]

This looks amazing, I just wanted to point out that most vision overlays destroy the immersion of a game because they put in an overlay that looks like your eyes are somewhere in the middle of your face and about 6 inches behind the helmet, even a helmet with small slits to see through doesn't obstruct your vision very much.

[DeadlyAzuril]

Psycho,

 

I completely agree mate. We will need to find the right hooks in memory also. I think that if i can extract the particular bone/joint rotations on the camera and each hand from the nifs and animation files - i will be able to find the right codes in memory so we can hook into it with our program and feed our own values through there.

 

True, lag with this method is the biggest worry. but unlike thuumic and script dragon, I think changing the value in memory will be MUCH faster so hopefully we can do it with litte (preferably no) lag whatsoever.

 

This weekend its my mission to

 

a: extract these values

 

b: get a working test of head tracking and hydra working in an open game engine - unity will probably be the way to o, just to get a proper understanding of whats going on 'under the hood' in both interfaces.

 

But yes, thats definately the way to go.

 

@Civ77

 

Thanks for the heads up (pun intended), I am yet to *try* the sony device but am going to organise a little go at my local sony store sometime soon.

 

But as stated earlier, this program will have support for a lot of the similar interfaces as far as motion tracking hands/head is concerned. so as soon as a working build is happening - i will be porting to cheaper alternatives (shouldnt be difficult once the hard part is over)

 

So someone with just head tracking will be able to use the program, or someone whos just a hydra user can use that part etc etc just as someone with a mic can use thuumic now. it will be modular in its setup

[DeadlyAzuril]

Quick update, checking out the heads up display tomorrow at the sony store ! :D

[CylonSurfer]

Cool - I hope you enjoy the HMZ. I feel it ups the immersion ten fold, particulary with head tracking. One thing to keep in mind is that the unit works much better in a dark or dimly lit room. The screen looks much larger this way.

 

I stumbled across a mod on here called real 1st person view. It works well for slow walk but is totally broken when running or sneaking. The feeling of looking down with head tracking to see your body is very weird. It could be worth looking at, the author hasn't updated it in some time by the look of things.

[Jakisthe]

Um...so...is there a workaround for the obscenely high literal physical equipment cost?

[CylonSurfer]

Well if you are planing to play VR games you need to buy the tech.

 

As with everything, there are cheaper solutions to choose from, ala FreeTrack as opposed to TrackIR, a 3D TV or monitor instead of a HMD. Really depends on how deep your pockets are and how high your passion for wanting to improve the immersion in the games that you play is.

[NanoCrudele]

it's a great idea one year too early, next year we will see the flexi screen in the stores, so the next gen headmounted screen will be a lot better, something that really occupies almost your entire field of vision and gives you a real feel of immersion

 

btw it's good to see someone working on something this big

[DeadlyAzuril]

Ok, so using glovePIE, a fantastic program that lets you script multiple inputs together and x360ce, a 360 controller emulator, I have have managed to get trackIR to feed x/y rotational data (via mouse emulation) into the 360 controller joystick. an offshoot of this is that to anyone that wanted to use analog movement with mouse-look. I now have a solution for that too ^_^

 

I had a play with the Sony HMZ the other week too.. its very cool! kind of feels like your sitting in a small cinema by yourself. What i didnt like was how it weighed on the front of my head, and that the viewing angle was waaaay too low.

 

Good for games, good for movies. not for VR in my opinion. Im going to continue looking towards other options, but the sony is by far the cheapest it seems for the quality you get..

 

Another thought ive had on the head-tracking. is maybe i dont need to find a 'hook' to control camera rotation. just a hook for player rotation. as the camera already pretty much does what I want it too (sans xyz translations ofcourse). so If i can just find a way to control player rotation, I should be able to pass player rotations to the tumbstick/mouse and and camera rotations directly to track ir, then have a constraint on turning, lets say 180 degrees, before turning will bring the camera with it (to stop any unwanted exorcist esque head spinning) :D

 

a lot of this is purely theoretical. but hey - its progress!

 

heres a pic of the hmz in action :)

 

http://i43.tinypic.com/e69j14.jpg

 

So. now im working on cutting out mouse emulation and interfacing with trackIR directly through glovePIE, to see if the jittery results im getting can be fixed.

[dirtythekid]

Any updates on this? I just made a Free-track rig and I'm wanting to incorporate it with as many games as possible.