Question Using SimTools for data acquisition

Hi Everyone,

I'm currently in the process of doing some research for a school project. The project involves actuating a motion simulator through Matlab/Simulink interfacing. Concerning this I have 2 questions at the moment.

When games output data such as roll and pitch, what are they being compared to? I guess against the center of gravity, is this correct? In reality these things don't act on a single point, they are rotations about the roll and pitch axis, but these don't need to have a common point. That was my reason for asking.

My other question concerns the SimTools software. To be able to calculate the required motion in Simulink, I need to import the game telemetry data in real time. This could be done by writing applications for each game, but looking at the limited time I have, I was thinking about using SimTools for this. There are a lot of plug-ins for different games and SimTools. Would it be possible to interface Simulink to SimTools itself for extracting the game data? This way I can import the required data from a single location. When I need to simulate another game I only have to download the required plug-in, but I wouldn't have to change anything in my Simulink program.
What would be the best way to do this? Do I only need to interface with the game manager, or is this impossible without using the game engine?
I do not need the motion calculations, these I will do myself, I just need the pitch and roll data.

Thank you for your time!

Joël

Thank you for your quick response!

I was aware of the directions of roll and pitch, I just wasn't sure what they were compared to. In the pictures that point is called C, but what is it? Is it the center of gravity or is it just a random point?

The UDP solution is indeed a good idea, but quickly looking over the topic about creating plug ins that it refers to, I started to wonder one thing. Let's say I just need my program to work for one game, would it not be easier to get the values from one of the plugins itself? Or is that not advised?
SimTools has the advantage that it can accomodate for different games, but if I need just one, would the plug in example not be easier? I am not capable of investigating the topic thoroughly at this moment, but that's what crossed my mind when I saw the detailed explainations in there.

Greetings,

Joël

Thank you for your response yobuddy.

I think I will stick with the udp packet solution, also because simulink has block to receive them. This looks like the most plug and play solution to me.
I still wonder though, what are the values in these packages? Are these absolute values like acceleration, roll and pitch in degrees. What values are represented in what way, because I need the roll and pitch values in degrees for example, not a different value that is calculated for correct motion in the simtools engine.

Thanks in advance,

Joël

I have configured the output for a network output. The outputs I get are not in degrees and g-forces, but in numbers ranging from 0 to 255 when operating in 8 bit mode (127 being the center value). I know that when looking at roll for example, the value 127 represents the normal position, and 0 and 255 represent maximum roll in their respective directions.
How much degrees roll do these numbers represent, how is this calculated in simtools? Converting them to degrees is no problem, but I have to know the degree/percentage ratio that simtools uses to convert the game output to the axis output..

Thanks in advance!

Joël

Hi joel! Did you in your project define a plugin (for SimTools) to provide data to Simtools from Simulink?

what is the data acquisition rate of simtools? Is this depends on the game (like xplane) data output rate. or simtools has its own data transfer rate?

Thank you for your response. However, for a 6-degree-of-freedom motion simulator, each axis is involved in the motion of each DOF. Why does each Axis here (Axis Assignment page) correspond to only one DOF, for example, "Axis 1a corresponds to DOF1 (Roll 100%)"? If I want to obtain vehicle data from a game, such as yaw angle and acceleration. How can I achieve this using SimTools?

Thanks for your response. Does it means that if I use UDP to output these datas, <Aixs1a> correspons to Roll angle of the vehicle, and <Axis2a> to Pitch angle and so on? Furthermore, I want to get acceleration along x,y,z axis of a vehilce in a game, and angular velocity around thses three axes. Can i achive this by using SimTools?