Outerra forum

Outerra Engine => Ideas & Suggestions & Questions => Topic started by: deathevor on August 06, 2012, 01:28:39 pm

Title: Outerra Controller - data feed to Glovepie (or alternatives)
Post by: deathevor on August 06, 2012, 01:28:39 pm
Hi,

Would be great if Outerra could have an live feed as a controller. For example to GlovePie or as a Virtual Joystick.

Many people develop they own sim equipment like Cockpit panels or even Hydraulic Motion Simulators.
If Outerra could give as much as possible data as a controller (Virtual Joystick) it would be much easier to control those things.

Not sure which way it's better to feed instrument readings, but some connection to GlovePie would be great.

Again ideas/opportunities:


Insane Ideas:


Extremely insane idea:



Of course last two are a bit crazy, but I mentioned them just because simple data feed can bring a lot of opportunities to Outerra hardware developers.

P.S. Actually NASA (or other agencies) might not think that Pressure room is so much crazy at all. :)


Title: Re: Outerra Controller - data feed to Glovepie (or alternatives)
Post by: ZeosPantera on August 06, 2012, 02:04:20 pm
Quote from: deathevor on August 06, 2012, 01:28:39 pm
Insane Ideas:

  • Control Wind machine's (Fan) position and rotation speed to create realistic wind effect. For example if flying Para plane.

Extremely insane idea:
  • Pressure room :). Make an isolated room with artificial atmospheric pressure controlled by Outerra.
    Flying in High Altitudes lowers a pressure in room.
    WARNING!!! DEADLY for space flights!!!

Someone setup something like that for a race simulator.

(http://i.imgur.com/naqXN.jpg)

each fan is controlled separately.

As for the EXXXTREAME insane idea I am pretty sure it is do-able.
Title: Re: Outerra Controller - data feed to Glovepie (or alternatives)
Post by: deathevor on August 06, 2012, 04:03:39 pm
I don't see much difficulty in pressure room as well.
It just might be a little bit unhealthy idea :)

But basically my post is not to suggest hardware ideas, I just wanted to ask you to make this data available. And as much as possible data.

Would it affect performance anyhow?


Additionally, it would be perfect to see Outerra as main host with inputs and outputs, so users can link their own scripts, programs, controllers to it.
For example like EZdok for FSX (External camera movement generator) - http://www.ezdok-software.com/2.html (http://www.ezdok-software.com/2.html) (software screenshots down the link).
It basically takes data from FSX and generates camera shakes, leans and sends them back to FSX camera. (Again this is an example).

So the suggestion is, that this kind of workflow would give you an extra hands as most of small ideas, that users begging for, will be done by themselves, making Outerra's functionality to grow rapidly.
Title: Re: Outerra Controller - data feed to Glovepie (or alternatives)
Post by: Steve.Wilson on August 06, 2012, 05:02:22 pm
As a cockpit builder myself, I second Sergei's ideas.  This is the time to think "outside the box" to be sure, since everything is so new. 

The way that X-Plane handles this, as I may have indicated before, is to permit users to access the X-Plane runtime every frame via a smorgasbord of data references.  Some can be written to, some are data only.  The plugins are compiled as DLL's in C/C++, making the ability to code them widely available.

X-Plane is only used as an example, but it is the easiest flight simulator to extend, and is, of course, the only commercial product actively being developed -- at least that I'm aware of.  This isn't derogatory to the many fine open source flight sim products, by the way.  I'm just comparing apples to apples.