😀

We hope that the PMsimNavSytems branch will continue to integrate a “plausible” default FMC (with SDK) in LR’s core product. 😉

Best regards,
Marc.

This already happens. Laminar Research just recently “bought” a “company” with specialized GPS knowledge for integration into the core product 😉

A mistake in the site migration to the new server – fixed now!

Maybe you have further information. Thank you very much.
I love the sim. Much better than my old FSX incl. ORBX!!!

Phil

That 3rd party was likely Fred from Dreamfoil Creations. I sent him a DK1 to try and get rift support into x-plane.

In my experience with the rift development kits the easiest option is a track ball. The other often neglected option is voice. Programs like voice attack allow for very powerful keyboard manipulation and are starting to be used more often with the rift. With some recorded wav files you can have a virtual co pilot working through your checklists.

For me I find the scroll wheel the easiest when adjusting click spots.

Thanks Ben.

Dom

You are correct – the manipulators are VERY mouse-centric, something that has been discussed internally this week — and not so internally:

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/465666-official-request-from-laminar-on-x-plane-radio-tuning-procedure/

More on that in a week or two.

I’d say input with the 3-d headsets is still a bit of an unsolved problem. If you can be HOTAS the entire time, there’s no issue, and maybe that’s the case with shooters, but for some games the inability to see the keyboard will be a real problem.

No change in cloud performance in 1040.

Just a note in which I would like to develop a thought. Many software companies such as X-Plane buy special knowledge of developers, or take over smal companies that produced the new ideas. These companies are offering to customer additional service packages, for a higher price. I can well imagine that X-Plane can also do the same with success. For example, there may be “X-Plane plus” package, which in addition offers also an EFB or synthetic vision, vertical terrain, weather an integrated moving map system. This Plus package will give sim pilots, advanced navigation aid.

I see many such developer for X-Plane around that beside the add-ons, various applications developed, for example for the iPad. Those developments could be integrate directly into X-Plane. This will also correspond your intention not to deal with anything and everything.

I was reading the oculus forums way back when a 3rd party was working on trying to get the rift working with X-plane.

At the time, I was thinking about it, and while that’s impressive in itself, (I think I may even have managed to get it to work in my DK1 all the way back then when the first kickstarter backers were getting headsets), I did note the input issue was a bit frustrating.

Personally I have a Razer hydra. And I was thinking about how awesome that would be to use in a 3d cockpit.

Not expecting official support for something like that, I looked into adding support as a plugin.

Unfortunately, I soon realised that was easier said than done.

The best aspect of something like the hydra in a virtual cockpit is that it is a 6-dof input device, so you could, in principle, rotate knobs, push buttons, even manipulate the virtual flight controls reasonably well (except foot pedals really).
You could do this two-handed as well, which would be nice for a variety of reasons.

Further, because the controller is a true 6-dof controller and can manipulate things in 3d space, you could also manipulate ‘offscreen’ controls.
This isn’t reliable obviously, due to lack of touch feedback, but it would suffice for some purposes where you need to keep your hand on one control and manipulate something else at the same time…

Anyway, back to the point, in trying to create a plugin for this, I got a bit lost in the x-plane SDK…
And started to notice that it would be pretty difficult, given how the controls are programmed to respond to cursor input to actually get this to work.

Turns out the way the 3d cockpits work when it comes to picking up manipulation of the cockpit controls is tied very closely to the 2d mouse cursor.
And most of my ideas for it seemed like they would require rather convoluted methods to even approach being usable.
It got to the point where it looked like I would need to directly interfere with the rendering process, and that’s when I decided it wasn’t worth it.

Of course, I could have been wrong, and I was maybe just not understanding the plugin documentation correctly, but it seems like the possibility of that kind of input scheme wasn’t really ever considered for cockpit controls, and the current system seems tied rather closely to mouse input…
(Even having 2 mouse cursors seems to be asking a bit much)

Obviously, you can manipulate just about any of the aircraft’s controls directly using joystick or keyboard bindings, but that seems to have no real relation to anything depicted in the virtual cockpit itself…

Anyway, we can dream… I may look over the plugin documentation again to see if I missed anything.
Especially since it’s been quite a while (and many xplane versions) since I last checked.

I guess there wouldn’t be a simple way to add a 3d 6-dof cursor object for use with 3d cockpits though. (Nor getting the controls in a 3d cockpit to handle the difference between linear and rotary input. – Rotary controls seem to be implemented more as buttons attached to the graphics of a rotary control than an actual rotary switch or dial)

Clearly, given the ability to manipulate the flight controls directly through plugins with an external program, it would be possible to create a program that models an entire 3d cockpit and the hydra’s inputs and feeds them into xplane’s control system as control inputs, but that would mean recreating a duplicate of every virtual cockpit of every aircraft you intended to fly…

That would be like using a nuke to swat a fly, and seems a little ridiculous… (Not to mention inherently fragile and limiting)…

A generic 6-dof control object that can manipulate the controls in 3d cockpits would be useful long-term though, if VR does take off and become common, this would be a fairly useful capability regardless of the exact input device…
Like the 3d equivalent of a mouse cursor.
(Would also help if there was support for more than one of them being in use at the same time. These could model anything from hands to individual fingers depending on the input device…)

Still, it’s not exactly a high priority. Still going to check if I can make something work using just the existing SDK features…